Iraqi Naval Base Pier and Seawall
West Construction was tasked with completing an extremely important $60 million project for the US Army Corps of Engineers Foreign Military Sales Program. CCI Contracting had entered into this design-build contract in association with a subcontractor providing all on-site work. For a variety of reasons, this arrangement did not work out and West was tasked with completing the project with a host of logistical and scheduling challenges.
In addition to the issues associated with building work in a combat zone, equipment, tooling and supplies had to be mobilized from countries around the Persian Gulf for completion of this work. A total of 6 barges, 5 tugs and 5 cranes and a host of support equipment were mobilized in as rapidly as possible to complete this work. We installed 1,855 sheet pile, 450,000 cubic yards of fill, 1,220 lf of face beam and fender pile and constructed a 440 linear foot floating dock.
On top of these efforts, a significant differing site condition was encountered, which required extensive modification to the work and access plan. Up to 12 meters of extremely soft marine sediments were found. Up to 1.5 meters of settlement was anticipated from these sediments which would prevent the placement of utilities and a concrete road. West immediately obtained help from experts in geotechnical construction and worked with them to develop a vertical drain program to accelerate the settlements to a period of a few months with the addition of a significant surcharge program.
