Newell Highway Upgrade Project

The Project

The Newell Highway is the longest highway in New South Wales, stretching over 1060 kilometres from the Victorian border at Tocumwal to the Queensland border at Goondiwindi, and is a National Highway. The highway is a vital transport artery and needed a major pavement upgrade.

The Challenge

Transport for New South Wales (TfNSW) and Fulton Hogan Construction faced a unique challenge while upgrading the Newell Highway, a critical national transport artery in NSW. The extensive project, underway since August 2022, encountered highly expansive in situ soils. These soils posed a significant obstacle to traditional construction methods, which often rely on raised working platforms.

Building such platforms would have disrupted the natural water flow, negatively impacting dams used by local farmers. TfNSW and Fulton Hogan required a solution that addressed the soil challenges while minimising environmental disruption.

Our Solution

To tackle the challenge of expansive clay subgrades on the Newell Highway upgrade, a two-part solution was utilised. Lime stabilisation was used to improve the behaviour of the clay, while Combigrid® Composite Geogrid was introduced to mitigate potential long-term reflective cracking caused by subgrade movement.

Combigrid® Composite Geogrid was chosen not only for its effectiveness in treating expansive clays, but also because it's a well-established product recognised by Australian road authorities for improving the bearing capacity of soft subgrade soils in pavement construction.

This innovative approach, combining lime stabilisation with Combigrid®, resulted in a robust pavement structure that could withstand the challenges posed by the expansive soils, ensuring minimal disruption to traffic flow and the critical water needs of local farmers.

Our successful involvement in this project builds upon our prior contribution to the Newell Highway upgrade between Mungle Back Creek and Boggabilla, where significant quantities of Combigrid® were also supplied.

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