Shell Eastern Petroleum intends to build a new plant and requires new equipment and materials for its construction.
Thus, the existing Ro Ro ramp in Pulau Bukom is unable to cope will the spike in maritime traffic. Also, the existing Ro Ro ramp is situated too far away from the proposed construction site and proved to be inaccessible for direct loading of consignments.
Due to the existing channel flow of the jetty, HSL is unable to deploy the normal piling barge for the piling works. The anchor lines of the conventional barge will criss cross in the water and cause undue disruptions to the surrounding vessels and traffic operations. Therefore, HSL will need to develop an avant-garde way of piling in this challenging circumstances.
After very careful and detailed studies, HSL decided to use staging piling method to drive the marine piles as the foundation for the Ro Ro ramp. For the superstructure construction, the casting of the precast panel for the ramp has to be extremely accurate since the gradient and steepness of the Ramp leaves little room for error. The constraints of unfavorable tidal conditions also pose a tremendous challenge to the construction team to complete the piling works within a very short time period.
The end results achieved using this piling technique to build the Ro Ro Ramp was more than satisfactory. Devising the precast panel construction methodology is an effective and efficient method as it saves onsite assembly time and produces a higher quality Ro Ro ramp.