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.
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.
– "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."
– "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."
– "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
– "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!
Any news or views about the global marine project sector? Send it through to editor@baird.com.au ASAP (between now and June 11), so we can add it to this current edition of Marine Projects Week!
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