UNDER CONSTRUCTION
Contest to mark engineering feat
It began as a classic tussle between muscle power and machine.
However, the bridge-building competition held at Linton Military Camp in Palmerston North on Monday proved a span too far for the specialist team from engineering and construction company Downer.
The Hastings-based Downer crew of eight, equipped with a truck-mounted Hiab crane, took on a 32-strong group from Linton Camp’s 2nd Engineers Regiment in a race to sling a single span across an imaginary river.
The contest marked the 75th anniversary of a war-time engineering feat, the Bailey bridge.
In full battle-order helmets, webbing and weapons, and showing exemplary teamwork, the 32 sappers finished hefting and securing the bridge sections into position in 1 hour, 25 minutes.
An hour or so later, the soldiers had to help their civvy comrades complete the task so that they too could get to enjoy a cooked fieldkitchen lunch.
Adjudicator Nigel Lloyd, from the New Zealand Transport Agency, said the competition was judged on speed, build accuracy, health and safety, and cost effectiveness – or the cost per person per hour juxtaposed against hiring the crane.
Army took out the inaugural trophy with points for speed and health and safety.
The sappers’ commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Terry Mcdonald, said the first Bailey bridge designed during World War II by British civil engineer Sir Donald Bailey, was used at Tobruk, Tunisia, in 1942.
Held together by pins, the metal girder sections of the temporary structure could be physically manouevred into position without needing specialist or lifting equipment, and could support heavily laden vehicles.
The truss design had proved the test of time, with the Bailey bridge providing a core component of New Zealand’s civil defence preparation.
Downer, which has a publicprivate partnership with the New Zealand Defence Force, had erected six of the temporary bridges in Marlborough following the Kaikoura earthquake.
The last time the army had built one of the spans ‘‘in anger’’, Mcdonald said, was last decade in East Timor, while his team had obviously kept their skills up.
‘‘I think it is really special to celebrate this,’’ Mcdonald said.
As far as he was aware, this was the only official 75th Bailey bridge commemoration being held to mark the day by anyone, anywhere.