Southeast Stoney Trail | Cutting Drive Time
Michael Sagmeister, of Chinook Infrastructures is the safety manager for the Southeast Stoney Trail project and notes that there are up to 500 people working on the ring road at any given time, including steel erectors, equipment operators, surveyors, and dirt work crews.
Bridges are also being constructed over two railways, the Western Headworks Canal and the Shepard Canal. At the areas of 17th Avenue and Glenmore Trail, crews are constructing around moving traffic, building several of the permanent ramps to use as detours.
“The biggest challenge on this project is the construction of the Deerfoot Trail systems interchange,” Brown says. “Several of the main roadways are curved and super-elevated, which means that the girders are inclined on slopes to conform to the curvature of the road. And
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all of this work is happening over moving traffic on one of the busiest roads in Calgary.” While the majority of construction work for the SEST project is traditional in its approach, there are some new technologies and processes that increase efficiency. Grade control systems, using advanced GPS technology, provide operators with greater control and increased accuracy. With a grade control system, design parameters are transferred from the designer’s desk to a computer on the grader. Operators can grade faster with less need for survey stakes. The system saves time and money, and there is less chance for human error. The SEST project also incorporates reclaimed asphalt pavement (RAP), which is becoming a common practice in road construction. The use of old road materials that have been ground up and processed is both environmentally and economically beneficial. For the construction of SEST, eight to 10 per cent of the aggregate used is RAP, for a total of 180,000 tonnes of diverted material.