| Work Detail |
The 1,425-tonne steel bridge was positioned overnight over James Ruse Drive in the Sydney suburb of Rosehill, Australia.
Lift specialist Sarens has successfully positioned a 64m-long 1,425-tonne steel arch bridge over a busy highway in Rosehill, a suburb of Sydney, eastern Australia.
The project scope for Sarens included the engineering and design of a temporary lifting assembly of SPMTs and strand jacks, lifting and transportation of the bridge arch from fabrication area to installation site and, finally, the lowering of the bridge onto temporary bearings onto bridge piers.
The SPMTs – self-propelled modular transporters - were brought in from western Australia as well as from Malaysia and Vietnam. The team deployed 48 axle-lines of Kamag K24 SPMTs with two power packs and 48 axle-lines of Scheurle Gen 3 SPMTs with two power packs.
Meanwhile, the required towers, bracings, modular lifting beams and strand jacks came from Belgium. It took four weeks to set-up and test all the equipment.
Sarens said that the lift was planned on the basis of an eight-hour window for the operation to place the bridge over James Ruse Drive.
On the night of installation, the bridge was transported from its fabrication location to the final position for installation onto its awaiting bridge piers. The bridge was already complete with light rail tracks as well as walking and bike-riding path.
Bog mats were laid along James Ruse Drive to level the travel path of the SPMTs. The bridge, nearly 16m wide, was lifted using strand jacks to a height of 11.7m.
“Our six crew members on-site and the design experience of our engineering team made this extremely challenging project a success,” said Minhaj Rizvi, Sarens’s project manager for the job.
Sarens was acting for its client Parramatta Connect on the Parramatta Light Rail project that includes a 12km two-way track.
Sarens, based in Wolvertem, Belgium, recently opened a new depot in the Slovakian capital Bratislava where it picked up its first project - lifting operations for a local company producing and assembling precast concrete elements. The company said it will be vying for an important bridge column construction project in northern Slovakia in the near future. |
