Spitfire Banks Drive, Pelican Waters – Landscape and Erosion

Project: Spitfire Banks Drive Bridge
Contact: Michael Fields
Contractor: Hall Contracting
Address: Spitfire Banks Drive, Pelican Waters

The Project

Pelican Waters has long been regarded as the Sunshine Coast’s waterfront lifestyle of choice and a selection of residential home sites, including rare ocean access, and waterview land for sale.

Pelican Waters is on the south of the sunshine coast, and is well connected to major facilities like universities, hospitals, shopping centres and recreational areas.

A 33 year project to date, the Pelican Waters residential community has sold more than 2,750 home sites since first released to the market in 1989.

An exciting new development is the new Central Park right in the middle of the pelican waters suburb which will include:

• Large 2ha activity park 
• Parkour – Finnish-designed equipment to promote creative movement including climbing, jumping, swinging, balancing and vaulting. The course includes state-of-the-art climbing frames, balance rails, platforms and walls.
• Custom design basketball and netball court.
• New Bocce Court.
• Large covered BBQ and picnic table plaza.
• Sports field with multi-use goal posts for both league and soccer.
• Feature lighting will set off the park and night.
• Large carparks

Spitfire Banks Drive is the main drive that will connect Central Park from the waterfront side of Pelican waters and is currently being constructed by Hall Contracting. The drive crosses a canal which feeds from the Pelican Waters marina, and a bridge is being constructed across what used to be mangrove swamp.

The Challenges

Hall Contracting have been the principle contractor for the Pelican Waters estate since 1990 which has involved some challenging engineering and Hall Contracting have a very diverse range of solutions to offer.

The Spitfire Banks Drive bridge is no exception! With issues from running sand and clay, Hall Contracting engaged Tectonic to test the soil, where it was discovered the firm clay layer was at a depth of 4m which meant traditional pavement and bridge construction methodology would be both expensive and slow. De-watering, excavation and then importing quality fill to a depth of 4m was scarcely considered.

Instead, Hall Contracting turned to geosynthetics as a high quality and cost effective solution.

Our Solution

Hall Contracting, in conjunction with Tectonic and Polyfabrics, selected the TerraStop® HS Woven 200/50 as the most suitable product to assist building a stable platform from which the piling rigs could operate.

The project brief became comparatively simple:

1. Excavation to -0.5m AHD
2. Install layer of separation geotextile across subgrade (mastaTEX® PF24)
3. Construct platform of 1m thickness with 2 layers of HS Woven geotextile
   a. Lower layer oriented in transverse
   b.Upper layer oriented longitudinally.
4. Platform fill to be placed in 300mm lifts and compacted between lifts

Polyfabrics supplied a 6m wide geotextile spreader bar to facilitate the installation of the heavy geotextile rolls.

This solution allowed Hall Contracting to save the client Pelican Waters significant costs, reducing project delays and reducing the need to import costly fill material. 

Polyfabrics is proud to work alongside Hall Contracting and it’s professional project staff!

Contact Us

For more details on this project, contact us at sales@polyfabrics.com.au or call 1300 287 484

Product

1. TerraStop HS Woven PET 200kN geotextile (4000m2)
2. mastaTEX® Non Woven Class B geotextile (10,800m2)
3. TerraDrain 10mm and 18mm Drainage Sheeting (890m2)

Resources

• Hallcontracting.com.au
• Pelicanwaters.com