icubed consulting are industry leaders at designing the civil infrastructure required to build and maintain wind farms, however as no two sites are the same, each site has its own unique challenges from planning to construction. Collector wind farm is no different. As part of the Collector wind farm approval, the existing public Lerida Road South was required to be re-designed and upgraded. In its existing condition Lerida Road South was an unsealed, winding, 5 m wide road, with steep batters, uncontrolled drainage crossings and a roadside lined with existing vegetation.
So how do you turn a road like this into a sealed 7 m rural road to the approval of local council, the Office of Environment and Heritage, and to the satisfaction of existing property owners’ all while achieving Austroads Standards and producing a cost-effective design? Enter icubed.
Early on, it was found that the existing alignment was well below the standards required for Austroads and Council requirements. The team at icubed consulting comprising of Josh Mason and Nick Canto worked together to come up with a viable and innovative solution, which involved redesigning of the horizontal and vertical alignment, cross section and drainage, to achieve a safe and compliant road.
The wider and safer road cross section meant that numerous trees were going to be removed. Working collaboratively with Ratch Australia and NGH Consulting, the project team were collectively able to save 92 mature trees from removal by shifting the road alignment. NGH’s biodiversity assessments defined the trees that were of retention value, and Ratch Australia were successfully able to negotiate land resumptions with property owners. From here icubed, were able to define a new road alignment that maintained a safe clear zone for road users, retained 92 trees gaining the approval from the Office of Environment and Heritage and Council.
The challenges didn’t stop there! Being over 50 km from a major town centre and having inadequate geotechnical conditions, a traditional pavement design would require large quantities of road base materials to be imported at great cost to achieve a suitable pavement. icubed’s solution – design a pavement of reduced thickness by improving the existing sub-grade through the process of lime stabilisation. This design choice enabled the saving of approximately 11,000 m3 of pavement material (880 truck and dog deliveries)!
Throughout all 27 horizontal direction changes, 28 culvert crossings, 4 track intersections, 6 driveway crossings and for every metre of the 6.1 km road upgrade, icubed were making decisions and solving problems to the benefit of all road stakeholders along Lerida Road South.
Get in touch and let us know how we can help you with your project problems!
