Brisbane Airport Link

Linking Roads for Smoother Travel

Airport Link, Northern Busway (Windsor to Kedron) & Airport Roundabout Upgrade

The Airport Link,  a toll system of tunnel and motorway, connects Brisbane’s CBD, and a longer Clem Jones Tunnel to the East-West Arterial Road leading to the Brisbane Airport. It was built along with the Windsor to Kedron segment of the Northern Busway.

The link and busway development spanned 15 kilometres of tunnelling, including the road, (6.7km of twin tunnels), busway tunnels and connecting ramps, as well as 25 bridges. It resulted in more than 7km of new road. The Airport Link began operations on July 24, 2012.

Earl Alcon was Senior Project Engineer for Thiess John Holland JV. He was responsible for $80 million of construction works and managed 15 engineering and supervisory staff.

Earl’s talent and diligence was rewarded with the Engineers Australia 2008 Young Professional Engineer of the Year Award for Queensland, featured in Engineers Australia publications and news media.

Earl was Involved with the project from the initial design phase to the execution, delivery and completion phases.

His roles included:

• Engineer responsible for the construction of CC210-South (cut and cover tunnel) and BR214 (bridge) at Kedron. Works entailed 250,000T bulk excavation (35m deep open-cut excavation), drilling and blasting of over 200MPa high-strength rock, piled retaining walls (secant, CFA, CSM and sheet piling), soil-nailing and rock-bolting, shotcreting, two tunnel portals, a ventilation plenum building, and simultaneous construction of a twin-arch concrete tunnel roof structure.
• Solved challenging design, technical and logistical problems with designers and project engineers. Some of these challenges were attributed to the majority of construction being in a deep excavation directly bordered by a multi-storey building, an arterial road and a flood-prone creek (including temporary realignments of the creek).
• Managed and coordinated Australia’s first successful vertical face rock blast in an urban environment and received an invitation to attend the World Conference in Explosives and Blasting.
• Construction of in-situ concrete structures with complex reinforcing steel designs having steel densities over 800kg/m3 of concrete.
• Managed the geotechnical and ground movement monitoring works and liaised with designers.
• Managed the operation and strategic coordination of three tower cranes (both hammerhead and luffing types) and up to four mobile cranes simultaneously, including dual lifts and lift study reviews.
• Preparation of supplier and sub-contractor tender documents and sub-contracts administration.
• Monthly forecasting of direct project costs including maintaining daily labour and plant cost registers.