During the main contractor tender phase Bowhill Engineering helped our client Gateway South (Fulton Hogan/Lang O’Rourke JV) flesh out some critical constructability feasibility checks. This process was done well before award of the contract to Gateway and hence well before any contract being negotiated with Bowhill Engineering. This process uncovered some important budgeting information to allow our client certainty with their bid to the project client (DPTI).
Early Engagement is something that Bowhill Engineering invite on important projects where there are genuine opportunities to find better ways to improve the scope. This service is offered without any expectation, a reliance only on openness, innovativeness, honesty and helpfulness shines through and this alone often sees us being chosen to represent our trade during the actual project.
During the project Gateway asked us to provide additional scope by way of the temporary steelwork that supported the nearly 12,000t of steel and concrete prior to its installation onto the permanent piers and abutments. Upon inspection, it was found that the initial design had some inefficient features, the clients budget was looking under serious threat.
With some quick and innovative thinking between the client, their engineer and Bowhill Engineering staff, the cost to actually complete the temporary steelwork was reduced by some $400,000, thus saving the clients budget and making the ambitious timeline to supply possible. Credit must be given to the engineer James Deane-Butcher from Robert Bird Group for the cooperative and flexible nature he had to our repeated requests towards tweaking the design to achieve significant efficiencies but still to maintain structural integrity.
