On road to completion

CONSTRUCTION on the Gerringong Princes Highway upgrade is set to ramp up in the coming months, with the project currently on schedule.

Contractor Fulton Hogan's project director, Steve Glover, said 72 personnel were currently on-site, but that was set to increase to more than 350 once the project reached "full swing".

"We didn't want to cause too much of an impact during the holiday period, but now that's ending, we're going to be ramping it up and you'll see a lot more happening," he said.

Fulton Hogan has begun work on some of the service roads, culverts to cope with flood events and some of the foundations for the Belinda Street interchange.

A Fern Street road diversion has been completed to maintain both Gerringong accesses while the railway overpass is built.

Mr Glover said the bridge components would be made on-site and pushed out across the railway.

"It's a working railway and obviously you can't shut that down," he said.

So far, soft soils and hard rock have been identified as challenges, however Mr Glover said Fulton Hogan was trialling a different technique to minimise disruption to residents as cuttings were made for the road.

"We thought blasting is going to be one of our major issues," he said.

"One, you've got to close the highway, two, you've got local residents, so one of the things we're trialling on this job is to use a train leveller and it virtually just crunches up the rock without having to blast it, so hopefully that'll alleviate a lot of the issues."

Roads and Maritime Services project manager Adrian Rouse said the southbound lanes would be constructed first, which traffic would travel along until the northbound lanes were constructed.

Completion is expected from September 2014 to the beginning of 2015.

Minister for Roads Duncan Gay inspected the progress on Thursday.

He was impressed with the progress and thought Berry residents waiting for the Berry bypass could take some solace from the community consultation under way on the Gerringong upgrade.