No_5_July_-_August_-_September__1958 — Page 30

PRINCIPAL DATUM

2

4

TURF

(above) Key Block & Berm Stone construction. (above right) Finished sea wall at low tide. (right) Graphical representation of design of

sea wall.

£5 Million Contract

In August, 1955 the contract for

Typical Section of Sea Wall

1. Upper rubble mound, 2. Lower rubble mound. 3. Decomposed granite or sand fill. 4. Sand fill. 5. Mud, existing sea-bed. 6. Mud dredged and replaced with sand.

The scheme is thought to be uni- Company were to undertake the dredging plant on site. Two large modern que in that no other runway of com- ing and marine work, and Gammon bucket dredgers of Dutch" manufac- parable size has been built in rela- (Malaya) Limited the hill excavation ture were towed out from the South tively deep water.

and construction of the drainage, the of France; a grab dredger and two runway and part of the seawalls. The small cutter-suction dredgers were or- value of the contract was about £5 dered and shipped from the U.S.A.; million, which is believed to be the a fleet of nine tugs and ten barges fabricated largest single civil engineering con- and some pontoons were tract in the history of South East Asia. in Hong Kong shipyards. Messrs. Gammon (Malaya) Limited brought The time allowed for the contract

much of their plant from Singapore and the Thornycraft lorries, from England and remainder, including 40 the U.S.A. The dredging fleet was sub- sequently augmented by the addition of a hopper suction dredger, while over 100 lorries belonging to local con tractors assisted in the work of hill

removal.

this work was awarded to the French Company, the Societe Francaise d'Entreprises de Dragages et de Travaux Publics, who tendered in association with the British Company, was three years, and the first six Gammon (Malaya) Limited, as their months of this were mainly main Sub-Contractors. The French to assembling the necessary engineer-

2

Laying the stone base of the Taxi way.

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devoted

2 Years Working Time

In the 2 years working time avail- able, the mud had to be dredged, the seawalls built, the land made and al- lowed to settle, and finally the run- way and taxiways had to be built to a very high standard. The volume of mud to be removed amounted to about 2 million cu. yds., and it had to be carried six miles and dumped from barges outside the harbour area; three million cu. yds. of earth from

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Text and Drawings extracted from Paper presented before the Institution of Civil Engineers by Henry Grace S. M., M.Sc, M. I. C. E., and John Keith Maxwell Henry, B. A. I.,

M. I. C. E.

Artist's impression of the new Terminal Building at Kai Tak as it will look upon completion towards the end of 1960. The estimated cost of the building is over HK$16 million.

Photograph by

P.R.O., Hong Kong