- King Edward Point is
located in South Georgia,
which is a group of islands
located between the Falkland Islands
and Antarctica.
- In terms of science,
South Georgia is extremely important.
It's a natural wildlife haven.
- South Georgia can
only be reached by sea.
And so a safe berthing point is critical
to crew safety,
but also to the variety of operations
that we undertake.
And this new wharf provides protection
of the territory.
- The Sir David Attenborough vessel
is extremely important for
the scientific community.
The wharf had been constructed
to allow that vessel to berth
at King Edward Point
and on South Georgia.
- The wharf just helps support
the whole science base.
So it means the SDA and the
Pharos can come alongside,
and can bring us cargo,
can help people move around
and can also bring us our food.
- The most important milestone
in the very beginning
was the departure of the Billesborg
from Teesport in the UK.
It arrived on the 16th January.
The next milestone was the
first pile on 28 January.
- So to construct the new wharf,
we had to
pitch and drive up to 168 piles
around the existing wharf,
backfill to make a nice level
platform for the future.
After that, constructing the new slipway.
And finally,
as we're working on right now,
is finishing the new mooring dolphin.
- Okay, the sun is shining today
and it's absolutely fantastic.
But a lot of the time it isn't,
a lot of the time it's quite wet.
It's quite windy, it's quite wild.
It's physically quite a hard place.
- Could be absolutely not a breath of wind
and within five minutes you can have 30,
35 metres a second wind.
It's quite a challenge.
- Pre-planning is absolutely important
at locations that are isolated
and difficult to reach
such as KEP.
- The diligence and conscientiousness
of the team in pre-construction
and the planning stage
had been really a great success.
We built it digitally,
challenging and verifying
the design as necessary.
- The wildlife's been fantastic,
really interesting,
really in your face.
- Fur seals,
Elephant seals,
a variety of birds,
including terns
and albatross and petrels.
- Any process that we have
to do within the construction
has to really take care
of the local environment.
- We brought sniffer dogs onto the ships
to make sure that there were no
accidental introduction to rodents.
- We had to start construction in January
due to the local animal breeding season.
- We limited the use of impact piling
and used the less intrusive
vibro piling.
- The KEP Wharf Project was
carried out as a collaborative project
with the government of South Georgia,
BAS,
Ramboll
and BAM Nuttall.
- Sweco joined as BAM's design partner.
- Integration's been fantastic.
The kind of BAM team that we've had here,
in the evenings and at weekends
we spend a lot of time with each other.
- A lot of emphasis was put
in developing a one team philosophy
for the whole of the season.
- After almost two years
of design, planning,
mobilisation and subsequent construction,
the team were able to align
the completion of the wharf
to the exact day,
to enable the safe arrival
of the demobilisation vessel.
- 3 weeks ahead of schedule, finished,
slightly under budget,
quality,
health and safety,
and environmental performance, excellent.
It was a phenomenally good
performance by the team there.
- Given this very remote,
rather limited territory
in terms of infrastructure,
that is an incredible achievement.
