New Milestone for Brisbane Airport Project

Brisbane Airport Corporation (BAC) and contracting partner Jan De Nul (Australia) Pty Ltd (JDN) celebrated an exciting milestone today in the construction of the New Parallel Runway (NPR) with the cutting of the final drainage wick.

A final wick cutting ceremony on site marked the completion of this phase of the project which included the installation of more than 300,000 drainage wicks across the NPR site.

Installed by the Menard Bachy-SoilWicks Australia joint venture, the drainage wicks are pivotal in expediting the consolidation of the underlying waterlogged soils.

Each wick drain is driven vertically into the soil to depths averaging 25 meters below ground and at a horizontal density of around 1 meter between wicks. The drainage wicks are the most efficient and cost effective method of treating the runway site.

BAC CEO and Managing Director, Julieanne Alroe, said the Principal Contractor JDN and its sub-contractor Menard Bachy-SoilWicks Australia achieved the quantum of works required three weeks ahead of schedule.

“We’re hugely proud of their efforts and excited that the last drainage wick has been installed because the sooner the wicks are placed in the ground the sooner the runway pavement construction can begin.Since the dredging and reclamation works began in June this year our Principal Contractor, JDN, has placed more than eight million cubic meters of sand on the site and their sub-contractor, Menard Bachy-SoilWicks Australia, has installed the hundreds of thousands of individual wick drains,” Ms Alroe said.

Managing Director of SoilWicks Australia, Greg Ryan, said the NPR wick drain project is the largest wick drain project ever undertaken in Australia.

“The 8,000,000 linear meters of wick drain used is longer than the distance from Brisbane to Beijing and is also longer than the distance to the center of the earth,” Mr Ryan said.

The NPR is on course to open in 2020.

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Press Release