Vanpile’s capabilities include pile driving, floating concrete structures, dredging and marine earthworks, marine facilities and bridges.

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Although marine general contractor Vancouver Pile Driving (Vanpile) Ltd. is enjoying a boom in business, Wayne Saunders, general manager and vice-president, knows that these construction cycles come and go through the years and the good times can’t last forever. So, the company is making sure it doesn’t allow this surge to lull it into complacency.

Vanpile has managed to secure two major projects, the W.R. Bennett Bridge and the Deltaport Berth 3 Expansion, with the help of its joint-venture partners. The construction of the W.R. Bennett Bridge is a partnership with SNC Lavalin to build a new floating bridge on Lake Okanagan, which is expected to open to traffic in June 2008. The Deltaport Expansion project is a partnership with Graham Construction to build a $195 million third berth at the Deltaport Container Terminal in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, scheduled for completion in 2009.

“We have a lot of major projects on the go and have increased our staff and work force to suit the workload, but we are concerned with the rapid growth and the potential slowing down of the economy,” Saunders says. “History has told us that we don’t keep riding the wave of a prosperous industry for too long.”

Vanpile has been one of the major marine contractors along the west coast and inland waters of British Columbia since its inception in 1913. Dillingham Construction Canada owned the company from 1965 thru the 1980s. In 1997, new ownership reinstated the Vancouver Pile Driving name. Saunders has been with the company for 35 years.

Today, Vanpile’s capabilities include pile driving, floating concrete structures, dredging and marine earthworks, marine facilities and bridges. The company has a small contracts division which provides long-term maintenance and repair services around Vancouver Harbor, the Fraser River and along the south coast of British Columbia.

The company’s large marine facility in the Vancouver Harbor supports its fleet of more than a dozen crane-mounted marine derricks supported with scows and workboats. Vanpile says the capacity of its fleet of marine derricks is the largest in western Canada, with cranes ranging from 70 to 350 tons of capacity.

Floating Concrete Structures
Vanpile has been a leader in construction of major concrete floating structures utilizing slip form concrete or standard construction techniques since 1976. In addition to its fleet of marine equipment for pile driving, dredging and marine construction, its marine facility located in North Vancouver is equipped with a graving dock, which allows Vanpile to build large concrete floating structures with strict quality control.

The company says its floating concrete structures are built with high-strength, quality controlled reinforced concrete, which can include post-tensioning and provisions for match casting for mating two concrete structures. The designs also take advantage of positive buoyancy techniques which is Styrofoam floatation enclosed in concrete.

One of the highest-profile projects Vanpile has ever handled was the Swartz Bay Ferry Terminal Berth 2 reconstruction, which it completed in October 2006. The work included construction of five floating concrete pontoons in Vanpile’s graving dock and connection of the pontoons to make up a 180-meter-long by 510-meter-wide floating berth.

The company says the complete berth was then towed to Victoria and installed. The berth supported a doubled-decked truss ramp and hydraulic fendering system supported on a single base.

According to Vanpile, the floating berth concept has five advantages over conventional berths: safety, economy, predictability, operational efficiency and environmental impact.

But the Swartz floating berth project also had construction challenges.

For instance, Vanpile had just one year to design and build the new berth, which meant construction of the concrete pontoon, with its five linked modules, shortly after the contract was awarded.

This required close coordination between Vanpile and many of its subcontractors to resolve design details and enhance constructability and value.

These included:

• A procedure to align the floating concrete modules, followed by making connections using short, tensioned, Dywidag bars;
• The rigid underwater structure comprises several sections of prefabricated steelwork, which were connected underwater using tremie concrete;
• A method for installing the 250-ton main vehicle truss; after the concrete pontoon had been floated into place, the load was transferred to the concrete float and the scow was removed; and
• A unique fendering system with hydraulic dampers.

    
Vanpile’s Future
As with many industries and similar construction companies, Vanpile has a significant gap between generations of its employees. With so many baby boomers set to retire in the next few years, Vanpile will continue to focus on bringing in younger people to work for the company. “The training and development of the younger generation will be the challenge but the interesting nature and excellent career path at the company and business is an attraction,” Saunders says.