Posted on March 4, 2026
By David Kinlan
Back in August 2015, just over a decade ago now, Egypt opened the New Suez Canal, a parallel channel approximately 35 km long constructed in less than a year.
For those of us involved in the tender phase, the project was remarkable.
Not only for its scale but for the speed of executionand the way the global dredging industry mobilised collectively to deliver it.
When it first arrived on my desk to review I thought it was just a pipe dream, especially after the 2008 Financial Crisis when major planned projects in the Middle East fell like dominos.
Yet within a few short weeks the contract was signed.
Time was of the essence!
At peak mobilisation the dredging fleet comprised:
- 21 Cutter Suction Dredgers (CSDs)
- 5 Trailing Suction Hopper Dredgers (TSHDs)
- 2 Water Injection Dredgers (WIDs)
Together they formed one of the largest dredging fleets ever assembled on a single project.
Material to be dredged exceeded 250 million m³, achieved under a programme that was initially set at 3 years but which got reduced to just 1 year many initially thought unrealistic.
The business case said it would produce significant extra revenue if the bottleneck of transiting vessels would be removed.
At Chek Lap Kok in the 1990s also with roughly 250 million m³it took some 3-4 years to complete.
For the Suez Expansion the Egyptian President Sisi wanted it completed in a year!
Yet within roughly 11 months, the works were delivered ahead of time and the canal opened to increased navigation and the money in extra transit fees came pouring in.
A Familiar Pattern for the Dredging Industry
For those with long memories in dredging, the Suez Canal Expansion echoed another landmark project:
Chek Lap Kok Airport in Hong Kong.
At Chek Lap Kok in the 1990s, the world’s leading dredging contractors also came together in joint venture to deliver one of the largest marine infrastructure projects ever undertaken.
Two decades later, Suez demonstrated that the industry still possesses the ability to mobilise globally, rapidly and collaboratively when the scale of a project demands it.
The Contractors
Six major dredging contractors participated in the international consortium:
The work was split into Lots. Each contractor brought major assets, specialist personnel and operational expertise to the programme.
I had the privilege of being one small part of the large tender team assembled across these contractorsduring the procurement phase.
The scale of the bidding effort itself was immense — multiple engineering disciplines, production modelling, logistics planning and contractual structuring all being developed under extreme time pressure.
A Fleet Without Precedent
The operational picture during the works which followed was extraordinary.
Multiple large cutter suction dredgers working simultaneously along the canal alignment, supported by hopper dredgers handling areas better suited to trailer dredging.
Pipelines stretched across the desert to discharge the dredged material. Operations were continuous.
Production targets were measured in millions of cubic metres per week.
Few projects in dredging history have required such simultaneous deployment of high-capacity CSDs.
Multiple CSDs deployed working in unisom
The Contractual Foundation
Equally noteworthy was the form of contract.
The project incorporated the FIDIC Blue Book (2006) — a form specifically developed for dredging and reclamation works.
For a project of this scale, the choice of contract form matters.
The Blue Book provided a balanced risk allocation framework familiar to the industry, covering issues such as:
- defined risks
- measurement of dredged quantities
- plant mobilisation and demobilisation
In a programme where time pressure was extraordinary, having a contractual framework already well understood by the industryhelped provide stability.
No law firms involved re-writing a trusted FIDIC Blue Book format.
Project Films and Industry Documentation
There is a lot of AI videos on Youtube but the best detailed youtube video which describes the project, is available here
The scale of the works is best appreciated through the project films produced by some of the contractors themselves.
Boskalis project video: https://vimeo.com/130528117
Van Oord project video: https://vimeo.com/135248680
Jan De Nul’s project documentation available here also provides an excellent overview of their dredging operations.
And the International Association of Dredging Companies (IADC) has published a number of valuable articles documenting the engineering and logistics challenges of the project.
IADC article can be found here
Looking Back
The dredging industry has always been fiercely competitive however large dredging megaprojects have always required cooperation between competitors.
Chek Lap Kok demonstrated this in the 1990s. The Suez Canal Expansion in the 21st century showed that the model still works.
The project remains a powerful reminder that when the scale is large enough, the global dredging industry has the ability to mobilise fleets, people and expertise from across the globe and deliver at extraordinary speed.
For those of us involved — even in a small way — it remains one of the more memorable projects of the last decade.
