St Aubin's Harbour and Fort

Description:

The stabilisation of the North Pier of St Aubin’s Harbour and St Aubin’s Fort Breakwater (360 years old), Jersey Harbours appointed Arup as designer.  Arup worked closely with Jersey civil and marine contractor, Geomarine, and with Cintec (the manufacturer of the stitching anchors)  to  develop a ‘stitching’ method in order to provide a cost effective, environmentally sound solution. This solution also took into consideration the heritage requirements of the two piers. This method effectively strengthened and stabilised them.

A paper was delivered to the Institution of Civil Engineers 2011 Coastal Management Conference held in Belfast on 15^th and 16^th November 2011 by Steve Hold of Arup, Cardiff, outlining this design achievement using needling technology.

Steve Hold’s  paper outlines the difficulties faced by the designers and contractors in finding the correct stabilising solution. It also details the historical and tidal factors which caused the deterioration of the structures and previous unsuccessful attempts to stop the failure of the masonry.  The challenges faced by Geomarine in effectively implementing the design and their eventual success in effectively and secretly strengthening these difficult structures in order to preserve them for future generations are celebrated by his paper.

Ray Hine of Jersey Harbours commented on Geomarine's performance in this project as follows:-

'In a sentence, I believe that this was one of the most well-executed civil engineering projects I have ever been involved with. It was a credit to the Geomarine team and demonstrated the solution based culture that your company pratices.'

To download a pdf of the project details, please click on the link below:-

StAubinsHarbourandFortPage1and2.pdf