Successfully adding a third berth to Canada’s largest and busiest container terminal, three months ahead of schedule.

The project scope was an initiative to expand the container capacity at the port to accommodate consumer and business-driven demand for increased Canadian trade through the West Coast of Canada. The development increased capacity at Deltaport by approximately 600,000 TEUs by adding a third berth and 20 hectares of container storage facilities to the existing two-berth container terminal.

• The 432 lineal metre berth was constructed using 10 sunken concrete caissons, which were ballasted into place on a densified rock mattress.
• The soil conditions at the Deltaport site consist of dense sand and silt, as this site is located near the mouth of the Fraser River. The berth design was a caisson quay wall wharf, which is the ideal structure for those soil conditions.
• The caissons were large concrete boxes, designed to float, but were required to be sunk on the seabed to create the quay wall. VanPile’s graving dock located in Vancouver harbour, was used to fabricate the floating caissons.
• The project also required approximately 500,000 cubic metres of dredging on the marine side and 1.5 million cubic metres of fills to create the upland component.