Welcome to Marine Projects Week!

Living on Sydney’s Pittwater, as I do, I am fortunate to see an almost daily parade of small-scale marine projects. They are mainly in the form of mooring checking, lifting and repairs and jetty and marina repairs and development. Further around the Australian coast, I can observe harbour dredging and very large port and terminal development, pipeline construction and protection, as well as tourist and aquaculture facility development.

Further afield, still, in all coastal regions of the world, so much is happening. Offshore wind farms are the particular boom development at present but there is much more. Gas pipelines and port development are a constant even in these Covid-19-stricken times. The sector, seemingly, never stops and the projects it undertakes are invariably massive.

This week in Baird Maritime we will see a global presentation of some minor and major projects and the vessels and equipment that will participate in them. They range from navaid renewal through harbour dredging and construction, pile driving, land reclamation, river enhancement, bridge building, tunnel construction, and even the widening and deepening of the Suez Canal after the recent grounding accident.

Dredging and Land Reclamation • Maritime Infrastructure Development • Installation and Decommissioning • Maritime Surveying • Port Development • Offshore Wind Farm Development

All this is happening all over the world and, while it is led by the big Dutch firms that are the acknowledged masters of dredging and coastal construction, many other companies globally are learning from them and successfully undertaking similar but usually smaller projects.

There seems to be a steady stream of impressive new dredgers being launched but, simultaneously, other craft, such as OSVs, are being repurposed as is described in our article on Briggs Marine and its project for the UK’s Peel Ports.

As always with Baird Maritime, readers will learn of new developments and new ideas for vessels and their equipment in this particularly interesting and exciting sector of the global maritime industry.

Vessel Reviews:

• Morskaya – Rosmorport takes delivery of locally built hopper barge
• Mohab Mameesh – First of two new 29,190kW dredgers for Suez Canal Authority
• Bengel & Deugniet – New split hopper barge pair join DEME fleet
• MBI-08 – Heavy duty, ocean-capable spud barge with 51-tonne lifting capacity
• SARB – Dutch-built backhoe dredger for UAE operator
  
• Electric-powered dredger takes on aggregates mining in Missouri
  
• Yantra – Bulgaria’s newest CSD to take on Danube maintenance duties
  

Features and Opinion:

FEATURE | Seven-year refurbishment for aids to navigation underway at UK’s Peel Ports

– “The buoy handler vessel Cameron is the main workboat used in the execution of the projects, supported by a range of smaller RIBs and other company vessels, including Kingdom of Fife on occasion.”

News and Gear:

• Gold Coast Seaway dredging to begin soon
• USACE Memphis District awards US$5.2 million harbour dredging contract
• Sea trials completed for Suez Canal Authority’s future cutter suction dredger
• First steel cut for three new hopper barges for Great Lakes Dredge and Dock
• Mexican navy secretariat takes delivery of five new dredgers
• Ports of Stockholm to invest in new cruise ship quay at Frihamnen
• Expansion completed on Abu Dhabi Ports’ Fujairah Terminals facility
• Rosmorport to expand grain transshipment facilities
• Jan De Nul’s newest dredger begins first project
• Latest annual dredging wraps up at North Queensland’s Port of Weipa

Recent Important Features:

FEATURE | Dutch-US partnership collaborates on unmanned nearshore surveys

– “The system has been customised to allow the shore-based operator to also have full control of the vessel’s array of onboard equipment such as cameras, sonars, hydrophones, winches, cranes, and davits.”

INTERVIEW | Building erosion-proof marine structures using dredged sediment

– “Anywhere in the world where dredging of sediment should be combined with building new hydraulic structures, landscaping, flood defences, or other applications, this technology can be implemented and can even be further developed.”

– by Nelson E Dela Cruz, Baird Maritime Philippines’ correspondent

FEATURE | A nervous watch on the Three Gorges Dam

– “Today, after several upgrades, the dam has 32 main turbines, with a generating capacity of over 22,000 megawatts, more than five times the size of the generating capacity of the Snowy Mountains Scheme in southern New South Wales.”

– by Peter McCawley, visiting fellow in the Arndt-Corden Department of Economics at the Australian National University

Remember to come back every day to see the latest news, opinion and vessel reviews!

Call for content!

Any news or views about the global marine project sector? Send it through to [email protected] ASAP (between now and June 11), so we can add it to this current edition of Marine Projects Week!

We are after:

• Vessels – Orders, new deliveries, under construction
• Gear – Latest innovations and technology in the marine projects sector
• Interviews – Owners, operators, dredging companies, marine contractors, port developers, etc.
• Reminiscences – Do you have any exciting, amusing or downright dangerous anecdotes from your time in the marine projects world? (example here)
• Other – Any other relevant news