Quay To Our Success – An Unbearably Heavy Grizzly!

The construction of a new quay at the fifth largest port in the UK presented its own problems when barges were tasked with dredging the riverbed.

Graham Construction are building the structure at Teesport in the North East – among the 10 biggest ports in Western Europe – however, in order to complete the project, contaminated material first needed removing from the River Tees.

“That in itself may seem like a straightforward challenge and, in so   me ways it was,” said Senior Partner Paul Withers. “However, it was unloading the barges that became the ultimate problem because we needed to employ the services of a huge ‘grizzly’ excavator from Foyle and Marine.

“This was to be used to transfer the dredged material from barges to earth moving trucks ahead of safe disposal off site. However, these machines really are massive and the initial fear was that they would be too heavy for the existing quayside. Hiring it was the easy bit, moving it to site without a plan, would have been the scary bit!”

The excavator needed siting on an existing wharf structure built in the 1950’s but, before this could happen, it was decided by Paul Withers and HBPW engineer Dominik Spirydowicz, that the structure needed assessing first to determine if it was strong enough to support the ‘grizzly’ as well as large dumper trucks.

“In the event Dominik suggested the addition of a concrete slab on top of the existing deck to give the quay additional strength, which we did, however, before this could happen we had to design the temporary works bridges to span from the 50’s structure to the land in order to support the arriving dumper trucks and grizzly.

“We also produced risk assessments and method statement for the demolition of existing maritime structures, additionally designing piling rigs and crane platforms. Dominik did an excellent job with, this time, me in the background!”