In 2018 and 2019, at the height of the construction, Calais Port 2015 complexity will become increasingly important and be revealed to everyone, all the work taking then place jointly.
A large construction site is “complicated”.
The challenges often come from one or the other major difficulty inherent in such projects :
- Above-standards design requiring highly innovative construction methods,
- A site difficult to access threatening the productivity,
- Drastic environmental requirements limiting the construction options,
- The gigantic size of the operation accentuating the effects of any preparation mistake,
- …
But Calais Port 2015 complexity is not related to one of these prevailing difficulties. The breakwater construction remains of course the high point of the project. More than its design, relatively conventional for a mid-depth construction, the working conditions in an often stormy sea by the effects of wind and the delivery deadline to be respected are the challenge for the supporters of the project.
The main technical challenge of Calais Port 2015 is actually the disparity of works to be executed, and the nesting of these works together, both in features and phasing at the design stage and also regarding the construction schedule.
Dredging the basin protected by the breakwater is conditioned by the breakwater construction progress ; dredging allowing new platforms to be implemented with backfilling from dredging ; after burying multiple networks of fluids and energy, buildings will then be implemented on these platforms …
At the design stage, the interdependence of detailed preliminary studies is everywhere : The precise positioning of structures to access to and from the site depends, for example on the design of ferry berths to optimize the flow of vehicules. Work on these ferry berths will start for the first one at the end of 2016 which depend on the linkspan design, even if they will be brought on site at the very end of construction in 2020. The choice of road structures is determined by the type and intensity of traffic, partly determined by the spatial arrangement of checking buildings.
In 2018 and 2019, at the height of the construction, Calais Port 2015 complexity will become increasingly important and be revealed to everyone, all the work taking then place jointly. But when early studies were launched, the conception of the design of structures and the choice of construction methods were the first real challenge for all partners of the project.
We thus understand the upstream complexity in designing Calais Port 2015 and the more visible one, its implementation requiring the best coordinations for over five years.