As part of a project from Wellington Water, the team at Brian Perry Civil (BPC) have had to navigate a complicated path to the site.

Three kilometres of narrow, winding road sat between BPC’s transport truck – carrying a 35-tonne piling rig – to the work site north of Wellington.

Work on the Kaitoke pipe bridge began back in March 2022. The bridge supports a pipeline that is responsible for supplying 50 per cent of Wellington’s regional bulk water supply network.

The replacement bridge will be an improved network arch bridge, which will demonstrate improved seismic resilience in order to safeguard Wellington’s water supply. The old bridge doesn’t meet the necessary seismic standards required of such infrastructure and has started to crack and leak.

Prior to the rig’s arrival 300 cubic metres of rock and vegetation were cleared from the southern slope of the valley to make room for 20 vertical rock anchors to widen the access road. Overall, the work is expected to require over 200 horizontal and vertical rock anchors for stability and resilience.

The three-kilometre journey to the work site took the crew three hours, manoeuvring the truck and the rig around tight corners. The narrow bridges along the path had specific weight limits, forcing the crew to remove the rig from the transport, track it across and reload it on the other side.

The 18 m high piling rig was eventually successfully installed at the work site.

Work on the bridge is expected to continue until December 2024.

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