Our planet's polar regions are among the most remote and hostile environments known to humankind.
But while these worlds may feel detached from our everyday lives what happens here, in fact,
affects us all.
For more than a century research teams have studied these environments to learn more about
our planet as a whole and to monitor how it is responding to man-made climate change.
Now to ensure that it remains at the cutting edge of research the British Antarctic Survey
have partnered with specialist contractor BAM and UK engineering firm Ramboll to upgrade
a number of the survey sites in Antarctica.
Five hours by plane from the nearest town in temperatures that barely peak above freezing
during the summer and contending with some remarkable challenges, this is the world's
most extreme construction site.
The need to visit the world's most hostile continent is driven by our desire to learn
more about our planet and understand how it is responding to a rapidly changing climate.
What happens in Antarctica has a significant effect on the wider world and its ocean systems
and its four-kilometre-thick ice sheet contains a unique record of the Earth's climate over
the past million years.
To ensure that the UK remains at the forefront of climate, biodiversity
and oceanographic research the country's Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) has invested
more than 300 million pounds over a seven-year period to upgrade and modernize facilities
across the British Antarctic Survey's network of sites on the continent.
Many of these upgrades revolve around the Sir David Attenborough research vessel due
to launch in 2020.
Measuring 30 metres longer than its predecessor, the James Clark Ross,
wharf facilities at Rothera and other research sites across the Southern Ocean need to be
expanded in order for the ship to dock and unload supplies efficiently.
The British Antarctic Survey is responsible for delivering science in the polar regions.
We have five stations in Antarctica or Southern Antarctica including South Georgia.
The work that we do in the marine environment and the polar environment and then ice cores
and glaciology, all these things make a huge contribution to our understanding of the polar
regions and by extension the planet.
So the BAM Group up at a worldwide construction firm. The current project I'm working on is
upgrading the facilities in a place called Rothera in Antarctica.
It's part of a framework
that BAM is working with British Antarctic Survey and Ramboll the technical advisor.
We have commissioned this new ship which allows us to continue doing science in the remote
parts of this world. The new ship, the Sir David Attenborough, is going to allow us to
get further into the polar regions. As well as a new ship, we need infrastructure that
supports the new ship.
A lot of our land-based assets and buildings and so on were getting to towards the end
of their usable life.
So there was a requirement to upgrade them anyway.
Following an 18-month period working
with the construction team and BAS in Cambridge in the UK, we have just been out to site for
six months for our first construction season. Rothera Wharf is a two-season project where
we have dismantled the old wharf and we're about halfway through building a new wharf.
Our target is to finish building the wharf by April 2020.
With a population of more than 100 people during the summer months the survey's largest
facility is the Rothera research station located on Adelaide island just off the Antarctic Peninsula.
Undertaking construction works here is far from easy and the project to expand
Rothera’s wharf and its associated facilities has been approached unlike any other.
From the outset the key members of the project team formed a close partnership.
Antarctica is very far away particularly from the UK so it's a very remote place. It's an
enormous continent. So, it's very difficult to get from one place to another in Antarctica.
Clearly the environment is very challenging. I think we say it as the coldest, highest,
driest, all sorts of other adjectives, but how difficult it is to actually do science
and any other support works in the continent.
Some particularly unique things such as the orcas and leopard seals which mean restrictions
on our diving works, or when we have our divers in the water either helping during the dismantling
of the old wharf or when we’re building the new wharf.
We have icebergs that float past and we hope to come too close to us when we are building
the new wharf, but we have lots of snow and ice and lots of other things that you don't
necessarily have to deal with on our UK projects.
A lot of aspects of delivering construction projects in Antarctica are a bit counterintuitive.
So, you just need to forget one fairly simple part of a project. It could be a small part
of a machine, if you do that all of a sudden, your entire season is wasted so that you have
to plan so much in advance.
The twelve months that we spent together as a staff team planning the works were obviously
crucial before we all flew off to Rothera.
When we completed our design, we worked hand-in-hand
with both the permanent works designer and in-house BAM team in The Hague with our temporary
works designers in Camberley. And we brought all the design elements together and through
digital models to make sure that we had clash detection and planning in place.
We used those things at pre deployment training, really to make sure that everyone had as much knowledge
as possible and landed on the ground and knew what they had to do.
The build it before you build it approach is very important. The frames are modular
so that we have 10 fairly similar ones in the back, 10 fairly similar ones in the front.
But to make sure that they all work properly we actually built them all in the steel work
fabricators yard in Southampton before we even took them on the ship. Because what we
don't want to do is get the site and try and build it for the first time and realize it
doesn't work.
Thankfully all those trials went really well, and we didn't actually need any rework, but
we had that sanity checked done in the UK to save us time.
Obviously, it’s a lot easier to make any changes in the UK than it is on site.
Conditions can be a lot worse than they are over here at home.
The main driver for our program and our partnership model is that we wanted partners who that
we knew had all the competencies to deliver what we need but also, they were going to
stick with us for a long time.
So, British Antarctic Survey (BAS) they tendered for our
construction partners to work closely with during the early engagement and the planning
for the works and also the delivery and the construction on site. BAM were successful
in winning that tender, that was announced about January 2017.
And since then we have
been working on the planning for the initial projects, as well as our team in Cambridge
working alongside BAS with the planning, we also have people that go to site and deliver the projects.
It's not really much use for us to get to, spend quite a lot of money getting our partners
on the learning curve to become good at Antarctica, you know to get the polar badge as it were,
and then suddenly decide they've had enough to go somewhere else. So, continuity of the
team is very important. We’re looking for a long-term commitment. So, what we do is
we commit long term to them. So, we've put in place a 10-year contract, so BAM came in
as our construction partner about three years ago because we want them to help us deliver
a large programme but over a long period time.
Committing to a long-term collaborative partnership is fundamental to the success of delivering
projects in Antarctica.
We hand select people that we think both have the skills that are needed technically to
deliver the projects but just as importantly, living with 50 of your colleagues for six
months, that we think we'll get on well and be able to deal with the environment that
we're faced with when we're living together closely and working together closely for such
a long time.
Most people in construction are used to working relatively short on off periods. We are asking
them to do six months on before they then get their well-earned break. That's very tough.
Antarctica is an amazing place. Scenically it's fantastic. And you know most people will
look back at these projects as the highlight of their careers. However, it's not easy because
you can't get home.
As well as having all our plans in place for building the job, in some ways that becomes
easy bit, we've also got to consider how we keep people engaged and happy for six months
including myself.
It's a fantastic place, we are absolutely not roughing it. The facilities we have are
very very good. We have comfortable accommodation, fantastic chefs, the food is very very good.
But you can't get away from the fact that you're stuck there, and you cannot get away.
We've got a big investment in mental health and we have to manage the interface between
the construction team and the BAS team who generally come from quite different backgrounds
but actually the conclusions from last season was it was one of the most successful seasons
we've ever had at Rothera partly because of the amount of planning that went in to delivering
the project but also the integration of all the people from both the BAS side and the
BAM side.
We have a really engaged team, the majority of whom are going back to work on season 2
which is great, and it is great for me as a project manager that they're all happy to go back.
One of the things we need to consider during the planning is biosecurity. This is
important to make sure that any foreign species don't arrive in Antarctica.
Antarctica is a pristine environment and we absolutely want to keep it that way. And when
you're delivering thousands of tons of cargo it's quite easy for things to get hidden.
You know maybe in the tracks of an excavator or something like that.
We engaged with Transglobal Projects who BAM worked closely with in Teesport in the north
of England. And we had 10 weeks to bring in all the equipment, check it all over make
sure it was compliant both technically for going to Rothera and also that it was cleaned
thoroughly before it was loaded on the ship.
Every single piece of kit that came off the ship was checked off by BAS and BAM together
and we made sure that it was safe from a biosecurity risk point of view to bring onto the station
and start the work.
So in terms of the next phases of the project. Initially going back in November 2019 we have
to complete all the works on the wharf. We're also going to start all our ground works for
the new building which is part of the modernization of the research station. That's a four-season
project. Next season we want to do all the groundwork and make it ready for the following
season where we'll put the building actually up and make it watertight.
Proudest moment for me is probably the development of what I think is one of the strongest collaborative
partnerships in the construction project delivery. We have created a really great team including
BAS and BAM and Ramboll, SWEKO, NERC and others. It's all about partnering and collaborative,
it's about mutual trust and respect. We have that here.
We have such a broad spectrum of people. You know we have young 21-year old welders in
our team and we have people we are nearing the end of their career, and they've all been
happy to put their hands up and help us come and deliver this unique project. It's really
about seeing the joy and the commitment and the engagement that we have right across the
team. Orcas, leopard seals, a live runway. Icebergs the size of football pitches, four
and a half thousand tons of equipment transported 9000 miles.
It really is a unique site to work on.
With the effects of human activity on the environment becoming increasingly apparent,
the work being carried out by the British Antarctic Survey is now more important than
ever before.
By constructing and maintaining these remote facilities through dynamic and effective partnerships
with contractors like BAM, the Survey's teams are able to continue their critical work.
Though many of us don't yet recognize the impacts of the construction sector on our
lives. Projects like this which are enabled by construction and that have such a fundamental
influence over our progression on this planet, powerfully highlight the incredible people
and limitless ingenuity that shape the world's most important industry.
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