Final works and clean-up at the construction site of the Vistula Spit Shipping Channel!

The new shipping channel through the Vistula Spit will soon be open to vessels. Although ship traffic could already be possible, the finishing touches to the protective harbour and clean-up work on the entire site remain to be carried out. Training in the operation of the master control system is still in progress.

The Vistula Spit Channel is a huge hydraulic engineering challenge. The project assumed the construction of a protective harbour on the side of the Gdańsk Bay and a shipping channel with a lock and locking structure, together with berths on the side of the Gdańsk Bay and the Vistula Lagoon. This also includes a new road system with steel swing bridges rotating around a vertical axis, as well as the construction of a so-called artificial island in the Vistula Lagoon. Investor, the Maritime Office in Gdynia, and the general contractor, the NDI/Besix consortium, ensure that everything is almost ready for the new shipping channel to be put into operation. The final works are still taking place in the protective harbour.

“We are at the finish line, the commissioning is underway, very soon the Contractor will hand over the whole investment to us. The execution of this rather complicated hydrotechnical structure shall be carried out according to the assumed schedule,” said EngD Master Mariner Wiesław Piotrzkowski, Director of the Maritime Office in Gdynia.

Minimising waving

The protective harbour consists of the main breakwater (eastern), which is more than one-kilometre-long, and the protective breakwater (western), about 540 metres long. The eastern breakwater is a typical rubble-mound structure that suppresses and breaks up the waves entering the harbour, so that no dangerous waving forms in the shipping channel.

“All stone and Xbloc laying works are coming to an end. We still have clean-up work and minor cosmetic work on the reinforced concrete elements to be done in the second half of September,” says Bartosz Zabłocki, Hydrotechnical Works Manager from the NDI/Besix Consortium, and emhasises, “All the main works, both in the protective harbour and in the shipping channel, are already done to such an advanced extent that ship traffic can be introduced”.

As a reminder, the breakwaters were constructed using a globally unique technology – prefabricated Xbloc Plus elements. Before that, they have only been used on the Afsluitdijk Dam – a protective dam, which is the main dam and causeway in the Netherlands.

“We used three types of Xbloc Plus units on our site. For example, on the eastern breakwater, the Xbloc Plus of 1 m3 has been installed on the inner side and the Xbloc Plus of 3 m3 and 4 m3 on the outer side,” says Tomasz Brodnicki, hydrotechnical works foreman.

Each such element has its own number. Based on these numbers and coordinates, the excavator installs the Xbloc units just like toy blocks.

“We are finishing the laying of the Xblocs on the eastern breakwater. On the western breakwater, the entire rubble-mound structure is also fully completed,” emphasises Tomasz Brodnicki.

Final tests of the control system

Only finishing and clean-up works also remain in the channel area, where the installation of the hydrotechnical equipment has just been completed. The final clean-up is also in progress on the so-called artificial island. There, sheet piling, installation of steel tie rods, dredging works, backfilling of the cofferdam, geotubing and hydrotechnical stone work on the service strip were successfully completed. Hydrotechnical stone profiling has been completed.

The Nowy Świat Harbourmaster’s Office building, the site of general supervision of the lock crossing, shipping safety, and environmental and fire protection, has also been ready for a long time.

“Once the use permits were obtained for all the objects, i.e.: the bridges, the lock gates and the Harbourmaster’s Office building, the trials and tests related to the operation of the master control system started. It is a highly sophisticated system that allows safe crossing control. It has elements that, in the event of a possible failure of the control system, will allow the crossing to continue. All these issues are still being tested,” says Andrzej Małkiewicz, Deputy Plenipotentiary for Project Execution from the Maritime Office in Gdynia.

Work on the Vistula Spit began in October 2019. The first phase of this investment is set to be completed this month. When the entire investment is completed, vessels with a draught of up to 4.5 metres, a length of up to 100 metres and a width of up to 20 metres will be able to pass from the Gdańsk Bay to the Vistula Lagoon through the new shipping channel.