Two retaining walls were constructed on Evans Pass Road under subcontract to  McConnell Dowell.

McConnell Dowell have the contract to make Evans Pass Road safe and reopen it to traffic from Lyttelton to Sumner. The retaining walls were constructed to strengthen two areas of the road which had subsided badly and had limited capacity during the Canterbury earthquakes.

The walls needed to be repaired before McConnell Dowel could haul large quantities of rock across them using ADT’s. One of the walls was a simple gabion basket configuration and while the other was more complex. The second wall involved installing soil nails through existing gabion baskets into component rock underneath the road and facing the wall with two layers of structural shotcrete.

Hunter Civil designed and fabricated a access system which enabled the works to be completed safely and without the need for extensive harness and rope work.