SENER Develops Outer Port Engineering in Chile

The Chilean company Empresa Portuaria San Antonio has awarded the engineering and technology group SENER the optimization engineering and the detailed design of protection works, dredging and complementary work of the Outer Port (large-scale port, PGE in its Spanish acronym) in the Port of San Antonio, 100km from Santiago de Chile. This is the fourth port project that SENER has developed in Chile in recent years, which consolidates it as one of the leading engineering companies in the port sector.

The Outer Port PGE San Antonio will be located to the south of the current port, which is why the project covers the construction of a new breakwater, a dock and new esplanades that will provide the two new berthing facilities with the space and protection necessary for an efficient port operation. This extension will allow the needs, in a short and medium term, of Chile’s central area, where more than 35 percent of the national imports and exports are concentrated.

The design of the PGE San Antonio, from which basic engineering has currently been developed, includes the construction of two major automatic terminals of containers, called South-1 and South-2, with a berthing length of 1.730 m each, that will allow the simultaneous berthing of four large container ship vessels (Class E) in each of the terminals. It will be the fourth biggest port in the continent in traffic of maritime containers, and the first in Latin America, with enough storage capacity to operate a total of six million TEUs per annum. The infrastructure will be completed with an access channel, a stacking area and an inland dock.

In aggregate, SENER will design 3,900 m of breakwater, 13 million m3 of dredging, four million m3 of riprap and 13 million m3 of backfill in an area in which the maximum seismic acceleration of design is established around 1g.

In this project, SENER has marked out as main goals the detection of possible improvements aimed at simplifying constructive aspects and decreasing, as far as possible, the total costs and/or the term of construction; and the development of a design that promotes both the integration of the port with the city of San Antonio and the public enjoyment of the coastline, incorporating the best practices and technological innovations for energy efficiency, landscape and environmental protection.

In port infrastructure, SENER has become one of the global forerunners in highly complex technical work. Thanks to the company’s multidisciplinary nature, SENER can carry out integral projects in this sector, which demands specific skills in the areas of civil engineering, utilities, systems and equipment, building, marine design, process engineering and special structures. Among SENER’s projects, they stand out: the supervision, as Independent Checking Engineering, of the design of the port systems of the new port of Hamad (Qatar); the Basic design of the future quays in Barcelona’s port enlargement (Spain); the new energy port in Jorf Lasfar (Morocco); the integral consultancy for the validation of the private initiative in the port of Ilo (Perú); and the design and supervision of three pilot projects related with the managing system in the Guadalquivir estuary, for Puerto de Sevilla (Spain).