Featured Job of the Year 2007
WINNER Australia

EastLink is Australia's largest urban road development project. It's a A$2.5 billion project which will deliver Melbourne's second fully electronic tollway, comprising about 45 kilometres of freeway standard road connecting the city's eastern and south-eastern suburbs. Construction is now well underway at both entrances of the twin, 1.6 kilometre long three-lane tunnels under the Mullum Mullum Valley, with 600 people employed on the project.

For these tunnels Thiess John Holland required a specially designed mobile scaffold so that they could gain safe access and install the tunnel lining. To do this was no easy feat as there were a number of constraints that made such a mobile made from any other scaffolding system impossible.

First they needed to maintain the 7.5m traffic opening through the centre of the tunnel while at the same time only running on the existing, single track down either side.

Then they needed to be able to drive the mobile on a slope of up to 5º! To do this Layher designed a special frame for the scaffold to sit on that could have the special mechanical castors bolted to it.

SwiftScaff built this scaffold for Thiess John Holland overnight so that the road way was never blocked.

Thanks to Thiess John Holland and Paul Houghton of SwiftScaff for the use of this photo.