SUPPLY CHAIN & LOGISTICS

Seeing Another Way Around

Civil engineering is invaluable to heavy and oversize transport planning

Hendrik Wagner - BDP Project Logistics, Engineering Division

Successful project logistics depends on experience, planning and precise execution. It is commonly known that the transportation chain is only as strong as its weakest link.

For specialized transports, the level of difficulty increases exponentially with the size and weight of the components and the route of the move. In most cases, heavy transport projects pose few major challenges up to the port of import. It is during the final stage – from berth to jobsite – when most difficulties, such narrow roads, curves, bridges, rail lines and overland transmission lines, are encountered. While remote locations and poor infrastructure can mean potential obstacles for heavy-lift transportation, areas with a strong infrastructure network can present even greater restrictions and constraints for transportation, especially by road, because of the tight grid of the roads, railways, power lines and other man-made barriers.

The most decisive phase of land transportation planning is the first phase: exploring the route to detect existing and potential issues such as the load-bearing capacities of road and railway structure and geometrical constraints. A route survey must be performed to validate the transport strategy’s feasibility.

“The focus should be not only on the efficiency of the move but also on cost management for the client.”

The route surveyor must conduct a thorough review of road or rail infrastructure along the land transportation route crosses and natural or a manmade barrier. All visible as well as potential obstacles must be accounted for, including bridges and buried pipes, constraining construction beside and over the route, safety distances to overhead wires, and turning radii. The goal is to ensure challenges don’t become problems.

Route exploration and surveys for larger projects usually being roughly two years prior to the transport and are often handled by transport engineers, and sometimes by heavy transport escort service staff or experienced truck drivers. Only in rare cases are civil engineers, who specialize in railways, roads and bridges, involved in this first transport planning stage.

Prior to the transportation phase, road and railway authorities must be involved for approval and permission. In contrast to the transport engineer, road and railway authorities may have a completely different view of how infrastructure assets can be used, e.g. whether they are suitable or not for heavy transport purposes.

This is when the involvement of civil engineers – experienced in designing, construction, inspection and maintaining road and rail infrastructure – is urgently required. Their role is to find solutions to the move’s heavy transportation needs, which are also acceptable to administrative authorities. This can be complicated if the permission process is begun late in the planning stages. The later the permission process begins, the more expensive the solution may become.

The best way to avoid unexpected costs is to involve civil engineers in the first stages of transportation planning, enabling them to apply their knowledge, experience and tools to the earliest phases of the transportation project.

The first stage, route exploration and survey, may include visual bridge and road inspections and geodetic surveys. The next stage, detailed route planning, also may require geotechnical investigation, 2D or 3D geometrical analysis, static calculations, e.g. for bridges, culverts and buried pipes, as well as the complete design of auxiliary bridges or the planning of geotechnical ground improvements for crane supports. The common engineering tools are CAD software and FEM software.

What are the advantages of involving civil engineers in the initial phase of a transportation project? Engineers are not only skilled in detecting transportation obstacles. They also know the strengths and weaknesses a specific obstacle may have, and this enables them to consider infrastructural improvement measures versus increased transport and lifting efforts.

It is important to optimized costs. To this end, civil engineers may be able to see potential solutions that will allow this. For example, they will ask questions such as, “Is it better to reinforce or support an obviously weak bridge, or is it less expensive to build a temporary structure over it?” “Is it possible to lift an overhead construction temporarily or permanently, instead of building a bypass leg?”

Because the civil engineers are service partners of railway and highway officials, they also grasp their ways of thinking and the requirements of infrastructure administration. This enables them to negotiate and to identify uncommon solution.

The focus should be not only on the efficiency of the move but also on cost management for the client. The goal is to make the final link of the transportation chain as strong as every other link, without exceeding the budget.

Hendrik Wagner is Director of BDP Project Engineering. Located in Leipzig, he has almost 20 years of bridge and civil engineering experience. He can be reached at +49 341 6042 336 or hendrik.wagner@bdpprojects.com.

A 178-meter-long temporary bridge was built for heavy transport purposes over a double-lined, electrified
and highly frequented rail connection at the chemical site