Paving to a weather window in the Snowy Mountains

The ski resorts of the Snowy Mountains have roads and carparks like anywhere else, and they take a beating that most pavements never see: freeze-thaw through winter, snow chains, graders clearing snow, and then a summer of heavy tourist traffic. Maintaining them is ordinary pavement work with one difference. There is a window, and it closes.

In 2026 we delivered summer maintenance packages at both Perisher and Thredbo, along with pavement extensions in front of the National Parks head office at Perisher. Between them, that meant around 1,800 tonnes of mill and fill across resort roads and carparks, programmed into the weeks between the last of the snow and the resort reopening.

Weather sets the program, not the other way around. Asphalt cannot be placed onto a wet or frozen surface, so every shift is planned against a forecast and re-planned when the forecast changes. Plant has to be positioned so that a lost day does not become a lost week. And because the resorts are a long way from any asphalt plant, haulage is timed to the hour so the mix arrives at temperature.

The National Parks job added a second layer. Working inside Kosciuszko National Park meant a site-specific environmental plan, procurement worked out in advance so nothing was left waiting on a delivery, and finishing before winter closed the road behind us. It is the kind of job where the paving is the easy part.