Presented by Anna Dix at TOC Americas 2024 Conference in Panama
As part of a larger plan to develop their facilities, Port Everglades (PED) has made significant investments to their container handling terminal. The goal of the improvements is to accommodate larger and more ships, increase container movement capacity, and enhance the local and regional economy. The investments have already resulted in many new jobs, and cargo throughput is expected to double in the next decade or so compared to before the improvements.
Continued improvements include extending the turning notch (opening up new berths), expanding and upgrading new and existing infrastructure, procuring six new low profile cranes (at the time, the largest in the world), and upgrading seven existing low profile cranes. Liftech Consultants Inc. (Liftech) is the wharf/crane girder designer, PED’s crane procurement engineer, and the designer and PED’s representative for the crane upgrades project.
Since PED is an active port, the improvement projects were required to minimize the impact to the ongoing shipping operations. This was particularly challenging for the infrastructure work, with multiple entities involved in multiple simultaneous projects. Several strategies were used to maintain the schedules and operations and to improve the project outcomes. For example, parallel crane girders were added to the existing wharves to accommodate the new cranes and avoid disturbing the existing girders, and all parties and all projects maintained constant and proactive coordination of schedules and construction activities.
PED has airport clearance requirements. A height increase was secured; however, the height limitation is still quite strict. Therefore, to maximize the container lift height and minimize the overall height, special low profile cranes were selected.
Several other challenges and solutions are highlighted in the presentation.