Yesterday Halifax Harbour Bridges Released their 20 minute documentary on the Big lift – the Re-decking of the MacDonald bridge. I covered the construction of the bridge in a post a few years ago.
Since the Project is Nearly compete, I decided this would be a good time to share some images of the project from the archives.
The 20 minute Documentary is available from the Bridge Commission via Youtube.
Atlantic towing recently won a renewal for offshore contracts off Newfoundland and announced they were building new PSV’s to do the work. These vessels would be built offshore.
Seems the built offshore bit is a sort of, as is thier arrival today. Rather then build complete vessels the top sides arrived today aboard the Biglift vessel Happy Sky. Presumably the bottom parts will arrive shortly on a semisubmersible vessel. The tops can then be joined to the hulls completing the ship.
Previous Atlantic towing offshore vessels were built at halifax shipyard. Due to clearances in the old assembly hall top sides were constructed and attached to the hull in the yard, so this procedure is nothing new to Halifax shipyards. I suspect in this case importing ship parts results in less duty to be paid then the 25% paid on imported vessels.
UPDATE: Further research has provided a more interesting case. The ships were assembled Entirely at the Damen Shipyard in Romania. The two vessels were then Towed to Cadiz Spain, where the topsides appear to have been removed directly from the hulls by the Happy Sky. The Hulls are in tow to Halifax by tugs Fairplay 30 and Fairplay 31, and due next week.
The big lift looks ready to go. The first bridge section is on the pier at Cherubini (above and below) and the lifting gantry is in place on the bridge(bottom).
The first of the really big changes to the bridge are happening over night now. the Pedestrian and bike ways are coming off.
