Graham Group

Berth announcement┬áVancouver, CanadaÔÇÖs biggest and busiest port, has seen a huge increase in container traffic, and itÔÇÖs expected to triple by 2030. The construction of a third wharf at Deltaport will help, and John OÔÇÖHanlon speaks to the man responsible for building it. Deltaport is VancouverÔÇÖs largest container terminal, operated by TSI (Terminal Systems, Inc.) under a long-term lease agreement with Port Metro Vancouver. It has had two berths, but the Deltaport Third Berth Project (DP3) was given federal and provincial approval toward the end of 2005. The contract to construct was awarded to Deltaport Constructors Ltd., a single-purpose joint venture company set up with equal participation between Graham Group, a Canadian construction company, and Vancouver Pile Driving (VanPile). Work on the $200 million contract began in January 2006, and the 430-meter (1,400-foot) wharf, with 20 hectares for container storage, will be servicing ships in the fall of 2009.A site office was set up independent of both mother companies, each of which seconded staff, says Connolly. ÔÇ£The advantage of the joint venture was that it brought together the managerial expertise and the financial backing and capability of a major contractor, Graham, with the specialized expertise of a marine specialist, VanPile.ÔÇØ Graham was able to bring to the table not only the safe hands of John Connolly, its vice president for major infrastructure, with 28 years of service with the group, but also some important technical resources.The Graham Toolbox is a technology suite developed in-house over many years and includes a project management system that encompasses all activities on the site, from safety to scheduling to cost management, resource management and environmental controls. ÔÇ£ItÔÇÖs a one-stop shop for project management and administration. The people on the site integrated really well into a single cost center,ÔÇØ he says. ÔÇ£The seamless way everyone integrated together was the ultimate key to the success of the project.ÔÇØAlthough it still has a few months to run, the project can now truly be claimed as a success; all the challenging work has been done ahead of schedule and within budget. ÔÇ£I think we have managed to please the owners,ÔÇØ Connolly ventures.January is not the month youÔÇÖd choose to start work in Vancouver. The weather is not great, so the construction plan had to take advantage of the days when work was possible. The first job was to install a dike, or berm, to isolate the area that was to be reclaimed from the sea. ÔÇ£To get that dike installed, we worked 24 hours a day, so we used every available moment of favorable conditions,ÔÇØ Connolly explains. Every ton of gravel for the dike had to be brought in by barge and offloaded straight into the water, since road access through nearby residential areas had been embargoed. This being the West Coast, seismic activity has to be expected, to which the wharf had to be resistant. Deltaport Constructors brought in Pennine Vibropiling, a specialized firm from England, to compact, or ÔÇ£densify,ÔÇØ the 370,000 cubic meters of gravel.With only seven months to complete this portion of the work, starting in October 2007, Pennine worked 20 hours a day, six days a week and brought in more equipment than theyÔÇÖd normally use in order to complete the job by May 2008. The technique is rather like vibrating concrete, says Connolly; in all, 5,800 densified columns were created to resist seismic loading in the event of an earthquake.During the densification operation, the area identified for the container yard was being topped up with material dredged from the nearby Fraser River. This large area had to be compacted too, though it was done in a much less technical way: each section is over-built and left for three months so that the additional weight compresses the material below. By modifying the original design plan, Deltaport Constructors was able to do this in three stages instead of four, shaving valuable time off the schedule.The most highly engineered part of the container wharf had meanwhile been in preparation at VanPileÔÇÖs dry-dock facilities some 30 kilometers away. The front of the wharf is formed from ten concrete caissons, each measuring 15m wide, by 42m long, by 21m tall, and weighing over 6,100 tonnes. The construction of these massive concrete structures was started in dry dock. Once the base slab and lower portion of the walls were poured, the dry dock was then flooded, and the partially complete caisson was floated out to an outer dock where the caisson walls were then poured to full height. The completed caissons were then prepared for a critical 24 hour tow to site where they were temporarily set down on the seabed until the densified base was ready.Positioning of the caissons started in April last year, and by the end of August they had all been re-floated, maneuvered by barge to the Deltaport site, and settled in their final location some 60 meters to the seaward side of the berm and the reclaimed land. That phase was completed in January this year, and the concrete rail beams that carry the gantries to load and unload the ships are now finished also. All that remains is to level off the area and pave it with asphalt. Without a high level of trust between the joint venture partners and a lot of experience, it would have been harder to achieve, says Connolly. ÔÇ£It has been a fun job, and I get very excited talking about it. When I joined Graham in 1981, we were doing $35 million a year; last year we did $1.8 billion. I think the Graham Toolbox has been instrumental in our being able to maintain control of a rapidly growing company.ÔÇØ He is also delighted with how it proved itself in the joint venture environment. ÔÇ£In joint ventures, you can get people who are overly protective of the interests of their own company, to the detriment of the joint venture. That was a never problem on this project.ÔÇØ  ÔÇô Editorial research by Dan Finn