Tullamarine Freeway widening — bridge-approach piers

A major Tullamarine Freeway widening package required new bridge-pier and abutment foundations alongside a live 100 km/h carriageway. The design called for 900 mm and 1,200 mm diameter bored piers, socketed 3–5 m into Melbourne basalt, with every pile installed during single-shift daytime lane closures.

We mobilised a heavy Bauer BG-series rotary rig with rock tooling and a support crane for cage handling. Work zones were separated from live traffic by concrete barriers and water-filled barricades; lane-closure taper was managed by the principal’s traffic-management team. Each pile was drilled with temporary casing through the upper weathered basalt and rock-augered into the competent founding stratum, with the rock toe verified by the site geologist before cage placement.

Concrete was tremied from the base to prevent segregation, with 4 × CSL tubes cast in each pile for post-install Cross-Hole Sonic Logging verification. The post-install cert pack — pour records, CSL reports, cage drop sheets, and chartered-engineer AS 2159 certification — was issued the morning after the final pile.

Road-infrastructure piling is what VIC PILING does best: heavy rock-socket capability, full AS 2159 compliance, and a culture of same-day paperwork so the principal never chases us for records.