Aluminium Dur-A-Span® the best option for the Chatham’s

The Chatham Islands are an archipelago in the Pacific Ocean about 800 km east of New Zealand's South Island with around 800 residents. For many years Fulton Hogan has had a team based on the islands to maintain the road infrastructure to ensure Chatham Islanders are kept safe and can get around the island to run their lives.

“My partner and I were seconded to the Chatham's for five years and have been here for two, to run the maintenance team,” says Phil Holt, Project Manager for the Chatham Islands team of Fulton Hogan.

“It was decided just prior to my arrival that three very old Armco culverts required replacing as the diameter on them wasn’t large enough to cope with the water run-off from the surrounding land and one, in particular, was starting to collapse. Plus an old wooden bridge at Whangamoe required replacement as it was long past its use-by date.”

“Everything comes to us via ship which adds a considerable cost to things,” explains Phil. “My predecessor and the engineer's team decided that to import concrete pipes at 1.8m and 2.1m diameters for the culvert upgrades would just be too expensive. Plus, replacing the old wooden abutment bridge with another concrete bridge would be far more costly than using a 3.6m culvert. So the orders were placed with Michael Beattie at CSP for four Aluminium Dur-A-Span culverts. They were shipped to us via Napier earlier this year.”

Phil says that the culvert replacement at Waitaha, just before the quarry, and the other two on Waitangi Wharf-Owenga Road near Owenga have now been installed. “I have personally installed a Multi-plate before when I was in Northland but it was the first time for my guys,” adds Phil. “It took a bit of time for them to get the hang of it and then they went together quickly. We still have the bridge replacement to do with the much larger 3.6m Aluminium Dur-A-Span.”

“I would say that using the Multi-plate’s from CSP was definitely the most cost-effective and efficient option for what we required here in the Chatham’s. I’ll keep you posted on how we go with the bridge replacement,” says Phil.

For more on CSP’s Multi-plate Structures range click here