Huntly section of Waikato expressway heading towards finish line

Friday, 12 July 2019

It won't be too long before vehicles will be travelling up and over Taupiri mountain on the Huntly section of the Waikato Expressway. 

The 15km section is edging towards completion with its opening scheduled for early 2020. 

And with that in mind, the milestones on the five-year project are being ticked off - including the end of earthworks. 

There have been 4.4 million cubic metres of earthworks relocated since construction started in 2015. At its peak, the earthworks were using 150 machines. 

**READ MORE:

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* Waikato Expressway rutting repair work under way

* Work progressing on Hamilton section of Waikato Expressway

* Moving masses of earth in Huntly for expressway

* Sneak peek at Huntly's $458 million roading project

* Consultation key to Huntly expressway project**

Generally, they bank on 100 days of earthworks - given the dry months at the start of the year they managed to squeeze out 132 earthworks hours, Fulton Hogan HEB joint venture project director Tony Adams said. 

The road through Taupiri range involved a 57-metre cut at the top which this alone involved 1.4 million cubed metres of earthworks. 

The winter months will see staff continue with pavement construction which is building up what the final surface will sit on. 

They aren't using the same surface which has caused numerous problems with the Ngāruawāhia and Te Rapa sections  - instead they will be using a special surface called Stone Mastic Asphalt (SMA) rather than chipseal. 

There will be 42,000 tonnes of SMA which will get rolled out ahead of opening to traffic early next year.

'With SMA in place when we open, we won't need to go back in 12 months to lay the final surface.' 

SMA is a mixture of chip, lime, and bitumen, among other things, which is prepared at a bitumen plant and transported to the site.  it is then laid in a 50mm thick mat, at a constant speed to reduce the number of joins. To lay one kilometre of a single lane it takes around 8-10 hours to lay but will result in a better road surface.

The last of the four local road overbridges, at Orini Road, will open to traffic on Wednesday.

There will be some traffic switches at the northern end of the site late winter early spring.

'We will separate traffic northbound and southbound onto the separate on and off ramps at the northern end. At the southern end, we will be doing the tie in to the Ngāruawāhia section and there will be some pushing of the traffic into different lanes.'

Staff will continue to put up wire rope, concrete barriers and the finishing touches on the bridges over the coming months. 

While this week they notched up hand planting the one-millionth plant they still have 250,000 to be finish off. 

They have surpassed two million man-hours since construction began in late 2015. There has been more than 3500 staff which have been included in the site build. 

'Staff have been reasonably settled. There has been a lot of construction work in the Waikato and we thought that was going to be a real challenge but it hasn't been too bad.'

The biggest challenge Adams has had is the sheer area of the project. 

'The erosion and sediment control was a major issue we had to control so that was a challenge.

'The thing that was quite unique in this job was the steep terrain we had to deal with and getting the access into it. You have big bits of kit we had cat trip seven dump trucks involved in the second season they weigh in at about 140 tonnes and the challenges around that.'

The Longswamp section of the Waikato Expressway is expected to be finished later this year while the Hamilton section won't be completed until 2021.