Matt, who is a senior engineer with Baulderstone Hornibrook, has recently re-located to Ho Chi Minh City where he is working on a major bridge to divert traffic away from the city centre. While Matt builds bridges overseas his children are keeping up the associations with Sydney uni and the rowing clubs. This year Mattt’s daughter Nell is starting Arts at Sydney and after coxing at PLC is hoping to cox one of our Women’s eights at the State Championships this year.
Matt sends this report on the project in Vietnam.
Enter Matt
This bridge will be similar to the Anzac Bridge (which we built). Not many photos yet because we have only just finished the piling and we have now started going upwards. I attach two photos of the first of the two main pile caps. The two legs of the main tower are about to start (the two green boxes).
The bridge is located at the southern end of Ho Chi Minh City, and will allow a ring road around the city so that trucks no longer pass through the centre of the city. Our contract is a design and construct contract. It took four years to negotiate the contract which is worth US$105 million, and it will take three years to construct the bridge. Contract completion is due in December 2009, and we will beat that date. The project is financed with export credit finance (including finance from EFIC), it is a private sector infrastructure project, and a BOOT (build, own, operate, transfer) all three of which are firsts for Vietnam.
I attach a photo of our site office when we opened it (just to prove that I was actually here) (red is a lucky colour, that’s a pig in the middle of the table), and also the closest thing I have come to rowing so far.”
The photo atatched is of the site and there is a photo in the gallery of Matt at the opening of the project office.