Outer Pontoon Refurbishment – Harwich

The Outer Pontoon is the final one to be refurbished at the Launch Jetty harbour. Amicus has previously delivered the Inner Pontoon refurbishment and provision of 5 bespoke replacement pontoons using second hand units. This pontoon was too large to be economically removed from the water in Harwich and needed too much work to be done to permit transport by sea to a large enough dry dock facility. We developed two possible solutions to refurbish the pontoon on the adjacent beach. A bespoke steel track and skate system was developed to pull the pontoon up the beach and above the high tide line. This option was more costly with a number of risks so a simpler solution was accepted to undertake the refurbishment within the tidal zone and create a retaining wall and jacking concrete pads to facilitate jacking of the pontoon above the high tide level. The works were coordinated around the tides with movable scaffold towers and beach protection to undertake the works which included stripping off old fixtures, UHP water blasting, welding operations, shotblasting, painting and finishings such as new fenders. The beach was cleared prior to each tide to prevent any contamination to the beach and sea.