The Warringah Freeway Upgrade has been recognised for design excellence, winning the Arvo Tinni Award for Best Urban Pavement Infrastructure Design at the Australian Society of Concrete Pavements (ASCP) 8th Annual Pavement Conference.
Named after Arvo Tinni, the DMR Resident Engineer for the original freeway construction six decades ago, the award honours innovation and performance in concrete pavement engineering.
The Warringah Freeway, constructed in the 1960s, features a Mesh Reinforced Concrete Pavement (MRCP) that continues to perform today. To deliver the upgrade, the project team designed a new MRCP pavement that both rehabilitates existing sections and replaces others, ensuring seamless integration with the original design.
Because MRCP pavements are no longer part of standard Transport for NSW specifications, the team developed 16 new pavement profiles, 191 new edge details, and 121 new interface details, each supported by carbon footprint and ISCA assessments.
Installation within the brownfield site - whilst maintaining a traffic flow of 250,000 vehicles through the project daily - required innovative construction by the project. Diverse concrete mixes have been used including high early strength mixes, steel fibre mixes as well as conventional R82 and R83 mixes. Geosynthetic Asphalt reinforcement was also used to mitigate reflecting cracking.
“This award reflects the team’s ingenuity in preserving the legacy of the original Warringah Freeway while applying modern engineering to meet today’s challenges,” said Project Director Steven Clarke.
"The recognition is a testament to the project’s commitment to innovation, collaboration, and enduring infrastructure performance."