Cargo Transportation for PUB C2A Project

National water agency PUB has appointed Koh Brothers Eco Engineering’s unit and its joint venture (JV) partner, for a S$668.2 million influent pumping stations project at the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant. The influent pumping stations is an integral part of the Deep Tunnel Sewerage System (DTSS) Phase 2 project. A total of five deep shafts will be constructed at the Tuas Water Reclamation Plant to house 26 large capacity pumps. The largest pump has a capacity of 195,000 cubic metres a day, able to fill 78 Olympic-sized swimming pools. Santarli Marine provided land equipment such as excavators and land rovers for the shaft excavation works. Hopper barges and landing crafts are also deployed to transport these excavated materials to designated area for offloading.

Santarli Construction Pte Ltd was awarded the contract to design and build for reclamation 2.2ha of land. As a challenging marine construction project being delivered within major tourist spots, commercial buildings and private residential areas in Singapore, interfacing among the various stakeholders played a significant role in the project’s success.

The project team worked closely with Singapore Cruise Centre to manage site constraints and ensure minimal disruptions to the berthing of the cruises, and its operations. Stringent environmental controls were also implemented to protect marine life and prevent pollution to the sea surrounding the area.

The team was also dedicated to minimising noise pollution, especially during working hours. A vibratory hammer head was used to install the steel pipe piles, and a water jet system with high water pressure was designed to cut and wash the soil with high SPT in order to drive the pile piles to the designed toe level with minimal vibration. Both methods were effective in keeping the noise and vibration readings within the allowable levels.

Marina East Staging Ground (MESG) is a support facility for Land Transport Authority (LTA) projects all around Singapore to deliver excavated materials to the staging ground to be used as infill materials for land reclamation. This helps to reduce the dependency of sand required for conventional infilling works. Materials are weighed, discharged directly into barges and then sent to their designated dumping sites. The LTA projects include but not limited to, MRT Tunnelling, Stations, Flyover and Depots.

The team’s display of innovation throughout the project has contributed significantly to the success of MESG. Besides being the first in Singapore to introduce the direct discharged platform at the staging ground, MESG is also the only project then in Singapore approved to use Recycle Construction Concrete with Bricks (RCCB) – green material – as a fill material for the construction of T-bund.

MESG was constructed in a year while the operation of MESG lasted for six years. Throughout the years of operation, MESG has received a total of 2,314,472 number of trucks which total up to 35,103,838 tonnes of excavated materials. With the dedicated project team, the project has seen zero reported accidents and won the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents (ROSPA) Gold Award in 2019 and 2020.

A barging facility was constructed in Singapore to efficiently convey land-based materials for a large scale off-shore reclamation work. Santarli was the first local contractor in Singapore to secure a major land reclamation contract from a statutory board.
The works performed included the following:

• Approximately 20 million m3 of soft material was dredged using both grab and cutter suction dredgers.
• Placement of dredged soft material as infill using the grab and cutter suction dredgers to reclaim 482Ha of land.
• Use of geosynthetics to stabilize the soft material for installation of Prefabricated Vertical Drains (PVD) and placement of surcharge. The stabilizing of the soft material and slurry for the continuation of reclamation work was one of the many challenges of the project.
• Ground improvement on soft soil. Unprecedented in Singapore, the project had also successfully implemented large-scale vacuum preloading and shallow ground improvement on soft soil using short PVD.
• Placement of sand after consolidation of soft material as top infill layer.
• Design and construct 4 concrete piled jetties fully equipped with 5 direct dumping platforms. These innovative direct dumping platforms have improved the efficiency for material dumping to 270% compared to the original method, revolutionizing the material discharging process in Singapore today.
• Management of barging facility. At the peak, the barging facility handled over 80,000 dump trucks per month.
• Rock revetment works
• Environmental Monitoring and Management Programme (EMMP) of seawater and hydrographic survey works