The Queensland Government embarked on an ambitious program to create a “water grid” to link all major water sources in South East Queensland in a network to vastly improve water supply security to all urban areas of from Brisbane to the Gold Cost.
Project Overview
In 2006, as South East Queensland faced the prospect of entirely depleting the water reserves in the Wivenhoe and Somerset dams, the Queensland Government awarded Iplex contracts to supply 100 kilometres of DN1000 and DN1200 FLOWTITE® GRP pipe.
The FLOWTITE® GRP pipe was selected for a 65km section of the Western Corridor pipeline designed to operate at 1.6MPa and a 44km section of the Northern Interconnector designed to operate at 2.5MPa.
The FLOWTITE® pipe is lightweight and easy to handle. With the pipe being supplied in 12m lengths the crew were able to achieve rapid production rates of up to 1000m per day.
An innovative curvilinear construction process ensured using a series of shallow angle bends were used to negotiate changes in direction in the pipeline thus eliminating the need for a welded joint system.
