Southern Gateway Alliance New Perth to Bunbury Highway
The extension of Western Australia's Perth to Bunbury Highway is the largest single road project ever undertaken in the state, and has benefited greatly from the adoption of Trimble machine control systems and two-way data streaming.
The Kwinana Freeway extension and Forrest Highway was a dynamic and challenging infrastructure project, involving the design and construction of 70.5 kilometres of dual carriageway from Safety Bay Road in Baldivis to Old Coast Road in Lake Clifton.
More than 14 million tonnes of material was required to construct the route and historically, a project of this size would have relied on a large team of surveyors to peg the alignment and guide construction activity on-site.
Southern Gateway Alliance however took advantage of wireless technology to rapidly transmit data between the field and the design office with just a few key strokes on a computer.
Sitech WA, Trimble’s distributor in Western Australia, met the Alliance’s requirements with a unique combination of machine control systems and a wireless communications network that represented a world first in application of the technology.
The Trimble system allowed the Alliance to fast track construction and efficiently manage issues surrounding the highway’s evolving design.
The system virtually placed the site plan, design surface, grade and alignment, inside the cab of the earthmoving equipment. Using the GPS, the exact position and very accurate cross slope and heading of the blade or cutting edge was measured. The on-board computer then used this information and compared it to the design elevation to compute cut or fill to grade.
At the same time a Trimble SNR900 radio in each machine transmits data back through the network to the office 100 kilometers (62 miles) away in Perth, where design staff use Trimble SiteVision® Office software to handle the data and view, in real time, the computer screen and site-level data at each machine’s location.
The value of the system was its ability to handle and view data in real time, increasing responsiveness and productivity.
On this project, SGA purchased and fit 30 Trimble machine control systems into earthmoving machines and supervisor’s vehicles.
According to Tony Cariss, Construction Coordination Manager for the SGA, seasonal conditions, the scale of the work, and the relatively short lead time means that construction needs to follow extremely close behind the design work.
“Trimble technology has offered us precisely the solution we needed to fast track the project,” said Cariss. “We needed accurate machine positioning for construction purposes and an instant two-way data transfer between the field and design office.”
Head surveyor for the SGA is Ashley Van Kalken." We've been able to reduce the numbers to only 4 earth works surveyors on the whole project, where traditionally we would be looking at twice that number. The time savings and cost savings on surveyors alone has been quite significant."
