Dutch heavy-lifting and transport logistics company Mammoet has successfully transported eleven 287 tonne engines to a remote location in Colombia.
Adopting a ‘plug-and-lay’ approach, the company discovered that the client they were working for – UTC Overseas – had initially outlined a route that would require the disassembly and splitting of the engines, resulting in ballooning operational and resource costs.
Mammoet, however, figured out that a second path was available through some of the more vegetated and rural roads of Colombia, so long as the additional structural support was provided where necessary to local infrastructure.
“At first, the client was thinking it wasn’t possible to transport the engines fully assembled to the job site. They were considering dismantling them into two pieces. With smaller pieces it is easier to transport, so this was their initial plan,” said Mammoet’s Sales Manager Edilber Guerrero.
“Of course, the downside to this is that you would then need to build the engines on site, so you need more time, more people, more resources, and money. The scale of the project would double.”
With the engines set to help construct a new 200-megawatt powerplant in the South American country, Mammoet helped deliver them from the port in Compas – rather than Cartagena, which would have resulted in more restrictions and a further 100 kilometres being added to the journey.
After verifying the Compas port’s capacity to receive the 287-tonne engines, engineers and workers for Mammoet transhipped the engines from the vessel onto conventional 20-axle line flatbed trailers with a prime mover and then transported to a holding area inside the port before delivering them, by road, to the site in convoys of three.
Encountering weaker bridges, unpaved roads, low-hanging wires and overgrown vegetation on their selected alternative path, Mammoet had to consistently find solutions such as unplugging certain wires and adding extra steel support to weak infrastructure to transport the eleven engines.
Additionally, logistical problems ensued when they started to reach more populated areas as Guerrero explains.
“We had to manage traffic, people and liaise with the local authorities to agree the exact times that we were going to cross the towns,” he says. “Coordination with the local communities became the challenge. In advance, we lifted as many of the cables and removed roadside obstacles, such as billboards, but there were still a few cables that had to be raised during transit.”
Upon successfully transporting the engines to the site, Mammoet then used SPMTs to aid in moving them throughout the site until they could be returned to their upright position.
The project, now complete, is demonstrative of the Dutch heavy-lifting solutions company’s ability to transport heavy loads efficiently and effectively.