Nouakchott Port Development Marine Survey

Olam, through the SPV “Arise Mauritania”, is developing a new container terminal for the Nouakchott port in Mauritania. For this port development, the access channel will need to be dredged.

Van Oord Middle East Ltd awarded the project to Project Management International (PMI) to supply a Marine Survey package to deliver both geotechnical, bathymetric and geophysical data for the project.

The Scope of Work included

• Bathymetric and geophysical campaign were carried out in areas labelled by the Client.
• The potential dredge & dump areas were surveyed with Multibeam Echosounder (MBES), Sub Bottom Profiler (SBP) and Side Scan Sonar (SSS).
• Grab samples at set intervals as requested by the Client.
• Dropdown camera for visual inspection.
• Benthic Analysis and Laboratory Testing of the samples.
• Dredging Volume calculations

PMI Resources on Site

• A survey vessel was mobilised and equipped with positioning,  navigation, MBES, SBP, SSS, tide station and sampling equipment (such as Van Veen Grab Sampler and dropdown camera).

Data Processing

• QPS, QINSy and BeamworX AutoClean were used to post process MBES data.
• For the side scan sonar, SonarWiz was used to post process and mosaic the SSS data.
• The sub bottom data was processed and analysed in GeoSuite AllWorks and IHS Kingdom.
• For the backscatter data, QPS FM Geocoder Toolbox was used.

Contract Execution

The Scope of Work was adjusted on several occasions during the execution of the project. Thanks to the flexibility of our team, we could accommodate these changes to satisfaction of the client.

A final survey report, including drawings and all test results was presented to the client, as basis for their further tendering and project development.