Welcome to Marine Projects Week!

By Neil Baird - August 3, 2020.

MARINE PROJECTS WEEK

Otherwise known as dredging and marine construction, our focus area this week remains highly active. Despite the Covid-19 virus, there is much still to be done around our coasts and ports and across the wider littoral. The sector continues to be very busy.

That means that new dredgers, construction, demolition, survey and pipelay vessels, and their supporting workboats, tugs and barges continue to be launched. Some very exciting projects are starting or ongoing. We seem to feature an endless supply of new vessels servicing the sector on this site. We are also starting to see increasing numbers of offshore service vessels being adapted for marine project work.

Port development, maintenance and improvement remain important but other activities such as wind farm development and maintenance; pipe and cable laying; rig and platform removal; coastal protection; and, island construction in the South China Sea, are all flourishing.

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

Apart from the Chinese government island builders, the Dutch seem to have the lion’s share of this work. Certainly, Netherlands-based designers and shipbuilders are responsible for most of the new dredgers, pipe and cable layers, construction and demolition vessels, and the workboats that support and service them. The second-hand, adapted vessels come from just about everywhere with the current low oil price ensuring plenty of bargains.

The Dutch, of course, don’t just build the marine project vessels, they operate a large proportion of them. They are certainly regarded as the world leaders in the sector. Almost all the large operators are Netherlands-based multi-nationals. There are many others, of course, but the Dutch do dominate.

As with most things from the Netherlands, their ships and their equipment are of the highest quality. They set the bar very high for their competitors from other countries. Most of their customers are governments or very large companies. They expect maximum quality and absolute reliability.

Covering so many aspects of maritime activity, marine projects are a particularly fascinating sector. We trust you find our coverage of it in this Marine Projects Week both interesting and informative and very useful.

Vessel Reviews:

Features and Opinion:

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

News, Gear and Book Reviews:

Recent Important Features:

FEATURE | Gwadar Port: New Dubai or pie in the sky?

– “Even according to conservative estimates, it would take more than $750 million to finance the basic infrastructure of Gwadar.”

– by Adnan Aamir, journalist, researcher and analyst based in Quetta, Pakistan

FEATURE | On the Mekong – Khon Pi rapids saved, for now

– “In short, and while there is growing interest in the media about what is happening to the Mekong, the governments involved seem still to be assessing developments at a pace unrelated to the negative impacts already taking place.”

– by Dr Milton Osborne, author and former nonresident fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy

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 maritime security sectors? Send it through to [email protected] ASAP (between now and August 7), 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

Neil Baird

Co-founder and former Editor-in-Chief of Baird Maritime and Work Boat World magazine, Neil has travelled the length and breadth of this planet in over 40 years in the business. He knows the global work boat industry better than anyone.