Boskalis Annual Report 2020

34

BUSAITEEN PROJECT IN BAHRAIN: LAND RECLAMATION TO IMPROVE THE FLOW OF ROAD TRAFFIC

Boskalis completed the second phase of the Busaiteen project in Bahrain in early 2021. The work involved the construction of a large sand causeway for a five-kilometer-long, six-lane motorway. During the first phase in 2018 and 2019, Boskalis had already constructed a three-kilometer-long embankment. As well as dredging, phase 2 included revetment work. In addition to environmental protection and safety, there was a strong emphasis in the project on community support and stakeholder management.

“Bahrain has continued to expand its territory in recent decades through numerous land reclamation projects. Boskalis executed many of these projects, including New Town and Water Gardens. So we have built up a good name in this country,” says business unit director Peter Devinck. Both phases of the project were for Bahrain’s Ministry of Works, as part of a long-term master plan developed by the government. “We executed the recent work in a residential area where the road network was under increasing strain. To improve the flow of traffic between the districts of Manama and Muharraq, it was decided to build a road in the sea. Our job was to construct a large sand embankment for the road and the civil- engineering structures,” explains Devinck. SAND AND ROCK The 8.2 million cubic meters of sand required for the project was brought in by the Boskalis trailing suction hopper dredgers Causeway and Coastway. The sand was taken from a borrow area twenty kilometers to the north-east of the project site. The hoppers pumped the sand directly to the embankment after which it was hydraulically compacted. To protect the banks, a local subcontractor installed roughly 340,000 tons of rock, ranging from smaller rocks to large boulders weighing more than two tons that were brought in by truck from a quarry in Askar. The layers of rock were placed on approximately 180,000 square meters of geotextile.