New Bridgewater Bridge passes construction milestone
Tasmania’s largest-ever infrastructure project has passed another milestone with the pouring of the last two concrete piers for the new Bridgewater Bridge. Here’s how it’s progressing.
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Tasmania’s largest-ever infrastructure project has passed another milestone with the pouring of the last two concrete piers for the new Bridgewater Bridge.
New Infrastructure Minister Kerry Vincent and federal MP Brian Mitchell visited the construction site on Tuesday to inspect progress.
The federal and state governments are contributing $786m into the project.
The 46 piles that make up the bridge’s foundations were completed in July 2024, with their bases bottoming out up to 90-metres below the river.
“To have these last two piers poured is a great milestone,” Mr Vincent said.
“We’re totally out of the water and up to the superstructure part of the job and that’s progressed very quickly.
“Yesterday, I had the privilege of going out through the precast plant and seeing the over 1000 precast panels and segments being made that form the superstructure of this bridge, amazing technology production line that I hadn’t experienced before and to see it all coming together now is incredible.”
Mr Mitchell said he too was impressed by the progress to date.
“People have been promising a new Bridgewater bridge, for decades, and here it is finally happening, the last two piers being poured tonight and then they can get really started on the superstructure,” Mr Mitchell said.
“And of course, we hope to have cars driving over this bridge by mid next year.
“So a wonderful testament to the team putting this together. They’ve done a magnificent job so far.”
Project director Ben Moloney said work was underway to fix a wonky section that has been the subject of much public comment.
He said the bridge has a large number of joints to deal with thermal expansion and contraction.
“With this particular expansion joint, the temporary works didn’t perform as was intended, so we weren’t able to get the alignment we were looking for,” he said.
“Over the weekend, the contractor has made some modifications to those temporary works, and by the end of the this week, we anticipate that the alignment will be resolved.
“With big builds like the like this, they are quite complex. So we do anticipate these challenges from time to time.
“I think what’s cropped up here is the fact that we’ve got 20,000 people driving past every day and if the and it doesn’t take a particular expert to see things weren’t lining up.”
Mr Mitchell famously bet — while Labor was in opposition during the Morrison government — that he would eat his hat if the bridge was finished by the end of this year.
The new bridge is currently due to be completed by July 2025.
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