Goulburn Murray Water – Connections Project

Project Details

Brief

The Connections Project is the largest irrigation modernisation project in Australia. An investment of $2 billion is creating a more efficient automated water delivery network to save water in the Goulburn-Murray Irrigation District (GMID) and to deliver improved customer service levels.The project is funded by the Commonwealth and Victorian governments and is the most significant upgrade to the region’s irrigation infrastructure in its 100-year history. The GMID upgrade takes in northern Victoria between Swan Hill and Cobram, and the Goulburn and Murray systems – it’s often referred to as the ‘Food Bowl’ of Australia.

The Connections Project is automating much of the water delivery network, as the modernisation project replaces the majority of our ageing irrigation infrastructure, while reducing the GMID footprint and making our water use sustainable for future challenges and opportunities.

For irrigators, water becomes available almost on demand, with consistent flow rates to assist in improving on farm productivity. The project also provides environmental opportunities and benefits through water savings. The project is required to deliver 429 GL in water savings across the GMID by the end of the project – that’s close to the amount of water in Sydney Harbour, which holds around 500 GL.
It is the biggest water savings project in Australia’s history.

GEM was required to supply labour, plant, equipment, and QA as part of a complete HDPE pipeline service across multiple locations.

Challenge

Large bore pipe was used to transfer water at very low pressure in very large volumes for irrigation purposes. The very thin walled pipe posed a serious challenge. The 800mm PN4 pipe has a wall thickness of just 19.5mm which made the pipe very hard to clamp and hold while maintaining roundness. If the two internal jaws of the welder were clamped too tightly the alignment was unacceptable. Our team developed a technique which allowed rounding with the internal jaws only and utilised the rear jaws to hold the pipe in place. 

Solution

The systems were constructed using mainly 560mm – 1200mm HDPE pipeline with a pressure rating of PN4 and PN6.3 & PN8.   Most of the pipeline strings had been fabricated above ground to drawings and then lifted into place. Once the strings had been placed, GEM performed in-ground fusions to tie the sections together along with the installation of tees and off takes.

At times GEM was running multiple crews and achieving up to 60 fusions per day. Multiple fusion machines, loaders, excavators were employed to realise over a kilometer of pipeline completed each day.
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