The $1.2 billion Southern Regional Water Pipeline Alliance (SRWPA) program is a fundamental part of the Queensland Government’s drought strategy initiative. The State Government’s Water Grid will allow water to be shared across SEQ, moving water from areas of surplus to where it is needed most, providing government with the ability to balance regional supply with localised demand.

For more than 20 years, the region has enjoyed the prosperity of a burgeoning population, a trend accelerated more recently. Over the same time, SEQ’s water supply was impacted by severe drought, posing a challenge for water management and planning. To combat this problem, the Queensland Government launched a major drought strategy initiative that included establishing additional water infrastructure.

The Water Grid will improve the management of available resources by better using spare capacity within pre-existing water supply networks and planned integration of new ones, future-proofing water supply up to the year 2050.

The SRWPA started as one $901 million project that was granted Significant Project Status by the Queensland Government in September 2005.

This particular project involved the design and construction of a 94 km reverse flow Southern Regional Pipeline (SRP) that would transport water between Brisbane and the Gold Coast city council areas. The ability to transport up to130 ML/d of water between two of Queensland’s most densely populated locations is integral to the Government’s drought proofing strategy.

The SRWPA began construction in September 2006. A year later saw the development of two sister projects: the Northern Pipeline Interconnector (NPI) – Stage 1 and the Eastern Pipeline Interconnector (EPI).

The NPI – Stage 1 pipeline runs for 47 km between Landers Shute Water Treatment Plant, Landsborough and Morayfield Reservoir, Caboolture. It has the capacity to deliver up to 65 ML/d.

The 8.6 km EPI links Heinemann Road Reservoir, Redland and Kimberley Park Reservoir, Logan, and has a daily water movement capacity of up to 22 ML.

The SRP project was originally owned by Southern Regional Water Pipeline Company (SRWPCo), an organisation with six shareholders, including five local councils – Brisbane, Gold Coast, Ipswich, Logan and the former Beaudesert Shire Council (now the Scenic Rim Regional Council) – and government water supply authority SEQWater.

In 2007, these shareholders were bought out by the Queensland Government who established the Queensland Bulk Water Transport Authority, trading as LinkWater. LinkWater is responsible for the ongoing management, operation and maintenance of SEQ’s potable bulk water lines.

A separate entity, LinkWater Projects, operates as the Queensland Government’s Special Purpose Vehicle for the design, construction and commissioning of major potable water pipelines in SEQ. This entity, together with KBR, Abigroup and McConnell Dowell, operate as a shared Alliance structure.

The Alliance culture

SRWPA Program Director Paul Tracey said the Alliance-style of project delivery was integral to successfully constructing the pipelines.

“Alliancing gave us the flexibility to effectively manage an evolving scope of work resulting from the addition of NPI – Stage 1 and EPI in 2007 while continuing to meet our delivery timeframes,” Paul said. “There is probably no other form of contract that could do this.”

“A hard dollar project would require multiple variations and protracted commercial negotiations whereas the Alliance model can handle it.”

Normal design and construct delivery involves a structure of one company working with the designer for the client. The SRWPA involved a client (LinkWater Projects), two construction contractors (Abigroup and McConnell Dowell), the designer (KBR) and electrical contractor (JP Richardson) working as one team. This enabled the teams to co-ordinate their work and resulted in smoother, more flexible, project execution.

This structure also inspired value management strategies and innovation involving cost efficiencies, environmental care and community relationships.

This is evident in the significant cost savings achieved using the same systems and processes to design and construct across all three projects.

A unique program

There were a number of factors that made the SRWPA unique as a water infrastructure program.

Many major pipeline projects are located in remote areas, whereas the pipelines built for this extensive program of works are situated near, and designed to service, urban areas. This required a great deal of landowner interaction to manage expectations and develop understanding of the construction process.

Route selection was critical. When the SRWPA was in its infancy, it was charged with a number of responsibilities such as land acquisition, while simultaneously managing design, pipe procurement and construction planning.

Mr Tracey likens mapping the route to piecing together a jigsaw puzzle.

“It was a challenge working out where we could start construction,” he said.

“Land availability originally drove the schedule and guided the program of works.

“This was managed with a ‘traffic light’ coded schedule so we could identify areas that had land approvals, an agreed design and available pipe and fittings, like pipeline bends.

“Our pipeline planning was an organic process and for this reason we tried to make the project design fairly flexible so we could map it out,” mr Tracey said.

There was a great deal of public interest in pipeline construction as it involved 569 directly-affected landowners, various nearby communities and SEQ residents across the region. This required establishing a number of communication channels including:

• 1800 numbers
• Community information stands
• Construction and contact cards
• Face-to-face meetings such as doorknocks
• Community building activities such as school visits and attendance at local fetes
• Media liaison
• Regular meetings with elected representatives and community groups

Discussions included information on the pipeline location, construction methods, management of construction works, community services, local events and timeframes.

By the close of the SRWPA program, the Alliance had directly communicated with more than 20,000 stakeholders.

From an environmental perspective, the program ensured all pipeline structures, such as the six pump stations, four balance tanks and three water quality facilities, had a minimal building footprint. The program also shared stakeholder relationship learnings, enabling communities to receive prompt responses to inquiries and practical solutions to their concerns.

Other innovations included:

• Establishing new procedures for the hyperbaric conditions involved in microtunnelling;
• Ensuring pipeline traceability;
• Conducting Australia’s largest water project cold tap;
• Building one of the world’s biggest two-way breakpoint chlorination facilities;
• Using a ‘pig’ to clean the pipeline; and,
• Carrying out an enormous bridge lift.

Hyperbaric microtunnelling conditions

The SRWPA built 12 microtunnels in order to minimise any impact on the environment. Although it increased the difficulty of the job, it successfully reduced the potential impact of construction on major roadways, streams and rivers as the banks and waters were left untouched.

Hyperbaric conditions involving enormous atmospheric pressures were experienced during microtunnelling. To manage these conditions, the SRP project partnered with the Wesley Centre for Hyperbaric Medicine to conduct a comprehensive risk assessment.

The SRWPA also co-ordinated all life support systems and support personnel, organised ‘dive’ medical assessments for the caisson workers (those working in the deep shafts and tunnels below water level), lock operators, paramedics and intensive care nursing staff, and established and practiced an emergency evacuation exercise with SRP staff.

Pipeline traceability

In a first for a major water pipeline, barcoding was specified as part of the construction quality assurance system to keep track of each individual section of pipe – from manufacture to final position in the ground.

As the pipe was laid, each section was sorted and tracked using a GPS system. Although the SRWPA has laid more than 160 km of pipeline, the exact location of each pipe will be able to be located years after the projects are completed. Knowing where each individual piece of pipe is situated means that the pipeline operator can identify when a piece of pipe was manufactured in the plant.

Pigging

Prior to pigging, extensive trials were completed to select an appropriate pig type and size to ensure that there would be no damage to the pipes. A pig’s diameter is traditionally designed to be larger than the pipeline. The SRWPA crews tailored the pigs to reduce oversize and avoid snags while still being able to pig efficiently. The pigging crew condensed its program to gain schedule efficiencies by disinfecting pipelines in association with the pigging activity.

Additionally, as a result of relatively clean pipeline installation, the pig was able to be used without an initial high velocity flush behind it, practically halving the time normally taken to do this task. Water flow was controlled by using the pipeline’s temporary valves to manage water pressure in the pipes, while the pig location in the pipeline was continuously monitored electronically.

Bridge lift

On the NPI – Stage 1 project, it was decided to use an elevated crossing, where the pipe is supported by a bridge instead of being buried underground. The aim was to reduce the construction impact on an environmentally sensitive area.

The steel truss bridge designed to carry the pipe across the Caboolture River was 82 m long and, including pipes, fittings and lifting attachments, weighed 192 tonnes. This ‘super lift’ required the use of Australia’s largest mobile crane – a 1,100 tonne Gottwald AK 850/1100 – transported from Sydney for the purpose. Even then, this lift was at maximum capacity for this crane.

The single crane option was chosen because it provided greater safety than a dual crane lift. Another safety consideration involved the proximity of the crane outriggers to the river bank and soft ground (silt and sand) conditions. The SRWPA made the first priority of the operation ensuring the stability of the crane outriggers during the lift from lateral movement and settlement. The lift was successfully completed without incident.

Cold tapping

The SRWPA achieved an Australian first with the successful completion of the nation’s largest water project cold tap. The process involved attaching the new SRP to the existing mainline at Cameron’s Hill Reservoir in Brisbane’s west, by temporarily turning off the main and draining it for drilling.

The impressive size of the undertaking involved drilling a 940 mm hole to fit a pipe that was 1,086 mm in diameter to a 1,750 mm pipe. The drilling rig was 4 m long and weighed 3.5 tonnes.

Operational challenges successfully overcome included:

• Drilling a pipe that was suspended two metres from the ground;
• Cutting into an oval, not circular, pipe; and,
• Co-ordinating cutting machine components that travelled via six countries for various modifications before being shipped to Brisbane via Perth and Melbourne.

Breakpoint chlorination

Breakpoint chlorination is the process of converting the water disinfection process by changing chloramine into chlorine. Likewise, the opposite process of converting chlorine into chloramine is called breakpoint chloramination.

The pump station at Chambers Flat is designed to pump water between Brisbane and the Gold Coast and uses both disinfection processes. The local councils for these areas use different methods to disinfect the water supply. This means the pump station must have the ability to change the water disinfection process depending on the direction water is being pumped.

On a worldwide scale, the Chambers Flat pump station is unique. It uses both breakpoint processes in the same plant to convert from one disinfection residual regime to the other. The sheer scale of the processes is also a world first. The breakpoint processes will service the SRP that has a water delivery capacity of up to 130 ML/d, and provide water to two urban hubs with a combined population of 2.5 million residents.

Safety first

Around 30 km of pipeline was constructed under or near 32 kilovolt powerlines in residential environments. The high voltage transmission lines, narrow easements and lifting operations posed special workplace health and safety challenges to maintain safe clearances for surface operations. High voltage electrical transmission wires can arc several metres depending on latent conditions.

To protect the SRWPA workforce, a number of safety measures were introduced such as physical and mechanical machinery lockouts and proxy volt sensors that sense overhead powerlines and automatically shut down the crane whenever the boom comes within a predetermined distance of the hazard. Construction crews also reduced their footprint, reducing the risk by securing one crane in an optimal location to operate as needed instead of having mobile cranes moving around the site. Each machine was also supplied with a trained spotter with radio communication to the operator.

On such a large project, it was imperative that safety be the main consideration in the minds of all workforce, staff and subcontractors. This involved developing a supportive framework of systems and procedures, adapted from the SRWPA’s home organisations, to produce a best-for-project safety system that accommodated each organisation’s requirements.

These processes and systems then supported the development and maintenance of a strong safety culture using a consultative, behaviour-based approach. The success of this approach is demonstrated by the SRWPA’s outstanding safety record. SRWPA achieved an initial one million hours with no lost time injuries (LTIs) and subsequently achieved another 2.4 million hours LTI-free.

Various tactics employed to build the safety culture included:

• Ensuring safety was an essential component of position descriptions;
• Developing a safety leadership program;
• Conducting regular safety culture surveys that enabled management to better support the workforce;
• Ongoing training – for example, supervisors undertook training programs on safety and team management. Over the course of the SRWPA program more than 1,000 staff clocked up 284,000 accredited training hours;
• Scheduling ‘Stop and Consider Days’ that obtained feedback from the workforce on safety performance; and,
• Managing an ongoing review process that involved employee focus groups, manager interviews, site visits and induction observations.

The reviews produced strong evidence of demonstrated best practice and found that:

• Supervisors set high standards of safety and involved their teams in discussing and planning the work each day;
• Subcontractors were given the same assistance as employees and were held accountable to the same safety standards;
• Safety professionals spent most of their time in the field giving advice to teams and ensuring standards were met;
• The safety team was effective at following up and resolving safety issues; and,
• Good communication resulted from pre-start meetings (daily), toolbox talks (weekly), an active safety and environment committee and health, safety and environment noticeboards.

While looking after the SRWPA workforce, staff and subcontractors, the program also ensured it looked after the community. One of the ways the SRWPA did this was through using local suppliers wherever possible. This involved a tendering process to obtain a minimum of three quotes and awarding orders based on best value-for-money, safety and previous experience.

Achievements in the pipeline

SRWPA achievements were acknowledged by a raft of state, national and international awards that recognised SRWPA’s achievements in safety, training, innovation and project management.

Some of the more outstanding awards received included:

• International Pipeline and Offshore Contractors Association Health and Safety Award 2008 runner-up;
• Department of Education, Training and the Arts – Queensland Training Awards 2008: Trainee of the Year (Queensland);
• Queensland Major Contractors Association – Project Safety Excellence Award 2007;
• International Water Association Project Innovation Award – Honour Award (East Asia & Pacific) 2008; and;
• Infrastructure Partnerships Australia – National Infrastructure Award Contractor Excellence 2008.

The SRWPA program was a massive infrastructure undertaking that is unlikely to be repeated for some time. Over its three-year duration, the program provided a community service that went beyond building a pipeline and its associated structures, helping to ensure the region can move water to where it’s needed most. Over this time, the SRWPA set new industry standards for safety and established a number of world and Australian firsts in pipeline projects.

The program proved that best practice isn’t merely a glib truism trotted out for industry awards, but is the cornerstone for delivering a successful program of works. It is central to all frameworks, processes and systems and to maintaining a healthy project culture. The project teams repeatedly came up against challenges not often experienced in the pipeline industry and repeatedly overcame these potential adversities, never stalling and always moving forward.

Now the pipelines sit underground, quietly supplying an entire region with one of life’s most necessary resources. Although the tangible result of the SRWPA is mainly out of sight, the legacy of the program will live on in the industry benchmarks set, the workforce skills built and the strong relationships forged among home organisations, local and state government and regional communities.