Project Name: Phuket Deep Sea Port

Consultant: SPC Consulting Engineers Co.,Ltd.

Associates: Sir William Halcrows and Maunsell Consultants

Project Owner: Water Transport Department (Harbour Department)

Project Location: Ao Kham – Phuket Province, Thailand

Type Size and Value: Deep Sea Port on the Andaman Sea for berthing 20-30,000 tons ships Construction cost of 330 Million Baht (1987)

Project Description: There is no port on the Andaman coast to berth the container ships of these sizes.  After feasibility study, it was concluded that the country’s benefits was great and ADB had given the loan for the project.  The Port site was selected at Ao Kham due to deep water channel, good protection from the wind, wave and the important factor is no need for maintenance channel dredging.  The bedding at the site is so good that hard strata is shallow from the sea bed.  The lead consultants

- Halcrows and Manusell decided to design using Concrete gravity block walls as the structural components for theberthing, with total height of the wall 13 m from the seabed. The innovative part is the concrete block wall of 13 m height that has to retain the backfill materials and be able to resist the berthing force, waves, tides etc. by using plain concrete block weighting about 20-25 tons with box interlock and various trigonometric shapes.  The concrete under water for flat and clean bedding is very important and need very skillful technician inspector. This project was lead by British inspector.

The filter materials were the selected grade of quarry stones available in Phuket.  They were placed in sequence for the thickness to backing the block.  Sequence of stone laying had to correspond to the height of laying block to block them from washing away and not overturning the wall.  Besides the under-water concreting are the in-place concrete, the very thick capping beam to hold the upper blocks are also in-place concrete.  The structure is standing for over 20 years without maintenance.