The expansion of Pier 41 / 42 at Halterm is legitimately underway.
Though the Port Authority announced in October that work had begun, it didn’t actually get going until this month. The first tasks were closing the harbour lookoff near Point Pleasant Park and the removal of the walkway from the side of the pier.
McNally Construction Inc. won the bid for the dredging and has been assembling the required equipment at Pier 9. This phase of the work will likely get underway after the holidays.
The tender for construction of the actual expansion closed this month. That contract has yet to be awarded, but it seems likely it will go to McNally, the lowest bidder.
McNally has built several piers in Halifax, including the recent expansion of Pier 9, the new jetty at the navy dockyard and a previous extension to Pier 42.
McNally is based in Hamilton, Ont., and was acquired by Weeks Marine of New Jersey in 2011. McNally maintains an Atlantic Canada office in Dartmouth.
The other bidder was Waterworks Construction Ltd. of Dartmouth. An experienced construction firm, it has constructed the pontoons for the ferry terminals and most of the Halifax boardwalk.
The port has been calling this a temporary expansion. Lane Farguson, spokesman for the Port Authority, told me the new expansion will be constructed of hollow caissons.
The caissons will be floated, then filled with aggregate to set them into place. The gravel can then be removed, allowing the caissons to be reused. Presumably, they will be used for the port’s proposed larger expansion, which will see the finger piers at the ocean terminals filled in.
Combined with the interest of CN in acquiring the terminal, this means the port is well-positioned going into 2019.
To update some other stories:
The Canadian Coast Guard vessel Corporal McLaren, which was damaged at the CME shipyard in Sambro Head, has been hauled out of the water for the completion of work. The ship was partially submerged when the cradle it was sitting in was tampered with and allowed to roll into the water. There has been no word on the status of the police investigation, nor what damage was sustained in the incident.
The Akademik Ioffe still sits at the shipyard in Les Mechins, Que. The ship ran aground in the Arctic on Aug. 27 and made it to the shipyard under its own power at the end of September. The ship typically cruises the Antarctic this time of year, so several trips have likely been cancelled. The ship is scheduled for an Antarctic cruise, departing from the Falkland Islands on Jan. 22. The 12-day voyage has cabins available starting at US$12,095.
Last week, four men were rescued from a sailboat about 240 nautical miles southeast of Halifax. The U.K.-registered vessel was bound for Toronto after being purchased from the Dutch owner. The Brits aboard were hired to deliver the boat.
The crew apparently lacked survival suits. If the plan was to make Toronto this year, they also would have faced an icy St. Lawrence River and the closure of locks at the end of December between Montreal and Lake Ontario.
Quebec’s Davie shipyard is offering the federal government a second supply ship at a discount. The Obelix, a sister ship to the Asterix, is being offered for $500 million. The Asterix cost the feds $659 million. Davie is able to offer the discount since the engineering work was done for the first ship and can be reused.
The supply ships have become politically contentious. However, it should be noted that the two Davie conversions could be had for less than the price of one of the new supply ships under construction at Seaspan in Vancouver.
