Avon Wharf MOTEMS Upgrade Project

Martinez, California

Kiewit subsidiary Cherne upgraded a large shipping terminal at the Golden Eagle Refinery in the San Francisco Bay Area. The Avon Wharf was being upgraded to comply with new requirements set by the California Marine Oil Terminal Engineering and Maintenance Standards (MOTEMS).

Major scopes of work included refurbishing all sections of a one-mile access and pipeway trestle and expanding a commercial wharf. To support the pipeway and the trestle’s new cast-in-place and precast concrete deck, the crew replaced the offshore timber piles with 120-foot to 150-foot steel piles and repaired the in-shore timber piles with fiberglass or steel sleeves.

Work on the offshore sections was performed from derrick barges on water. For sections running through sensitive tidal marshlands and wetlands, work could only be performed from the top of the existing structure. Working toward each other, 160-ton crawler cranes staged on each end of the trestle demolished the old timber trestle, removed pile, drove new pile and laid stringers and crane mats on the new pile as a temporary trestle. When the cranes met, they reversed direction, pulled up the temporary trestle and installed new steel pile caps and concrete deck panels as they went. The project also included a new aluminum pedestrian access path.

The new berth is founded on 135-foot-long, 6-foot-diameter steel piles and was constructed with 100-foot by 30-foot deck modules assembled by Cherne in our Vallejo yard across Suisun Bay. Other wharf improvements included an upgraded pipeline, a mooring dolphin, fender piles, two rescue platforms with boat lifts, an emergency spill response platform, fire pumps and new mechanical and electrical systems.