The Ballina Bypass Alliance (BBA) received the award for the local community generating value for the New South Wales Roads and Maritime Services (RMS) and community. The $640m project managed significant technical complexity and left a positive technical, safety, community and value for money legacy for future projects.
The Alliancing Association of Australasia (AAA) Acting CEO Ron Quill said the Ballina Bypass Alliance managed intolerable ground engineering solutions successfully through the alliance governance and communication framework, with the Alliance Management Team (AMT) regularly briefing the Alliance Leadership Team (ALT) on developments to assist quick resolution.
“The ALT was highly empowered to ‘plan, do, work, act’ and built a collaborative, integrated and performance-driven team who overcome many challenges and construction uncertainties, opening the bypass seven months early in November 2011,” Mr Quill said.
“The team constantly innovated (with more than 500 registered innovations) to manage the uncertainties of complex soft soils, construction around environmentally sensitive waterways and the need for road safety on an extremely busy and high-risk highway environment,” he said.
Coffey Geotechnics Manager and BBA ALT member, Brett Hawkins said the alliance fostered a culture of innovation and decisive leadership to achieve its goals.
“Congratulations to the alliance partners with Coffey – RMS, Leighton Contractors, AECOM, and SMEC – and to the 1,800 workers directly involved with the project on a job well done.
“Great alliancing and teamwork ensured that this large and complex engineering project was completed on budget and ahead of schedule.
“The Ballina region has complex ground conditions including deep soft soils with some areas of soft clays ranging between 6m and 28m deep. These are arguably the most challenging soils to build infrastructure on.
“Over the course of the project we used a number of new and emerging ground treatment technologies including vacuum consolidation. This allowed the road to be built over soft soils previously considered uneconomic,” said Mr Hawkins.
The project was praised for its safety record as the Winner of the Safe Work Australia Awards for Best Workplace Health and Safety Management System Award 2010 & 2011. It was also recently awarded the National Construction Contractors Federation 2012 Earth Award for environmental, engineering and project management excellence.
