The Hay Point Berthing Facility is regarded as a historically significant advance in Australian engineering. At the time of its construction, this project represented a world-first solution to the task of implementing a major shipping berth in the open sea. BMA Hay Point Services (BMA) now operates this Coal Terminal in Mackay, Queensland, known for its export of mined product. Commissioned in 1975, the two main ship loading facilities, Berth 1 and 2, have serviced the industry for over 40 years. More than 500 million tonnes of coal has been exported through Berth 2 since its inception.

PROJECT HIGHLIGHTS

• Actively corroding and chloride contaminated concrete
• Confined space entry
• Electrochemical testing of deteriorated concrete

CHALLENGES

Berthing Caissons at Berth 1 and 2 were showing signs of severe corrosion and concrete contaminated by chloride. Infracorr was invited to investigate the Hay Point site. With motives to assess the concrete structure and ascertain the strength of the existing caissons, our team engaged with BMA. This project surfaced three key challenges:
• The extent of continual corrosion and contaminated concrete from chloride ingress affected by the marine environment.
• The historical, social and economic relevance of the largest loading facility of the region, which pressed us further to ensure its ongoing and future operations continued smoothly.
• An urgent need for a repair design that actively addressed the longterm durability of the structure and while ensuring our client’s business continued smoothly.

SOLUTIONS

Our aim was to ensure that the strategy implemented not only benefited the client, but was also in compliance of all the stringent needs of such a critical terminal.

• Investigation carried out entailed extensive visual and diagnostic testing, equipotential mapping, corrosion rate analysis as well as chloride and cement content testing, all results being compiled into a condition assessment report

• Repair options considered continual concrete patch repairs, surface based Cathodic Protection (CP), water/soil based CP system and a combination of these options with the overall aim of ensuring minimal disruptions to BMA operations.

• Design for Durability provided to BMA addressed two main agendas – Durability; protecting the structure for over 50 years, and Serviceability; ensuring that periodic repairs and maintenance expenditure was optimised and interruptions to operations was minimised.