Waterfront Infrastructure

Art Anderson Associates provided multidisciplinary engineering services for the design and construction of an access trestle and attached floating surface collector (FSC) barge that will serve as a downstream fish passage facility for Pacificorp's Swift No. 1 hydroelectric project on the Lewis River in rural southwest Washington State. The facility was developed as a result of Pacificorp's settlement agreement for the relicensing of its hydroelectric facilities. Our firm's scope of work includes engineering analysis, design and construction services for the FSC barge, access trestle, mooring tower and the temporary drydock facility and staging area that will be used for the FSC's on-site assembly.

The FSC is a floating barge-like platform with dimensions of 82'x170'x28'. The FSC includes a variety of mechanisms for collecting, sorting, sampling and tagging downstream-travelling juvenile salmon, including screens, channels, baffles, cleaners, flumes, holding tanks and pump systems. Art Anderson Associates provided all naval architectural and marine engineering analysis and design services for the FSC barge, taking into account worker safety, ease of maintenance, life-cycle costs, and system redundancy requirements. The FSC is intended to operate continuously, during all flows and seasons, for a 50-year life cycle. Therefore designing to minimize downtime, or allow "hot-swapping" equipment that will wear out or break during ongoing operations was an important design criteria.

The FSC is moored to a fixed structure consisting of two primary elements: an approximately 650'-long multi-span trestle erected with 18'-wide by 110'-long pre-fabricated bridge trusses, and the 130'-tall FSC mooring tower that doubles as a hopper-to-truck fish transfer work platform.

The site is remote, with restrictive access. An overall design and procurement strategy for this project was to design to accommodate, to the maximum extent possible, off-site prefabrication, thereby minimizing expensive on-site assembly. Trucking contractors were engaged to determine the largest prefabricated items that could be safely transported to the site.

Off-site fabrication is currently proceeding with the contractor scheduled to mobilize for on-site assembly and erection in May, 2011.

The National Infrastructure Development Company (NIDCO) owns a Water Taxi Service that operates between Port of Spain and San Fernando on the island of Trinidad in the West Indes. Currently, three 150-passenger and one 450-passenger high-speed catamaran ferries serve the approximately 30-mile route. Since the service launched in 2008, ridership has grown rapidly, to the point that most sailings are near- or at-capacity. In order to accommodate the burgeoning demand, NIDCO has procured four new 405-passenger ferries that are currently under construction at Austal shipyards in Tasmania and mainland Australia.

The delivery of the new ferries is expected in September, 2010, but NIDCO does not currently have passenger or overnight berthing facilities in place to accommodate them. Therefore NIDCO hired Art Anderson Associates as its consultant to provide management, planning, engineering design and bid support for these facilities in time for delivery of the new vessels.

The project scope of work entails development of conceptual and detailed designs for new passenger and overnight berthing facilities to accommodate NIDCO's expanded fleet of ferry vessels. Tasks in this scope include performing an updated site survey and analysis of passenger flow patterns and space utilization at the Port of Spain and San Fernando terminals; development of conceptual drawings depicting the new facilities; preparation of calculations, plans, specifications and cost estimates for construction; assisting in responding to bidder inquiries; and performing a review of construction bids.

Supporting Art Anderson Associates on this project are two key subconsultants. Pacific Marine Technical Services of Bainbridge Island, WA is providing technical and operations consulting support. PMTS' relationship with the ferry service operator, Hornblower Marine Services, gives them particular insight into and knowledge of the details of the operation. Also supporting the team is Lee Young & Partners, a Trinidad-based civil and geotechnical engineering firm that is providing local expertise and representation, and relevant civil and geotechnical analysis.

The result of the project will include fully ADA-accessible terminal facilities at Port of Spain and San Fernando, which will be able to accommodate both the smaller 150-passenger and larger 405-passenger vessels in the Water Taxi Service fleet. Also, new overnight berthing facilities, including shore power connections, will be provided at San Fernando, providing a safe, secure location for the vessels to tie up at night.

Art Anderson Associates contracted with Winzler & Kelly as the lead design consultant for the overwater portion of this $13-million combined passenger ferry maintenance and terminal facility for the Baylink fleet of passenger ferries. The ferry maintenance and terminal facility project is an adaptive reuse of former US Naval Shipyard Facility, Mare Island. We provided concept and preliminary designs for the POF terminal and maintenance facilities.

The current phase of the project involves development of final designs and specifications for waterfront facilities and the barge and float structures. Art Anderson Associates is developing designs and specifications for the barge structure, potable water, sewage, lube oil, fueling, fire suppression, compressed air, urea, HVAC and electrical systems. Other work includes naval architectural calculations and hydrodynamic analysis of the service barge.

We are also working on structural calculations, connection and transfer span details and structural and mechanical specifications for the terminal portion of the project. The terminal function of the facility requires segregation of passengers from industrial activities, for both safety and Homeland Security requirements. The terminal function also requires ADA accessibility for passenger access, and operational flexibility to alternate slip usage for four slips, from terminal operations to maintenance operations and back again during any given shift. Art Anderson Associates personnel helped develop the required permit drawings and environmental documentation for design and construction, ensuring an environmentally sound facility.

Art Anderson Associates is participating in the largest tidal wetland restoration project on the west coast, located at the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge. About 85% of these historic marshes were lost in the last century due to urbanization or being diked off for salt production. In 2003, the US Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Game acquired 15,000 acres of these salt ponds for restoration, an area the size of Manhattan. Part of the restoration plan involves breaching levees to allow tides to flow back into the ponds, which will allow them to become natural marshlands once again. While this will do much to restore habitat, it presents challenges for flood control.

Our scope of work on this design-build project involves design development and construction documents for flash weirs and water control structures at the Ravenswood Pond SF2. This 240-acre pond will be reconfigured to create islands for nesting birds and shallow water habitat for shorebird foraging. Two water control structures, two steel-frame wildlife viewing platforms, and numerous berms and islands will be constructed, in addition to raising levees by 1-2 feet. The water control structures are being constructed to achieve target water depths, adequate flushing to ensure water quality, protecting the perimeter levee and bike path from flooding and habitat management flexibility.

We are also working with the contractor, Triton Marine Construction, to identify and capitalize on value engineering opportunities. Some of these opportunities have included substituting recycled concrete as fill, substituting a wood valve control structure for a concrete vault, and using precast, prestressed concrete piles instead of plastic-coated wood piles. So far in the project, we've identified $135,000 in project cost savings using value engineering.

The SF2 Project was featured in a paper and presentation for the ASCE PORTS 2010 Conference, held in April 2010.  Patrick Vasicek presented the project on behalf of he and the rest of the paper's authors (James Levey, PhD, PE; Herb Fricke, PE; Jon Archer, PE; and Rob Henry, PE).  Read the PORTS 2010 Paper (PDF).  View the PORTS 2010 Presentation (PDF).