Brisbane Airport Rail Link is an 5.2 mile elevated spur line linking Brisbane Airport's terminals with the city. The structure was typically constructed using precast prestressed concrete girders up to 125' span, which were supported on precast piles and in-situ concrete piers. Other major crossings included two crossings of a canal and an arterial road where spans up to 180' were achieved using post-tensioned cantilever piers and "drop in" spans.

The elevated rail link required over 900 precast prestressed concrete girders of varying length, all of which were designed using SAM. For typical spans, 2D grillages were used to allow quick and simple results transfer between analysis and design. The grillages also allowed for the effects of the curved track geometry, and the consideration of 'derailment' load cases. For the more complex structures 3D models were utilized so that substructure load effects could also be determined from the same models.

SAM was also used for design of the station platform structures for which 2D models were used to establish a more complex variety of load effects such as pedestrian loads, column loads from the roof structures, etc. In addition, SAM was used for designing the precast floor system used for the platforms.

The software's integrated analysis and design method for designing the large number of precast girders provided major time saving benefits. Conventional methods would have required significant manual manipulation of the analysis results which would have taken significant additional time, and also increased the risk of data transfer errors.

The precast girder section used for the Brisbane Airport Rail Link was specifically developed for the project. This was particularly well suited for SAM as a variety of section options were able to be assessed in a short time, and detailed sets of calculations were able to be produced (stress checks, crack control checks, strength limit state checks, shear calculations and so on) for each of the girder types.