🚧 Your Guide to Australian Civil Construction 🚧

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Todays article is 674 words… 5 mins reading time.

Project Overview

This project, which started in mid-2020, has transformed a 100-year-old concrete drain into a community ‘green space’ with a natural waterway, adventure playground, shared pathways and public art.

Client - Brisbane City Council

Project Cost - $15m

Awarded Contractor - Epoca Constructions

Design Consultant - Bligh Tanner, Tract Consultants

Project Drivers - Reduce flood impacts, create a community space that provides both aesthetic and environmental benefits, and to get kids from the local area involved!

Project Challenges - Flood prone, ground contamination (acid sulfate) , existing services (sewer) and proximity to residents.

Ashley Flower from Bligh Tanner, recently presented to Engineers Australia on the engineering reasons behind the design and the importance of collaboration in the early stages.

Key takeaways for Collaboration;

1) Knowing the objective → What are the project goals and drivers? Who are the key stakeholders involved? What’s the budget?

Early collaboration with community and the contractor can help eliminate problems down the line during project delivery.

Don’t skip those kick-off meetings! Make them count.

2) Communication → Be Present.

Face-to-face is definitely best but not needed for every meeting.

Your communication tactics will vary from project to project.

3) Know your audience → Are you in a room full of engineers or are you presenting to the client and community?

Engineers love to take you down into the depths of detail. If the room does not have the technical background, explain yourself clearly without going into too much detail.

4) A picture paints a thousand words → A 10min sketch can replace an hour meeting.

5) Be humble be curious → Learn to listen. A resident who has lived in the area for 50 years will have a wealth of information you may not find.

Use the project as an opportunity to learn about other areas when exposed to different technical professionals.

6) Team culture → Achieve deadlines you didn’t think were possible.

A positive culture can move mountains. Working collectively, all wanting to deliver a project together, helps achieve productivity.

7) Plan for the worst, hope for the best → It is better to underpromise and overdeliver.

A proactive design approach to mitigate potential problems down the road.

“Give yourself some freeboard” - A term used in stormwater design to provide a factor of safety on defined flood levels (vertical distance from AEP level).

Engineering Concepts

This location has previously flooded significantly! Hence, a key design objective is for the waterway to remain stable during rainfall events.

Slowing down the velocity of water which plays a vital role in preventing erosion. This can be achieved in a few ways;

Increase cross-sectional area. Hydraulic capacity of the channel was clearly increased by excavating out a deeper and wider channel.

Induce friction. While we often try to reduce friction, in stormwater design, the roughness of the channel’s surface is increased. Achieved by using concrete segments, rocks and native vegetation. This is critical in reducing erosion in severe weather events and improving water quality downstream.

Increase the distance the water travels. A ‘meandering’ channel was designed which creates more contact areas and turbulence to slow that hydraulic velocity.

The end result is a more controlled and uniform flow.

A video of the project can be found in the below link;

Engineers Australia presentation found here

Thanks for reading! 👷