Echuca Moama Bridge Project – Murray River Crossing

Australia

Project synopsis

Detailed design of cast in-situ balanced cantilever bridge

Contractor

McConnell Dowell

End client

Victoria State Government

Tony Gee was the bridge designer for the design and construction contract for a new bridge over the Murray River at the junction between New South Wales and Victoria near Echuca.

The project includes construction of a 20m wide bridge with two traffic lanes with cycle paths and a footway with a main span of 115m and backspans of 60m.

The bridge has integral twin blade piers, is made continuous with the super-tee deck approach spans and is supported on precast driven pile foundations.

The deck design was optimised to suit the tight construction programme, so an asymmetric segment layout was adopted to reduce the time required for the installation of the form travellers. The endspans were shortened compared to traditional designs in order to minimise the cost of the endspan on falsework construction, and the endspan piers were also made integral with the deck in order to resist the uplift forces.

The design was documented in 3D using the latest BIM techniques to ensure a clash free design along with solving buildability issues.