New Standard for Dry Docking Industry
ASCE/COPRI Standard 77-22 to Impact Dry Dock Owners & Users
ASCE/COPRI recently announced their new Dry Dock Standard 77-22 which emphasizes the safety certification of commercial dry docks. The new standard is modeled after NAVSEA dry dock standard MIL-STD-1625D with the goal of minimizing hazard risks to personnel and the vessels during docking and undocking evolutions. The new standard requires hands-on inspection and analysis as well as ongoing monitoring efforts to provide facility owners and operators upfront insight into the state of their dry dock facilities needing repairs before the catastrophic loss of their capital assets occurs.
Collins Engineers (Collins) are waterfront and shipyard engineering experts. Collins has conducted over 30,000 above-water and underwater inspections of waterfront and shipyard facilities, including at large navy-certified shipyards and ports; multi-modal marine terminals; cruise ports; liquid and bulk material handling terminals; ro-ro facilities; commercial fishing ports; and public access facilities, many of which included subsequent design of repairs and/or replacement. Collins employs approximately 325 staff in 26 offices nationwide with a group of 40 full-time engineers dedicated to the planning, inspection, design, and repair of dry docks and waterfront facilities.
We are proud of our history in providing comprehensive dry dock annual control inspections (ACI) and documentation to the MIL-STD-1625D Standard. We are prepared to leverage our knowledge and decades of dry dock inspection experience to help our commercial shipyard/dry dock partners navigate the challenges of the new standard. These challenges include conducting the initial condition assessment of the dry dock facility to establish the basis of design and conducting the annual control inspections.
Our firm’s DNA is like no other – our company cut its teeth providing hands-on technical inspection and design tasks focused on comprehensive understanding of each individual situation. As a result of our hands-on approach, Collins pioneered the field of engineer-divers in the 1980s and has since grown to be recognized as one of the leading waterfront engineering firms in the nation. All our inspections are conducted by engineers and overseen by licensed professional engineers.
Collins has provided a wide range of waterfront structural engineering services to federal, state, local, and public/private sector clients, including Newport News Shipbuilding, the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, and 29 state and local port authorities for over 44 years. Collins’ waterfront engineers have extensive experience in the above-water and underwater inspection, rope access inspections, analysis, evaluation, design, repair, rehabilitation, replacement, and construction of waterfront and port facilities and we can dispatch our inspectors throughout the country and worldwide at industrial, commercial, military, and Department of Defense installations.
Collins’ waterfront experience is broad and covers many type of marine structures including:
- Dry docks, caissons gates, floating docks and marine railways
- Piers, wharves, bulkheads, and seawalls
- Container berths and yards
- Fender systems and mooring platforms
- Mooring and breasting dolphins
- Crane support structures and foundations
- Access roads
- Channel dredging
- Shoreline protection
The Collins team is unique in its approach to project management and inherent knowledge of what works on the waterfront. The team’s approach is simple: assemble an experienced, multi-disciplinary team with a complete understanding of project delivery backed by a rigorous QA/QC process to maximize value and minimize risk to the client. Our qualifications, combined with a company-wide awareness of clients’ needs, allows Collins the flexibility to handle both small projects and large installations, all while keeping your priorities at the forefront.
As an ENR Top 500 Design Firm, Collins provides the complete package of waterfront structural engineering services, from the initial above-water and underwater inspection through the planning, design, and construction phase, including but not limited to the following:
Specific to dry docks, we provide:
- Dry dock annual control inspections and reporting
- Initial dry dock condition assessments
- Periodic underwater hull surveys and gauging of floating dry docks and caissons
- Underwater inspections conducted by in-house engineer-divers
- Underwater imaging and hydrographic surveying
- Rope access inspection (for example, dock concrete wall soundings and floating dry dock wing wall UT gauging)
We also provide:
- Scour analysis
- Emergency response
- Structural evaluations and analysis
- Load ratings
- Design of repairs, rehabilitation, and replacement
- Preparation of engineering reports, repair recommendations, and cost estimates
- Maintenance prioritizing and programming
- Asset management and life cycle cost analyses
- Construction management and administration, engineering, and inspection
- Permitting services
For more information, please contact Robert Ernsting, PhD, P.E., at rernsting@collinsengr.com