News Documenting £5.5m Royal Bridge Pontoon replacement at Sheerness

WE captured over 50,000 images using our fully-managed, dual-camera system set up as Beckett Rankine installed a new pontoon at Peel Ports’ London Medway facility.

With the first camera system set back behind the pontoon, capturing an overview of developments, the second was strategically positioned waterside looking down over the works. This allowed for ample coverage of the replacement without hinderance to the safe operations carried out by personnel on site.

From these positions, we covered all key manoeuvres throughout the project, such as the installation of steel pile moorings by a large jack-up structure, testing of the new pontoon itself and of course unloading of the first vessel – Royal Wagenborg’s “Balticborg”.

This also involved close planning and liaison with our contacts at Beckett Rankine, to inform not only daytime works, but also through-the-night and weekend capture on a number of occasions.

As part of our commitment to the highest quality capture in all environments, we used our unique micro-management methods to remotely adjust interval rates and exposure settings for both peak periods of activity and overnight developments.

The new 800-tonne twin Ro-Ro pontoon now replaces the previous Royal Bridge Pontoon – both feature in our final time-lapse video below – increasing the throughput capacity of Peel Ports’ Sheerness facility.

As part of our complete end-to-end service, we delivered this fully post-produced time-lapse sequence to Beckett Rankine’s detailed specifications. This involved optimising over 36 minutes of time-lapse footage into a concise, four-minute documentation of the full scheme of works, whilst also incorporating other video elements provided by the client.

And the end result has already been readily utilised as part of Beckett Rankine’s own press outputs about the Sheerness works already.

Our meticulous documentation helps to reflect the key complexities of the project, including constructing within an operational port where vessels regularly load and unload their freight, as well as our client’s need to work within tight weather windows when transferring the pontoon across the North Sea.

Faultless solutions on other maritime-waterside projects

This project adds to other specialised maritime & waterside projects in our repertoire, which include:

• Documenting intensive conservation of the iconic warship the Mary Rose, at Portsmouth Historic Dockyard.
• Time-lapsing developments at Wight Shipyard, on the Isle of Wight.
• Capture of the transformation at Crest Nicholson’s Campbell Wharf Marina in Milton Keynes.
• Short-term solutions capturing the biggest movement of historic vessels moored at Ellesmere Port for the Canal & River Trust.

It was a privilege to be able to work with Beckett Rankine to capture the successful delivery of this major project and its unique demands.