Launch of New Cruise Facility Pontoons

The pontoons, each between 18m and 25m in width, 60m in length and approximately 5m deep, form the major part of the facility and support a reception building, pilot crew building, linkspan, coach park and 120m long covered walkway.

Consultant Gifford and contractor Balfour Beatty were awarded the £18m design and build contract last year.

The pontoons have been built in the Canada Dry Dock in Liverpool. ‘Building the pontoons in the dry has not only allowed conventional construction techniques, but has also facilitated easier and safer installation of the facility infrastructure such as building frames and foundations, foul drainage and mechanical and electrical installations’, said Gifford project manager Nick Clarke.

Although the majority of the pontoon fit-out is to be undertaken in the dry dock, the dock will need to be flooded and the pontoons floated to enable final fit-out. The controlled flooding of the dock is scheduled for the middle of this month. Once afloat, the pontoons will be towed out into the adjacent wet basin where further fit out of the facility will be undertaken.

‘Even though we are maximising the work we can do in the relative safety of the wet basin, the final fit-out can only be done once the pontoons are in their final position out in the Mersey’, explained Balfour Beatty project manager Paul Brown.

All four pontoons are being constructed in the dry dock at the same time, but since they are different depths and widths and have differing superstructure arrangements, they will start to float at different times during the dock flooding. ‘The team has carefully considered the dock flooding including the pre-ballasting arrangements for each pontoon’, added Nick Clarke. Due to only partial installation of the facility’s equipment in the dock, each pontoon requires both a dock flooding ballast plan and then once in position the pontoon will need to be re-ballasted during the addition of the remaining fit out in order for them to remain trim.

The facility is intended to be operational this autumn and hopes to host the celebrations for the 40^th birthday of Cunard’s ‘Queen Elizabeth 2’ liner on 21 September 2007.