Duqm Liquid Bulk Berths

The roles in the Engineering, Procurement & Construction (EPC) contract were nicely divided. While RBW carried out the rock cladding, dredging and raising works, Six Construct was responsible for the detailed design of the maritime structures. It equally took care of building a 1 km long quay wall and two twin-berth jetties with associated facilities and navigation equipment.

Smooth communication and efficiently coordinating activities ensured the project was delivered in record time.

One of the biggest challenges was the remote location. The site was situated 500 km from the closest urban area, the Omani capital of Muscat. This impacts every aspect of the project, not in the least the procurement of materials and equipment.

The Six Construct-RBW consortium tackled this with an extremely detailed and perfectly coordinated planning, right from the start. The entire project was first executed on paper and computer before being actually built. This allowed the team to leave virtually nothing to chance and this contributed largely to the project's overall success.

Maritime facilities like these are usually built from a platform in the water. In the case of Duqm, the BESIX engineering team proposed a different method: building 'in the dry'.

This involved sealing off the construction site from the sea by building a sand dam – a retaining wall of reclaimed sand – and by pumping the site dry. Some 26 million m³ of material was dredged from the seabed by RBW. This allowed the team to work on a platform 20 m below sea level, which would later form the permanent seabed. Six Construct built the quay and berths using specially designed temporary structures.

After the works, the port was re-flooded again, with sea levels rising up to two metres a day over the course of two weeks.