Marine contractors are making brisk efficiency gains using technologies that could also be a boon to construction firms on dry land.
Marine construction has advanced markedly over the past 25 years. Companies engaged in dredging and land reclamation, as well as offshore construction of oil platforms and wind turbines, are seeing costs sink, as productivity, speed and quality rise. “Everything in our industry has become larger,” says Koen Vanderbeke of DEME, a Belgian marine contractor specialising in dredging, marine engineering and environmental remediation. “But we’ve become smarter, too.”
The leap forward, which has yet to be replicated in onshore construction, has come largely out of necessity. In an exceedingly capital-intensive industry demanding constant investment, companies needed cost efficiencies to keep up with growing demand. Fragmentation gave way to consolidation, and along with expansion, left five giants standing: DEME and Jan De Nul in Belgium, Boskalis and Van Oord in the Netherlands and CHEC in China.
According to The Economist, “These trends have been spurred by large, demanding customers (usually governments and energy firms), as well as by the greater need for precision at sea, where a tiny slit in an oil pipe can prompt a catastrophe.” Another driver is that maritime building projects have grown so large and complex, they would be virtually impossible without automation. GPS guidance systems and robotics are enabling dredging ships to penetrate harder materials and work in deeper waters.
Monitoring in offshore construction has changed most dramatically. “We now measure everything,” says Vanderbeke. Sensors track all machine processes, as well as activity on the seabed, and interaction between the two. Paired with computer simulations, this type of surveillance helps to avoid mishaps. In addition, modular building, which can speed up construction both on land and at sea, is being used to boost productivity.
Offshore productivity gains are affecting other industries as well. In Belgium, they have skewed productivity figures for the entire building sector. Effects can also be seen in real estate, as lower-cost dredging makes land reclamation more feasible. “In Amsterdam you pay around €1,000 for a square metre of land; we can now make new land in shallow water for just €300 per square metre,” says Pieter van Oord of Van Oord, a Dutch contractor. The business case is even more compelling in coastal cities like Jakarta and Singapore, where land prices are up to 10 times higher.
