INNOVATION By Sharon Aschaiek Turning 50 is a pivotal point for most people: it s a time for mid-life meditation on past accomplishments and failures, on goals yet to be achieved, and on the tweaking and maintenance necessary to maximize the second half of the adventure. A similar type of reflection process and resulting action plan is happening with the people who run the St. Lawrence Seaway, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The comprehensive deep draft waterway, which extends 3700 kilometres from the Atlantic Ocean to the head of the Great Lakes, was heralded by engineering and political leaders after its 1959 launch as one of Canada s most outstanding engineering achievements, and is now being honoured for its great contribution to water transport over the last half-century. Seaway leaders are also focusing on reversing the sagging fortunes the maritime gateway has suffered since the 1980s, and figuring out how to rejuvenate the waterway so that it can become more competitive now and in the future. And, finally, a crew of 40 seaway engineers is charged with the tweaking: investigating the most efficient and effective ways to repair, maintain and optimize the seaway to sustain it for 50 more years and likely well beyond. The seaway began as a very ambitious project, and it became a very important route for the domestic and international trade of bulk cargo, says Stephen Kwok, P.Eng., direc- 26 ENGINEERING DIMENSIONS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009
It s been 50 years since the Queen and President Eisenhower officially opened the St. Lawrence Seaway, nicknamed Highway H 2 O, in Montreal. But since its heyday in the late 1970s, the seaway has faced a steady decline. All that may be changing, though, as the engineers responsible for the waterway, still deemed one of the country s most important engineering achievements, build on their legacy of innovation. The icebreaker C.G.S. D Iberville makes the first transit through the St. Lawrence Seaway. shipments due to, respectively, changing international trade patterns and steel industry downsizing; and the aging Canadian merchant fleet are among the core contributing factors to the seaway s current economic woes. However, over the last several years, the St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation, which took over in 1998 what had been a Crown corporation, has been strongly focused on maintaining and increasing the reliability of the seaway. With the support of Transport Canada, $270 million is being invested in an asset renewal program between 2008 and 2013 to go towards structural fixes and improvements that will extend the life of the waterway and transform it into what seaway leadership call Highway H 2 O a more efficient, viable and competitive mode of cargo transportation. There is a requirement not just to maintain the infrastructure, but also to improve the processes, and, from an economic point of view, to look at ways to reduce our own operating costs, says Luc Boisclair, P.Eng., general manager of engineering for the Niagara Region. Before, it was about replacing aging infrastructure because of obsolescence, deterioration or maltor of operations and technical services, St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation. Going forward, we need to have a system that s reliable, and we need the traffic to support it. IN DECLINE Historically, the canal network, which includes the Montreal/Lake Ontario section that allows travel between the lower St. Lawrence River and Lake Ontario, and the Welland Canal section (which originally opened in 1932) that connects Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, has been a key artery for making grain from the Canadian prairies and American midwest available for delivery to international markets. In addition to grain, iron ore, coal, aggregates and road salt have also been staple transport items of the seaway. The waterway accommodates about 2500 commercial vessel transits each year, and over the last 50 years, more than 2.5 billion tonnes of cargo worth more than $375 billion has moved on the system. The seaway enjoyed its pinnacle year of productivity in 1979, a year in which it moved 74.3 million tonnes of goods. Since then, traffic on the waterway has steadily and seriously declined, with the waterway today operating at about 60 per cent of capacity and averaging about 40 to 50 million tonnes a year. The range of reasons for the decreasing use of the seaway shows that, like most other business entities worldwide, the waterway is not immune to the effects of globalization, and must evolve and improve to stay competitive. Canada s economic downturn of the 1980s and the current global recession; drops in grain and iron ore www.peo.on.ca ENGINEERING DIMENSIONS 27
Clockwise from top: An aerial view of twin lock No. 6 on the Welland Canal; a vacuum pad for hands-free mooring; the traffic control centre in Niagara; a hydraulic ship arrester, which is used to protect each lock. The yellow boom lays out a three-inch diameter steel cable that can stop a ship in the event that it is unable to on its own. function. Today, we re looking at how we can do things better, more efficiently, more safely, and with fewer costs to operate and maintain down the road. REMOTE-CONTROL BRIDGES INCREASE EFFICIENCY One of the leading approaches being used to make this happen has been improving the operation of the seaway s bridges, which was triggered by a bridge-operation accident, says Benoit Nolet, P.Eng., manager of civil engineering. We have to look at better ways to support our employees and to make the process more efficient. Traditionally, an individual operator would be stationed at each bridge and would be in charge of monitoring, raising and lowering it. A plan was developed to convert eight of the waterway s 16 bridges four in the Niagara section, and four in the Montreal-Lake Ontario section from manual to remote control operation. The electronic remote control technology works through the use of several cameras positioned at each bridge to monitor marine and vehicular traffic. Some cameras are equipped with new thermal detection technology to detect vessels and other craft in fog or bad weather. Capturing 30 frames a second, these cameras broadcast detailed, full-colour images to monitors, making it possible to observe not only all approaching vessels, but also vehicles and pedestrians. Bringing the operation of bridges into traffic control has increased efficiency, and the safety of workers and users of the canals, says Nolet of the automated technology, which has, so far, been applied to four bridges. If you have one person overseeing several bridges, you are utilizing your people better. HYDRAULICS BOOST RELIABILITY A boost in seaway efficiency and effectiveness and in the safety of employees is also taking place through the conversion of locks from mechanical to hydraulic operation. This decision had to be made because our current system is at the end of its life, and we ve been experiencing issues of reliability, Boisclair says. The conventional system of using cables and pulleys to operate valves, which has been in use in the seaway since the beginning, was starting to show wear and tear, Boisclair says, with chains experiencing breakage and ultimately becoming less dependable. Efforts to repair parts of this system are also typically cost-, labour- and timeheavy, he says, as well as more hazardous to workers. During some emergency repairs, we would have to get divers and use a crane to retrieve fallen parts, and those are potentially dangerous situations that expose workers to risk, he says. In the late 1990s, seaway management began investigating replacement technologies, such as electrical actuators and pneumatic options, in addition to hydraulics, but Boisclair says the latter proved to be the most suitable. In terms of its reliability and capability and the experience the industry has had with it, no other system can compete with hydraulics, he says. We also had to take into account our winter operations and pick a system that would work well in sub-zero conditions, and pneumatic and electrical wouldn t. 28 ENGINEERING DIMENSIONS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009
Since 2003, eight of the seaway s locks have been mostly converted to hydraulic operation, with final touches to be completed in early 2010. Improvements to effectiveness and worker safety and a reduction in maintenance time have been the key benefits realized by the move to hydraulically operated locks in the seaway. Most of the operation and maintenance is now computer-based, and a well-maintained hydraulics system can basically last forever, Boisclair says. There is still physical maintenance to be done in terms of inspecting the oil filters and tuning the system, but not the dangerous work it s more hands-off from the actual hazards. AIS PINPOINTS VESSELS IN REAL TIME Better communication between seaway staff and operators of vessels on the waterway has also improved the efficiency of operations. Traditionally, marine radio interaction was used to determine the nautical location of vessels and to manage waterway traffic and, while mainly reliable, the approach was vulnerable to mistakes, such as delays in reporting information or ships changing speed without advising traffic control. These human-error problems have disappeared thanks to the introduction of Automatic Identification System (AIS), a system used by seaway traffic control and ships that uses GPS technology to track commercial vessels on the waterway. Implemented by the seaway in 2003 a year before an International Maritime Organization convention making it necessary for the system to be used by large international voyaging ships took effect this short-range, coastal tracking system identifies the location of vessels, and electronically relays that information to seaway traffic control and other nearby ships. Other pertinent data, such as unique identification, position, course and speed, are also displayed on a screen, making it possible to help ships more efficiently and safely navigate the waterway. Working in conjunction with AIS is the Traffic Management System, which indicates to vessels such pertinent data as local wind speed and direction, water levels and flows, ice conditions, availability of upcoming locks and more. One of the biggest benefits is that all vessels now have the ability to see where they are, and where other vessels are, all in real time. Some areas of the canals are too narrow or too shallow for more than one vessel, and a lot of channels are one-way, so now we can better control and schedule traffic, and ships can stay a safe distance away from each other, Nolet says. The system also enables the use of electronic navigation charts that show the depth of the waterway at any point. Hydrographical surveys were performed on the bottom of the canals through the use of multi-beam echo sounders to determine the bottom contours of channels. The resulting data was developed with computer software into clear, detailed, colour-coded digital maps that ship operators can use to chart their course according to their vessel s draft level. Currently, the seaway is working with the Canadian Hydrographic Service on developing such high-definition navigational charts. Every vessel s draft changes depending on their load or even the weather, so this technology helps ships know if they re compliant as they re going through our system, Nolet says. The system also allows ships to know when they can go faster, within speed limits, in specific portions, which allows them to shave some time off their transit. Boisclair adds that the potential for waterway mishaps to occur has decreased thanks to specific AIS technology, such as bridge alarms, which are equipped with motion sensors and sound off if a ship gets too close before the bridge goes up. Before, in a situation like this, you would have to watch the monitor and decide when to raise the bridge. Now, with AIS, the warning alarm goes off automatically, so we have an additional means of preventing incidents and accidents, Boisclair says. VACUUM-SEALED MOORING The way in which ships enter and are positioned in locks in the seaway is also evolving for the better. With the conventional approach, ship crew members pass steel wires to lock personnel, who winch them to cement bollards to keep the ships in place. This is a mainly manual operation, and it has some hazards cables can break and injure workers, Boisclair says. Also, some international ships aren t equipped with steel The royal yacht Britannia at the seaway opening, June 26, 1959. www.peo.on.ca ENGINEERING DIMENSIONS 29
LASER-GUIDED STEERING At the same time, seaway leaders have been investigating a new laser technology to help ships better steer their way through locks. Vessel self-spotting uses 3-D laser scanning and image recognition techniques to detect and track the position of the most forward portion of a vessel as it enters and positions itself in a lock. Ship masters receive visual and audio information on their vessel s location relative to their mooring position. The benefit of such a system is that it frees up lock personnel to focus on preparing for mooring operations earlier, and ultimately increases the overall efficiency of the mooring process. Our traditional method involves a person with a mobile radio who would walk beside the vessel and follow it and radio to the captain how much farther to go 25 metres, 20 metres, and so on. It s one of those things where, if you could automate it, why wouldn t you? Nolet says. Now, a laser beam will measure the distance between a laser scanner and the bow of the vessel and, as the vessel gets closer, the beam updates the value to display a current reading. wires, so having a system without these wires would enable us to attract more ships. In 2007, seaway management decided to explore hands-free mooring, a system that uses vacuum technology to secure vessels during lockage. The system works through the use of suction pads that are about 1.6 metres horizontally by 1.4 metres vertically that connect to the sides of a vessel to create a sealed chamber, the strength of which can hold the largest of ships. There is a potential with this technology to accelerate some of the steps in the ship cycle. It s an incremental time savings, but it s important to our customers, because every second counts, and every minute they can save makes their operations more efficient, Boisclair says. FULL STEAM AHEAD Over the last two years, prototype testing of both systems has been performed on two locks, and the plan going forward is to continue refining and gradually applying these technologies to all locks in the seaway. Seaway engineers will continue to have their hands full for some time to come in applying current technologies to improve the waterway s effectiveness, efficiency and worker safety, and to enable it to be more competitive in the 21st century and beyond. Future projects will focus on further testing and implementing hands-free mooring on a wider scale, and using ice-controlling technology to improve vessel navigation in winter months. The growing emphasis on having more sophisticated and capable operating systems and processes in place is better positioning the seaway to compete with railways and trucking as a cheaper, safer and greener mode of commercial transport for container and bulk cargo by North American and international shipping companies. We are maximizing our existing system, and removing any obstacles that would prevent vessels from using the seaway, Kwok says. Our goal is to sustain and strengthen the seaway to make it reliable and viable for another 50 years. officially opened June 26, 1959, at St. Lambert Lock in Montreal one of the outstanding engineering feats of the 20th century extends 3700 kilometres (2340 miles) from the Atlantic Ocean to the head of the Great Lakes 2500 vessel transits each year since 1959, more than 2.5 billion tonnes of cargo estimated at $375 billion have moved to and from Canada, the US and nearly 50 other nations each lock is 233.5 metres long (766 feet), 24.4 metres wide (80 feet) and 9.1 metres deep (30 feet) lock systems: Montreal to Lake Ontario, two US, five Canadian Welland Canal, eight Canadian St. Mary s River, four US parallel locks, one transit (Army Corps of Engineers) ships measuring up to 225.5 metres in length (740 feet) and 23.8 metres in the beam (78 feet) are routinely raised to more than 180 metres above sea level, as high as a 60-storey building locks fill up with approximately 91 million litres of water (24 million gallons) in seven to 10 minutes getting through a lock takes 45 minutes 30 ENGINEERING DIMENSIONS SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2009