26/10/2026
SIS has announced the arrival of its Pilosio IXI Truss beams for the Eastern Freeway Upgrades, part of Victoria’s Big Build. The freeway widening cut through the shared path at Eram Park, so a temporary extension of the Eram Road walking and cycling bridge was needed to keep pedestrians and cyclists moving. That extension had to span a deep excavation and a service road running alongside live freeway traffic. Building a deck in place over the void would have kept crews working at height for days.
Rosslyn, SIS’s in house Design Engineer Lead spent months testing a system with Pilosio that made a different approach possible. Using IXI Truss, which comes in 3 m aluminium sections joined by hand, the team assembled two spans of 21 m and 16 m flat on the ground. At around 13 tonnes each, the spans were light enough for the site's crane to lift.
We fitted temporary handrails before each span left the ground, and checked sling loads against the truss chord capacity. The team then set each span onto Layher towers in a single lift. Not one bay of deck was built out over the excavation.
This is one of the first projects of its kind in Australia, and one we’ll carry with us as a company. Seeing months of design and testing come together over live freeway traffic was a proud moment for everyone at SIS, from our engineering and project teams to the crews on site.