Marine Civil Construction Vessels

Marine Construction, also known as Marine Civil Construction or Marine Civils, encompasses the construction of an entire spectrum of marine infrastructure from large bridge and causeway projects to quays, jetties, marinas, dolphins, piers, suspended decks, monopile installations and all types of piled foundations. More recently these have included offshore wind farms and - increasingly - development projects for wave and tidal arrays.

Such Marine Construction projects tend to take place in coastal areas, lakes or rivers and utilise marine equipment, often in vessel spreads ie a combination of a number of vessels, specific to the individual project. Depending on the scope of the project the required marine equipment varies and can be broken down into different categories:

• Heavy lifting of equipment for bridge/causeway projects etc - sheerleg, jackup barges, modular jack-up barges, crane barges, piling barges
• Dredging work for port construction, land reclamation, harbour maintenance and river channel widening/maintenance - TSHDs (trailer suction hopper dredgers), CSDs (cutter suction dredgers), backhoe or dipper dredgers, split hopper barges or split barges, bottom dumping barges and straight forward hopper barges
• Offshore wind farms - please see our offshore windfarm section.

Assisting the larger specialist vessels are a range of support vessels used in Marine Civil Construction. Support vessels chartered typically include: tugs, shoalbusters, multicats, dredge helpers, pilot and guard vessels and crew transfer vessels. These support vessels are often rented or chartered for specific short to medium term projects or, if the projects are for longer duration, they can be chartered on a bareboat contract - although this is less common. To bareboat a vessel simply means to charter or rent the vessel and associated machinery, but not the crew. Bareboat contracts tend to be for long term projects.

In addition to support vessels, specialist accommodation vessels are used to accommodate workers on a specific project. These take the form of floating hotel vessels known as 'flotels' or 'floatels' or accommodation jackups. These accommodation vessels are typically chartered or rented during the construction phases of Marine Construction projects and more specifically during hook up phase for offshore wind projects.

Locating workers' accommodation on site can have a significant impact on the efficiency of a project, particularly during 24 hour operations at a distance off shore. Transit times to and from site are taken out of the equation as is the issue of fatigue on the workers transiting in small crew transfer vessels in rougher conditions. Accommodation offshore can also reduce the footprint of a project, reducing its impact on the local community - eg when constructing or upgrading a power station on the coast - by accommodating workers in a self-contained flotel/floatel or accommodation jackup, the need for temporary onshore accommodation is removed and also any friction with the local community which may arise from the influx of workers into a small coastal conurbation.