Maritime

Waterfront development

Inspection and design for the rehabilitation and upgrading of waterfront structures and utility systems is one of Halcrow's important activities.

Such projects usually include above and underwater inspection, evaluation of rehabilitation or upgrading alternatives, and all engineering services required to design repairs or improvements and ensure that they are properly implemented. Halcrow's engineers have received international recognition for their expertise in the field, and have authored numerous articles and lectured extensively on the subject. They are key members of various technical committees devoted to improving the technology for rehabilitating waterfront structures and extending their useful life. These committees have been organized by the American Society of Civil Engineers, the American Concrete Institute, and the International Navigation Association.

Halcrow's approach to determining the need and timing for repairs, and selecting the optimum type of repairs, is based on minimizing life cycle costs. Often, repair of concrete waterfront structures is done too soon, and repair and protection of timber and steel waterfront structures is done too late. Both cases result in unnecessarily high costs.

Recognizing that older waterfront structures were often considerably overdesigned, Halcrow's engineers employ modern computer analysis techniques to reveal and utilize this available strength, thus minimizing rehabilitation and upgrading costs. Additionally, replacing in kind is often not a cost effective repair alternative, and Halcrow routinely takes advantage of modern construction materials and techniques to achieve the desired results, at considerably reduced costs.

Halcrow has discovered that the commonly used barrier remediation techniques for preventing marine borer attack on timber piles are often ineffective. Consequently, the firm has recently devoted a substantial portion of its research and development budget to a comprehensive field testing program to evaluate the effectiveness of various types of commercially available pile wraps and to develop cost effective techniques for remediating ineffective systems that are in place.