Arbé specializes in marine works

Over the past few years, Arbé has made its mark in the field of marine works, carrying out a wide range of projects including quays, fixed and floating pontoons, marine engineering structures, dolphins, piles for marinas and offshore pylons. Arbé’s great strength in this field lies in optimizing the synergy between its foundations and civil engineering sectors.

Arbé’s par equipment, qualified teams and network of partners enable the company to position itself on structures of all types and sizes.

Quays / Warfs

We master a variety of techniques for this type of structure. Pile docks, secant pile docks and overhanging pile docks. In 2022, the development of the Pandop fishing port in Koumac provided an opportunity to demonstrate some of our expertise. On this project, we built one quay using sheet piles and a second using secant piles. The combination of our crawler cranes, which are perfectly suited to vibrofonçage and sheet pile driving, and our hollow auger drills enables us to be highly efficient in this type of work.

Other large-scale quays include the Quai des Caboteurs, Quai de la Batellerie, and the Wadrilla wharf in Ouvéa, the largest maritime structure ever built by our teams. See the video below for a closer look at this unusual project in New Caledonia.

Recently, we also carried out work to reinforce the defenses of the Mata’ Utu wharf in Wallis and Futuna, demonstrating our ability to work outside New Caledonia.

Fixed or floating pontoons

We also build docking pontoons at sea: floating pontoons, fixed pontoons with access gangways, metal or concrete structures… the possibilities are endless.

The Easo pontoon boat dock in Lifou, to be built in 2019, required the construction of a removable boom. As the project progressed, our mobile crane found itself completely isolated on the water for pile-driving. A metal structure was then installed using a barge and welded to the pile, creating a berthing platform 100 meters from the beach edge.

Another technique was used for the small Kuto wharf: after pile-driving, a floating concrete dock was brought to the site from Noumea, then blocked around the metal piles. For the Black Beach pontoon in the Woodin Channel in 2018, central piles were driven from a barge. The metal structure welded to these piles was entirely clad in exotic wood.

Offshore pile driving / Ducs-d’Albe

For this type of work, we mainly work from a barge, from which we drive steel piles using our various driving hammers mounted on crawler cranes. These piles, often isolated, require a high degree of precision in their placement, under several meters of water. Our trained teams are autonomous in topography thanks to our total station. Our construction engineers can be called upon to design impressive templates to guide the piles, as on the Port Moselle marina extension project in 2020.

We also built offshore piles for electricity pylons in the Bay of Koutio-Koueta. Here, the tubes were filled with concrete, transported by helicopter rotations.

Arbé also produced the dolphins for the Tokuyama cement plant, to enable ships to dock at sea. Here, a prefabricated element tops 4 driven metal piles.

Maritime engineering structures

Our main project is the Ouvéa bridge linking the Lékiny and Mouli tribes. At 180 meters long, this imposing mixed concrete/metal structure rests on just 2 offshore supports. Temporary booms had to be erected to position our crawler cranes and drilling rigs in line with the piles. Preserving the environment of this exceptional site was one of the site’s major challenges, requiring us to deploy special engineering to avoid disturbing ecosystems and leave as little trace as possible during construction and deconstruction of the old bridge.

We invite you to take a look at this extraordinary work on video: