A new piece of equipment bought by specialized drilling firm Infrastructure Constructions Pty Ltd (IC) will not have much down time, says a company representative.  The companies Operations Manager, Rob Sawyers, said the new Vermeer D100x120 Series II drill was booked solid.

Sydney based IC, a subsidiary of diversified Melbourne based UXC Pty Ltd, specialises in trenchless and horizontal directional drilling (HDD) for laying power or communications cables and water or gas pipelines.

Mr Sawyers said within days of taking delivery of the new mahcine it was hard at work in Gladstone, central Queensland, drilling on a pipeline project for the regional council.  He said the machine, weighing almost 20 tonnes, was based at IC's facility at Acacia Ridge, Brisbane, but would undertake work throughout Australia, much of it for power distributors or retailers.

"We can use it for drilling under rivers and roads.  You can achieve bores up to 1,000 metres long", Mr Sawyers said.  "We have heaps of work lined up for it.  After Gladstone, it will head south to Mooloolaba on the Sunshine Coast for an Energex project.  Then it will go to Wollongong to do some work for Integral Energy".

Mr Sawyers said the D100x120 replaced an older, smaller Vermeer machine, a D80 dating back from the mid 1990's, with the new machine being bigger and more powerful.  "While it does similar sorts of work, the new one works alot quicker and you can do alot more with it", he said.  "You measure a drilling machine by its thrust and pullback.  The D100x120 has 100,000 lbs of thrust and pullback whereas the older machine had 80,000 lbs".