Western Harbour Tunnel, Sydney, NSW, Australia
Aurecon is transforming Sydney Harbour, replacing dredging with TBM tunnel engineering to deliver a faster, safer and more sustainable second harbour crossing.
Change your location to view content tailored for you.
Healesville–Koo Wee Rup Road is a vital connection for Melbourne’s south-east, and its upgrade will provide a huge benefit for the area, duplicating lanes, widening bridges and roundabouts and introducing new shared walking and cycling paths.
Improving safety and easing congestion in the area are the main priorities – with locals benefiting from reduced travel time and better connections. Aurecon is currently contributing to the Healesville–Koo Wee Rup (South) road upgrade project with its roads and bridge engineering design, sustainability and digital engineering services.
The upgrade is a road duplication that delivers:
Aurecon is using digital design tools to prepare the engineering designs for this project. This digital enablement assists to streamline approval workflows of the design iterations, manage quality control approvals, and provide digital files to the material fabricators for assurance in the construction process.
Having the engineering designs in a digital format also provides road operators with digital data that can be used to inform operations and maintenance in the future.
This approach follows the design standards ISO 19650-1 and ISO 19650-2, in the internationally-recognised BSI KitemarkTM certification, of which Aurecon is one of the leading organisations globally certified to use the standards.
Following tender design assessment, the upgrade’s reference design was enhanced with more than 20 wildlife crossings, to allow the safe passage of endangered fauna (identified in the Fauna Management Plan) across the highway. The design included the integration of fauna fencing to manage the passage of endangered species to safe crossing points.
The wildlife crossings were designed to include fauna shelves, gabions and shelters to produce a solution which promotes and protects fauna habitat. A retaining wall was introduced north of Ballarto Road to reduce impact on the protected southern brown bandicoot habitat. A services corridor was introduced along the boundary to reduce habitat loss.
The design challenges on this project are benefitting from digital engineering tools as the BSI KitemarkTM certification framework uses technology to support both project and asset information management processes.
Engineering-specific data provides design solutions in a digital environment during design and construction. The digital modelling also provides confidence in the materials fabrication quality and timeframe. It services the streamlining of design workflows to enable deeper collaboration between designers and constructors.
The digital models are one of the legacies that Aurecon has delivered for the road upgrade; to support and strengthen the operations and maintenance of the road asset beyond the design and construction contract.
In addition to the Healesville-Koo Wee Rup (South) road upgrade, Aurecon contributed to the Princes Highway East – Kilmany project under the same Major Road Projects Victoria programme of works.
Aurecon is transforming Sydney Harbour, replacing dredging with TBM tunnel engineering to deliver a faster, safer and more sustainable second harbour crossing.
Aurecon's active transport design expertise supports TfNSW to create a seamless, unobtrusive, step-free ramp and cycleway across Sydney Harbour Bridge.
Aurecon's expertise in tunnel systems helps design the replacement of the Burnley Tunnel's low-voltage cables to keep the city's busiest road links moving.
