Roy Hill Iron Ore Project

Background

This project of work forms part of a series of packages to construct a new railway from Roy Hill mine to Port Hedland. The new railway is required to transfer Run-of-Mine (ROM) iron ore directly from the mine to a wharf facility for overseas export.

The Roy Hill Iron Ore Project – Package 3 & 4 broadly comprises a section of rail, a rail loop, a stockyard and train unloader, a conveyor and a wharf, all located near Port Hedland, WA.

Scope

CMW constructed a geotechnical investigation of the project area comprising of:

Supervision of drilling of 41 boreholes up to 50m deep;
Supervision of 50 Cone Penetration Test (CPT) probes up to 10.2m deep;
Excavating of 5 test pits up to 2.8m deep;
Undertaking of 26 in-situ Nuclear Densometer Tests;
Undertaking of 3 falling head permeability tests;
Bathymetry survey of the proposed wharf facility located in South West Creek;
Undertaking of 7 in-situ packer tests;
Preparation of a factual report; and
Preparation of an interpretive report.

Findings/Challenges

The initial stages of this investigation involved significant liaison with the client and the PMC to ensure that all necessary environmental, heritage, land and site access approvals were in place. CMW helped the client obtain all the necessary permits to complete the work within the required time frame. The five week field campaign was completed prior to any other geotechnical consultants mobilising to site.

Factual and interpretive information was delivered to the client on an “as-required” basis to enable timely geotechnical designs to be completed.