Lorient Glass Replacement

The brief.

Konstruct was engaged to replace a failed 900-kilogram insulated glass unit at a building on Duporth Avenue, Maroochydore. The client's initial plan was to install the panel using a large crane positioned on the esplanade, an approach that would have closed the main road for the full two-day operation. Konstruct was brought in to find a less disruptive way to carry out the work.

The challenge.

The street-side crane lift would have shut down a main road through Maroochydore for two days, with the cost and disruption that entails. Konstruct proposed an alternative: deliver the replacement glass by barge from the river and carry out the removal and installation by rope access, taking the operation off the road entirely. That approach introduced its own difficulties. The river sat roughly twenty metres from the building, across a span carrying numerous obstructions, and the system had to control a 900-kilogram panel through that gap with no tolerance for uneven loading. Adding to the complexity, the existing broken unit had to be removed before the new panel could go in, a task that proved as demanding as the installation itself.

How we delivered.

Konstruct engineered a tension-line system capable of both carrying the 900-kilogram load and traversing the twenty-metre span from the river to the building. The rig used dual 4:1 Actsafe powered winch systems with twelve individual tension lines rigged off Arizona Vortex frames to distribute and control the load throughout. The failed unit was rigged and removed first, then the replacement glass, delivered to position by barge, was brought across and installed. Both operations ran under continuous coordination between the rope access crew and the machine operators, with careful sequencing keeping each panel under full control from pick-up to placement.

The outcome.

The failed unit was removed and the replacement installed safely and precisely, with no incident and no closure of Duporth Avenue. The rope and barge solution kept the main road open and the surrounding businesses trading throughout, while delivering a lift believed to be the heaviest of its kind on a soft rope system in Australia. The result stands as a benchmark for the specialist capability Konstruct brings to complex glazing access.