November 13 - deugro Canada has handled the transportation of the main bridge section from a fabrication yard in China to Victoria, Canada for the Johnson Street Bridge replacement project.
The main bridge section, which measured 42.8 m x 18.6 m x 7.96 m and weighed 368 tonnes, was transported by barge from Jiangyin to the Port of Shanghai and loaded onboard AAL's heavy lift ship, AAL Singapore.
The cargo was subsequently transported to Victoria's Cruise Terminal Ogden Point, and from there barged to the final location in Victoria Harbour where the project site is located.
In total, deugro has transported 72 international shipments for the project. The transport of all shipments, including air, land and sea, took four months to complete.
According to Baris Sever, head of projects - Canada, the biggest challenges for this project were the low tide levels at Ogden Point and busy cruise ship traffic, which limited the opportunities for the heavy lift vessels to berth at the terminal.
Sever explained that during one of the shipments, due to the low tide levels, the heavy lift vessel was unable to berth, which meant the bridge sections had to be discharged at Lynnterm, Vancouver and barged to Victoria from there.
"For the last shipment - the main bridge section - we needed to deliver the bridge at Ogden Point, so monitored the high/low tide levels and managed the berthing of the vessel during higher tide at Ogden Point," added Sever.
Tanya Britton, AAL's chief representative for AAL In Canada added, "Featuring side mounted cranes that offer combined lifting of up to 700mt, our A-Class was the perfect partner for this very challengingly-shaped cargo that presented a number of demands in terms of engineering, crane capacity and overall deck space requirement. Supported by our in-house engineering specialists and their experience of working on oversized and specialist cargo shipments, we completed the delivery of this high value cargo on schedule and budget."
The Johnson Street Bridge will provide an important transportation link into downtown Victoria and is expected to be open to traffic in March 2018.
