Mare Harbour Steel Dolphin Pipes - Falkland Islands
ESC Steel Structures fabricated and supplied 13 steel mono piles to Edgen Murray Europe. The project was part of the Mare Harbour base improvements in the Falkland Islands. Each steel mooring dolphin pile included fender mounting brackets and stiffeners, bollard supporting plates and topside deck plates.
The focus of the upgrade works was to improve the existing facility to allow the berthing of Roll-On and Roll-Off resupply ships. Annually the facility would see approximately 10 berths which resupplies the base with food suppliers, hardware, infrastructure and commercial freight.
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ESC Steel Structures in conjunction with their regional agent Edgen Murray Europe supplied the mono-piles used as the mooring and breasting dolphins. Each pile was nearly 2.5 metres in diameter and lengths between 19.5m up to 34.8m per piece. The dolphin pile design incorporated a mounting flange for a cone fender system that weighed in excess of 15 metric tons that was each capable of absorbing over 300 ton metres with over 250 tons reaction force. Each dolphin consisted of the steel pile and an upper section bolted on to the top of the steel pile via internal flanges for the bollard and walkway deck mounting.
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The service environment as classified under BS EN ISO 12944-2 was Category C5-M – Offshore Environments which is a very high marine atmospheric corrosivity category in regions with high salinity. The selected corrosion protection system for the steel dolphin mono-piles utilized a 380 microns dry film thickness approved coating.
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Prior to production, ESC completed a comprehensive Inspection & Test Plan (ITP) with a breakdown of all the processes which included: welder qualification review, raw material inspection, component dimensional inspection, weld inspection and coating inspection. Strategic review, witness and certify hold points were incorporated for each of the stages. A 3rd party inspector was selected for the project as well by ESC and accepted by the client. After several iterations working with both the project client and consultant, the ITP was agreed and approved well before production started.
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The production was completed successfully and was loaded to be shipped to the Falkland Islands in May 2017.
