Balfour Beatty Civil Engineering Ltd

Liverpool Cruise Liner Facility

Client: Liverpool City Council
Value: £18.2 million Design & Build contract

There were three key elements to the Liverpool Cruise Liner project:

• Marine piling
• Construction of the concrete pontoons
• Procurement of a Linkspan Bridge, a link footbridge and various other structural elements.

The Marine Piling was carried out by Commercial & Marine, with steel piles being supplied by the Italian contractor 'Cimolai'.

The pontoon construction was carried out in an old dry dock (Canada Dock) rented from Mersey Docks & Harbour Board. The dock was used in the First World War to refit the fated cruise liner the Lusitania. The dock had to be adapted to enable the construction of the four pontoons, each measuring 68 x 24 x 7m deep at the same time. Once completed, the pontoons were floated into the adjacent basin and then, taken to their final mooring position and attached to the marine piles.

The main linkspan was built on site using steel sections fabricated in Italy and then shipped to the UK in June 2007. The linkspan was lifted into position on the 17 and 18 September 2007, two days before the QE2 arrived in Liverpool.

A 1,200 tonne crane was used to lift the front of the linkspan, with bogies under the rear section driving it forward until it reached its final position, it was then connected to the floatation tank. The flotation tank takes the full live load of the structure and reduces the loading on the existing pontoons.

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