America's North Shore Journal

The Gulf Region South Dis­trict, head­quar­tered in Tallil, is a joint effort com­pris­ing Civil­ians, Sol­diers, Sailors, Air­men and Con­trac­tors. GRS pro­vides qual­ity and sus­tain­able engi­neer­ing in sup­port of civil/military con­struc­tion in Iraq. GRS and its Iraqi part­ners are build­ing a strong foun­da­tion for Iraq's future

The U.S. Army Corps of Engi­neers (USACE) is embark­ing on the first For­eign Mil­i­tary Sales (FMS) project with Iraq. The con­struc­tion of the $53 mil­lion Umm Qasr pier and sea­wall project, to pro­vide a state-of-the-art berthing facil­ity for the Iraqi Navy in Basra Province, began in Octo­ber 2008.

Accord­ing to Jim Hynum, a con­struc­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tive with the USACE Gulf Region South Basra Area Office, the state-of-the-art facil­ity will serve the Iraqi Navy for years to come. “The pier and sea­wall project will pro­vide a state-of-the-art berthing facil­ity for the Iraqi Navy and sup­port patrol ves­sels charged with secur­ing the vital port infra­struc­ture and sea­ways in Iraq’s ter­ri­to­r­ial waters,” Hynum said. “The project is incor­po­rat­ing the lat­est marine tech­nol­ogy to sup­port the fleet, charged with pro­tect­ing Iraq’s oil infra­struc­ture which is crit­i­cal to the nation’s eco­nomic growth and development.”

The project was awarded to CCI, an Alaskan based com­pany, who part­nered with Poly­Earth Con­struc­tion Inter­na­tional (U.S. based) and PND Engi­neers (U.S. based) to pro­vide the con­struc­tion using open cell tech­nol­ogy. “These com­pa­nies have a sig­nif­i­cant his­tory of build­ing sim­i­lar work in both the north­west­ern United States and inter­na­tional loca­tions,” Hynum said.

“The project includes about 370 meters of Open-Cell ® sheet­pile. The award win­ning Open-Cell ® sheet­pile sys­tem, designed by PND Engi­neers, includes a sheet­pile sea­wall pier and a float­ing pier which will pro­vide addi­tional berths to sup­port new ships ordered by the Iraqi Navy,” accord­ing to Sam Pelant, a rep­re­sen­ta­tive with Poly­Earth. “Both the sheet­pile pier and float­ing pier will pro­vide state-of-the-art light­ing, water, elec­tri­cal and fuel ser­vices for the new vessels.

"New util­ity ser­vices will be added to the pier facil­ity includ­ing fuel, elec­tri­cal and water,” Pelant said. “A new Oper­a­tional Fuel Stor­age facil­ity will be con­structed to store 300,000 liters of ship fuel. Shore tie elec­tri­cal ser­vice will be avail­able for berthed ves­sels, as well as potable water. A secu­rity fence and con­crete road will be con­structed along the face of the pier and down the exist­ing sea­wall for secu­rity and to allow access for ser­vice vehicles.”

Pelant said that there are two aspects of the project that he is par­tic­u­larly proud to point out. “First: we are very proud of our safety record,” Pelant said. “We’ve gone 427 days with­out a lost time acci­dent. Con­sid­er­ing the com­plex­ity of the project, I think that is an admirable achievement.

“The sec­ond is Larry Wil­son the genius behind the pro­gram. We’ve taken a num­ber of our bet­ter Iraqi welders and are work­ing to get them Amer­i­can Weld­ing Soci­ety (AWS) cer­ti­fied,” Pelant said. “We also have John Houser, a retired con­struc­tion tech­nolo­gies teacher, men­tor­ing a group of Iraqi con­struc­tion work­ers in car­pen­try and con­crete tech­niques like we do in the states.”

Pelant went on to explain that accord­ing to the terms of the con­tract, 25 per­cent of their work­force must be Iraqi. “We have super­seded that with a total of 60 per­cent of the work­force being Iraqi,” Pelant said. “The more than 200 Iraqis work­ing for us are com­pletely inte­grated in all of the work that has taken place and we are very proud of them.”

As Iraq strives to build a secure, sta­ble and self-governing nation, the USACE has com­pleted hun­dreds of projects in the trans­porta­tion and com­mu­ni­ca­tion sec­tor. Since 2004, the USACE has com­pleted eight port projects through­out Iraq.

MNF-I