Services

Minimising Disruption

As mentioned in the project scope, a key aspect of the Great Eastern Highway (GEH) upgrade is the relocation, replacement and protection of utilities including telecommunications, water, power and gas. These works are unavoidable and complex.

City East Alliance’s primary objective for these works is to manage the service network along GEH in a safe and productive manner while ensuring minimal impact to the community and the environment. As such, the Alliance is working closely with the relevant authorities to ensure the relocation process is carried out safely, efficiently and with minimal disruption.

The Alliance has established a Services Integration Task Force (SITF) to provide an interactive forum to share information, seek input into services design and construction, resolve technical and coordination issues, and facilitate coordination of the services integration.

CEA is also working collaboratively with the service providers and aims to perform as much of the civil works associated with the relocations and replacements as possible. Together they have:

  • identified the existing assets through detailed on-site investigation and survey
  • created a 3D model with the data collected to check for conflicts between various design elements
  • determined if the asset may be abandoned, requires relocation or can be protected and left in place
  • promoted the use of common trenching to ease spatial constraints.

The Alliance is using a combination of software products to manage and model Great Eastern Highway’s many utility services. The software allows the Alliance to model every service that will be located, as well as new utility designs and the drainage pipe network, in three dimensions. One of the key benefits of this software is the identification of clash locations, which can be further investigated to determine if a new design needs to be changed, or if the existing service needs to be relocated.

This method of modelling and interrogating data for buried services design is a unique initiative, which will save the team hundreds of hours by not having to manually detect more than 2,500 service elements from the two dimensional drawings.

3D Services Model Snapshot

Ultimately, a new three metre wide services corridor will be created on both sides of Great Eastern Highway, following the new cadastral property boundary.