Moreton Island House

Client	Bellevue Homes
Location	Moreton Island, off Brisbane, QLD
Solution	The Helical Pile
Scale	42 piles
Timeframe	Completed June 2026, 2 days on site

The Stake

Bellevue Homes brought FTA in late, after delays on the design and buildability side had already eaten into the program. Building on a sloping site on an island off Brisbane ruled out a straightforward concrete pour, and the client needed a foundation partner who could get the job moving fast enough to save the build.

The Challenge

Concrete was available but impractical: everything from the ancillary materials to the crew had to come in and out by barge, on an island with nowhere nearby to source what a traditional pour would need. The site itself added a second layer of risk beyond the usual compression and uplift loads, being sloped enough to require a full slope stability analysis, so that any landslip wouldn’t take the house downhill with it. Corrosion risk on the island ran high, and with the highest section of subfloor sitting 2.4 metres above ground, pile accuracy had to be dead straight to keep the structure rigid rather than moving underfoot.

The Approach

FTA engineered the piles for slope stability as well as standard structural loads, extending pile depth to allow for potential landslip and cross-bracing the tops of the piles to stiffen the subfloor at height. Where the slope was too steep to work directly, the crew dug flat working platforms to install safely; the site itself wasn’t steep enough to rule this out, but the fall from front to back still shaped how the job was staged. The screw piles carried through as the stumps for the floor system, and FTA delivered the full design methodology, from pile to subfloor connection to bracing, so the client received a complete engineered product rather than a set of separate trade handoffs. A three-person crew completed the install in two days.

The Outcome

FTA delivered the job in two days against real time pressure, at around 45% less than a concrete solution would have cost. Xavier, the project’s construction manager, summed it up simply: “A special shout out to FTA Pile for their outstanding footing design and engineering. This project simply wouldn’t have been possible without your expertise, innovation, and support.”