Cathie Associates Wins ‘Be Inspired’ Awards

Cathie Associates won the 2014 Be Inspired Awards in the category of innovation in Land Development and Management in the framework of the Year in Infrastructure conference held in London, by Bentley Systems on November 4 – 6, 2104.

The presentation by Dr. Jose Munoz covered a third party review of the foundation design for a port extension in Montevideo, Uruguay. On this project for the National Harbor Administration of Uruguay, Cathie Associates Paris office was contracted by French construction company Soletanche Bachy to evaluate issues encountered during the construction of dock foundations.

The new dock is part of a comprehensive enhancement program to the Port of Montevideo. The main engineering challenge was the hard ground conditions (presence of weathered amphibolite from 10m BSB), considered as a source of potential damage for sleeve piles used for dock foundations.

For this USD 73 million project, Cathie Associates reassessed the soil profile and engineering parameters, designed the sleeve steel piles, and evaluated pile driveability.

The company used gINT professional to interpret soil data, define soil profile and design parameters, estimate dredging target depth, and localize boreholes performed on site. Their in-house developed software O-Pile was used for pile design.

The reassessment of pile design saved the cost of 256 steel piles by avoiding pile damage, and about one year in delivery time.

Press Release