Creating sand causeway in Bahrain by Boskalis

Boskalis completed the second phase of the Busaiteen project in Bahrain recently. The work involved the construction of a large sand causeway for a five-kilometer-long, six-lane motorway.

In the first phase (2018 and 2019), the Papendrecht based giant had already constructed a three-kilometer-long embankment.

As well as dredging, phase two included revetment work. In addition to environmental protection and safety, there was a strong emphasis in the project on community support and stakeholder management.

According to Boskalis’ business unit director, Peter Devinck, “Bahrain has continued to expand its territory in recent decades through numerous land reclamation projects. Boskalis executed many of these projects, including New Town and Water Gardens. So we have built up a good name in this country.”

Both phases of the project were for Bahrain’s Ministry of Works, as part of a long-term master plan developed by the government.

“We executed the recent work in a residential area where the road network was under increasing strain. To improve the flow of traffic between the districts of Manama and Muharraq, it was decided to build a road in the sea. Our job was to construct a large sand embankment for this road,” added Devinck.

The 8.2 million cubic meters of sand required for the project was brought in by the Boskalis’ trailing suction hopper dredgers (TSHDs) Causeway and Coastway.

The sand was taken from a borrow area twenty kilometers to the north-east of the project site.

According to Boskalis, the TSHDs pumped the sand directly to the embankment after which it was hydraulically compacted.

To protect the banks, a local subcontractor installed roughly 340,000 tons of rock, ranging from smaller rocks to large boulders weighing more than two tons that were brought in by truck from a quarry in Askar.

The layers of rock were placed on approximately 180,000 square meters of geotextile.

“Our environmental protection measures were also essential,” said Project manager, Arjan van Bruggen.

“The waters around Bahrain include a vast area of mangroves and sea grass, and the waters in the southeastern part of Bahrain are also home to the second largest colony of dugongs (sea cows) in the world.”

In consultation with the authorities and in order to adhere to the environmental regulations of Bahrain, Boskalis implemented various precautions to prevent turbidity, including the use of silt screens and the construction of temporary dikes to safeguard the quality of the water during the reclamation work.

The project also included a range of activities for local society.

“In one of the initiatives, we adopted the mission of a local organization that uses the proceeds from collected plastic to purchase special customized wheelchairs for the local community,” added van Bruggen.

“We collected the plastic we used on the project, from plastic drinking bottles to the plastic waste from our vessels, and handed it over to this charity.”

Another initiative was the creation of a public garden in the vicinity of Al Dair as a gesture to the people living in the vicinity of the project. 

The Kingdom of Bahrain is an island located in the Gulf, east of Saudi Arabia and north of Qatar. The archipelago consists of some 30 islands with a total of 160 km of shoreline and has a population of 800,000.

Boskalis has participated in almost all of the medium and large reclamation projects since the early years of 1980 and has since then been continuously active in the Kingdom.

Most of the reclamation works have been performed at the north shore of the Kingdom, where the populations have been concentrated since long history and where both the airport and commercial ports are located.

During this long presence, Boskalis actively worked closely together with various local construction companies resulting in long-term relationships and successfully cooperation.