Woolgoolga-to-Ballina, Portion A was the largest of the four design packages in the Pacific Highway Upgrade, awarded to GHD with BG&E as the sub-consultant. Our team provided bridge design, structural and civil engineering, flooding and drainage, and materials testing and durability services.

This 155 kilometre stretch, spanning from north of Coffs Harbour at Woolgoolga to south of the Queensland border, marked the final link in the Pacific Highway upgrade. It included over 100 bridges, 10 grade-separated interchanges, five town bypasses, underpasses and overpasses for local traffic, fauna crossings and driver rest areas.

The bridge over Shark Creek was the longest on the project, spanning 820 metres. We implemented a novel construction methodology for the bridge, comprising nine girders for a single deck twin carriageway superstructure.

Key contributions from BG&E for Portion A included

• 49 kilometres of dual carriageway and local roads, with 35 kilometres of early works road design completed within four months.
• 33 kilometres of enabling works.
• 73 bridges, featuring PCS plank and Super-T girders on conventional in-situ and precast concrete substructures.
• 116 design lots (four stages for each lot), with designs delivered before or on schedule.
• Optimised road alignment of the reference design.
• Optimised bridge deck designs, reducing the number of 1,500 super tee bridge girders by 88 compared with reference designs – providing a saving of $2.8 million.
• Optimised bridge span configurations and substructure design – which reduced construction costs by $4.8 million).
• Refined the design of standard Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) prestressed planks and super tee beams.