Each berth will have two articulated vehicle bridges and a pedestrian walkway connecting the land to a pair of portal dolphins. These sheet piled, concrete-filled blocks will support the fenders. The ferries will turn against another dolphin at the far end of the pier.

The foundation works for the pier now underway involve 1.1m diameter tubular steel piles being driven by Nuttall up to 16m into chalk. With the channel dredged to 8.5m, the piles are typically 25m long.

The piles are being driven from a substantial but temporary jetty built on pairs of vertical tubular steel piles driven 5m into the chalk and designed to support decking that will carry a 150 tonne crane.

When Berths 8 and 9 become operational next summer, they will initially accommodate the current fleet of cross-Channel ferries measuring 180m long with a 28m beam. However, the new berths have been designed to accommodate forthcoming 210m by 32m ferries without major structural alterations. Spacers in the fendering system can be removed along the pier sidewalls so that the wider ferries are correctly aligned with the portal dolphins and bridges.

Dover's new berths will be the first in the northern hemisphere to use an automated mooring system developed by Mooring Systems in New Zealand, in which large suction pads extend out to the vessel and draw it to its mooring.

The new hydraulically articulated, 60m long connecting bridges will be the first at Dover not to use combined ropes and hydraulics. Hollandia is prefabricating the bridges to what is a standard design in the Netherlands.

MJ Information No: 18398