Bandy Creek Boat Harbour Dredging Complete

BMT JFA Consultants (BMT), a subsidiary of BMT Group, an international maritime design, engineering and risk management consultancy, recently completed the project management and supervision of the 2015 Bandy Creek Boat Harbour Dredging works. This campaign was undertaken as part of the state-wide maintenance dredging program which has been managed by BMT for the Western Australian Department of Transport (DoT). 

 

After the adverse weather conditions that hampered production in the 2013 session, the 2015 campaign successfully dredged a total of 87,000 cubic meters of sediments from the harbor and the entrance channel in 18 weeks against an average of 50,000 cubic meters of sediments dredged in the previous campaigns.

 

Bandy Creek Boat Harbor is a regional harbor developed in 1983 near the town of Esperance, Western Australia for recreational as well as commercial use. Since the opening, the Harbor has experienced ongoing sedimentation at the entrance area, which requires regular maintenance dredging to be undertaken. With heavy swells propagating from the Southern Ocean, operations such as dredging at the entrance area are challenging and limited by windows of calm sea-state. 

 

To cope with the swells the main contractor, CGC Dredging developed an innovative method to optimize the dredger’s operability by using stern and forward anchor’s to operate in the vicinity of the entrance.  The method proved to be successful with the dredge being able to operate effectively in a wider range of conditions in the harbor entrance. As a result of increased operability, the dredge vessel was able to work in areas that were not dredged in previous sessions, such as the harbor fairway, the approach to the jinker ramp and the berths.