Ravine Road North
- 75 million
- Snowy Hydro Limited
- Snowy Mountains, NSW
- Roads and Bridges
- Construct Only
Background
The Ravine Road Upgrade Project transformed an 8km mountainous, narrow, winding dirt track into a sealed two-lane road, ensuring safe, all-weather heavy vehicle access to the Snowy 2.0 construction site. With 850m of elevation change over the entire length of the project, crews faced significant challenges including extreme weather, tight construction corridors and the requirement to maintain site access during construction. The road upgrade stands as a significant achievement, showcasing engineering excellence and a well-executed solution in a challenging alpine environment.
Scope
The North Ravine Road upgrade was essential for accessing the Ravine Bay Spoil site, which will hold over 1 million cubic meters of spoil. The project involved widening 3 km of the existing 4WD access road and constructing a further 3km of new construction roads, known as the Talbingo Spoil Road.
The new section of road included steep terrain, with pioneering road grades of over 45% and batter heights of close to 50m. These sections resulted in extensive slope stabilisation to ensure batter stability and road safety requirements. Due to the access restrictions for this section of works plant was additionally barged over the Talbingo Reservoir to enable works to be completed from both ends of the cliff section to meet the projects tight time frames.
Leed created a pioneering track and removed 110,000m³ of rock to achieve the final road alignment through this section, and 180,000m3 .
