Bridges

The $1.95B Ipswich Motorway Upgrade in South East Queensland is Australia’s largest road infrastructure Alliance. Origin Alliance, a team comprising the Department of Transport and Main Roads, two designers and three contractors, were tasked with transforming an existing sub-standard four lane motorway into a modern, intelligent six-lane roadway with a future capacity for eight lanes using network-managed hard shoulder running.

Despite efforts to retain a considerable number of existing structures on the project, a total of thirteen bridges were removed to facilitate a new and safer road alignment. Encompassing the demolition of cable stay structures, arches and those built from precast planks, tees and composites, this paper outlines the many complexities undertaking such works and the means by which they were planned and executed to ensure no harm came to the travelling public, the on-site workforce or the surrounding environment.

Having made a decision early in the project to selfperform critical path works and obtain a DM1 licence (the highest grade demolition competency in Queensland), the demolition of structures over motorway, local roads and sensitive waterways quickly became an exercise in bridge de-construction.

This paper outlines some examples of this work and identifies how this approach also afforded the Alliance the opportunity to reuse and recycle various bridge components.