INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON

PORT & MARITIME R&D AND TECHNOLOGY

5th September 2005 – 7th September 2005
World Trade Center, Rotterdam

Title
Meeting Quay 2k30’s requirements.
Authors
G.H. Wijnants (TNO), A. v.d. Toorn, M. Schuylenburg, H.P.J. Heijnen (HBR), J.G. de Gijt (GWR/TU-Delft),
W.F. Molenaar, H. Ligteringen (TU-Delft), A.H.M. Krom (TNO)
Cooperating organisations:
TNO: Built environment and Geosciences. PO Box 49, 2600 AA Delft, the Netherlands
HBR: Port of Rotterdam, PO Box 6622, 3002 AP, Rotterdam, the Netherlands
GWR: Civil Works Department of Rotterdam, PO Box 6633, 3002 AP Rotterdam, the Netherlands
TU Delft: Delft University, Section of Hydraulic Engineering, PO Box 5048, 2600 GA Delft, the Netherlands
Abstract
The requirements that a quay design should meet in order to yield a viable port infrastructure, vary widely from
flexibility due to future customers requirements to durability due to owners requirements.
In a Port of Rotterdam backed project, current and future requirements have been aggregated by combining
expertise present within 4 different organisations. Current experiences have been combined in a FMECA
(Failure Mode Effect and Criticality Analysis) in which today's requirements with respect to maintenance
management can be retrieved. Future needs have been assessed by determining trends in logistic flows and the
development of the market position of the Port of Rotterdam. Current needs and future requirements have been
combined in design, maintain and demolish requirements for "quay 2030" within an LCC approach that
incorporates cost/benifit analysis. The costs involved have been assessed by their present value.
Functional requirement scenarios that may develop have been incorporated by specifying the probability of
occurrence in those scenarios. Scenarios for logistic changes that may influence the infrastructure have been
appended to these scenarios. This led to the formulation of location specific scenarios for the development of the
functional requirements for that particular area. Design proposals can be benchmarked for their performance
under these scenarios. Re-use and demolish scenario's are incorporated. This process will be elucidated by means
of an example.
The risk of occurrence of specific demand for future maintenance have been incorporated by assessing and
tuning this risk against the costs of preventive measures and quality improvements in the cost-optimum.
When calculating the costs of investment and maintenance management in combination with the yields for
various designs under different future market scenario's, the optimal design for the current requirements has been
assessed.
Incorporating the various aspects within one approach, a performance based methodology for quay design has
been realised that meets both cost-effectivity requirements of the owner as well as the performance and cost
requirements of the user.
Project characteristics, resulting requirements and viable designs are highlighted within this Fit For Purpose
(FFP) project approach. This project yields an example for design requirements that are apt for use within
DCB(F)M constructions, since both flexibility and durability requirements are balanced within one life-cycle
oriënted framework. The project has shown us that Quay2k30 is not a specific design but is a location specific
design that is based upon a prediction for the development of the Functional requirements with time.

Page 1.
1. Introduction
When viewing the developments with the Port of Rotterdam during the last 20 Years the fact is observed that
refurbishing of rather recently constructed quays is no rare event. This impression is engraved by suggestive
Overview of ages of use images as represented in figure 1, which peer
the eye with developments that tend to lead to a
150 City decrease of the life expectancy of quays.
Waal-/Eemhaven area
Time of use in years

The changes encountered are related to

Maasvlakte
changes in the requirements of the customer
100
due to changes in the type of vessel used for
transport.
50 Experience with different types of quays has
shown that customer requirements with respect
0
to availability tend to increase, which places
1850 1920 1930 1850 1980 2000 increased restrictions on maintenance of the
2010
Time in Years
quay. These considerations have led to the
awareness that a long term view of the
Figure 1: Development of ages of use against year of
development in functional requirements to the
construction.
quay design should be evaluated against the
performance characteristics of various quay designs.

2. Terms of reference
The project borders for the definition of a quay have been drawn as follows: “that part of the harbour
infrastructure that is needed in order to resist soil and water, berth ships and also to transfer goods from shore to
sea and vice versa”. In practical terms this refers to the quay wall or the quay dam and the quay deck over the
inland depth that is related to the stability of the wall.
The focus of the harbour infrastructure lays on the overseas transport, which is likely to develop during the next
25 years to come, so until 2030.
The aim of the project is twofold:
a) to provide a decision structure, that balances both LC costs and benefits within a NPV approach while
taking account of future developments and boundary conditions with respect to functionality and quality
b) demonstrate the approach by applying it on a number of quay designs that have specific characteristics fit
for specific future developments.

3. Project structure
In this project the following structure has been used in order to manage the information flow:
a) Current practises with respect to the performance of quays have been evaluated with respect to the
following assesment aspects: functionality, quality, project realisability, inspectability and maintainability,
adaptability, and whole life costs
b) Developments with respect to the next issues have been inventoried: flow of cargo and logistic chains,
ships and cranes, spatial distribution, quay design and materials, construction methods, maintenance
management concepts and future criteria for current bottlenecks.
c) Creation of preliminary design for (a) single use quay; (b) upgradable quay and (c) a reusable quay and
assessment of the quay characteristics against the development foreseen for Quay 2030.
The steps a) en b) have been made in parallel in order to determine the critical assessment criteria for Quay2k30.
Subsequently step c) has been taken in order to evaluate the various concepts against the assessment criteria and
trend found in steps a) and b). An illustrative picture for the aspects involved is presented in figure 2.

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Figure 2: Image representing the solidity of the balance that is investigated in Quay 2k30.
4. Results
The assessment criteria that were revealed during the inventory, can be grouped into four categories:
- Quality requirements needed to prevent currently encountered failures of the structure that are clearly
unacceptable
- Functional requirements that result from the overseas transport requirements
- Investement costs for creating a quay concept that meets the quality and functional requirements
- Maintenance costs involved during use that are related to a probability of failure and the subsequent costs
involved. This latter category has the form of failure mode effect and criticality analysis.
Uncertainties that are present due to forecasting over a long period, are to be tackled by specifying the
probability of a specific development. The approach starts with defining the scenarios that are likely to happen in
the future. A scenario is defined as “a change in functional requirements in order to meet the customers needs
that are linked to a specific moment in time, triggered by an occurrence of events”. In other words, a scenario is
a situation that leads to obligatory changes in the functionality of the quay, changes in its performance or
changes in use by customer or loss of customer. In general, the number of scenario’s is determined by the
specific asset strategy that is followed. Due to the fact that the costs involved for a design modification are
considerable and since we are focussed on the quay support structure only, the amount of scenario’s can be
limited.
4.1. Decision model
The decision model that has been developed for assessing the various quay concepts, contains the costs per km
quay length (the length needed for three ships) of:
- Construction costs; this entails terrain unlocking and establishment, and additional costs due to multiple use
of quay
- Maintenance costs, containing inspection, monitoring and secondary costs due to unavailability
- Construction aspects, which incorporates specific requirements due to the use of the structure as a harbour
facility
- Vulnerability of the quay for collisional damage , this is to be capitalised by estimating the frequency of
collisions that will lead to failure times the costs of repair
- Vulnerability of the quay for overload, this is to be capitalised likewise as the collisional damage
- The strength and stiffness of the soil, this parameter capitalizes the costs that arise due to de measures
needed to create the obligatory soil quality needed by the quay design

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- Legal and environmental aspects; this parameter capitalizes the costs that arize for studies and measures to
be taken in order to meet the requirements of the supervisory agencies
- Deformation costs; this parameter capitalizes the costs that arize due to settling and other mechanisms that
may lead to deformation of the quay structure
- Project requirements, this capitalizes the costs involved for enabling and facilitating the specific project with
monitoring and management measures.
- Scour aspects, this capitalizes the likeliness for scour in terms of loss of availability and costs of corrective
measures.
- Multi-functionality, this parameter capitalizes the costs for facilitating multiple functionality of the quay
- Construction time; this parameter capitalizes the loss of income due to unavailability of the quay
All these parameters are determined in terms of their net present value, in combination with the uncertainty that
is present with respect to the parameter. To facilitate the use of “engineering jugdment”, standard scores for the
variation band with respect to a parameter are “very good” or 10% variation, “good” or 25% variation,
“moderate” or 50% variation, and “bad” or 100% variation (the “Yes /No” situation for costs). A term “very
bad” is present in order to denote those parameters that can actually not be predicted and that are excluded from
the evaluation.
Besides the costs, the next merits are taken into account:
- harbour, buoy and quay dues, harbour towage dues and mooring dues as attritubeted to the quay for a
specific part
- harbour area rental, as accounted for by a fixed part of the rental rates
- Other factors such as added value for the customer can be taken into account when these added values of a
specific quay lead to higher rental rates or harbour fees (for example, automated mooring could be such a
factor)
Losses of availability due to modifications in the quay design, are taken into account in the scenario by means of
loss of income during the time of change of the design.
The scenario’s that are involved, are specified by means of a likeliness that specific changes in design with
accompanying costs is needed, as shown in Table 1.

Scenario A (ScA) Costs/Benefits SoA

α%
Costs/Benefits
Quay concept β% Scenario B (ScB) Costs/Benefits SoB forecast by means
of weighing.
γ% Discrimination
Scenario C (ScC) needed within Costs/Benefits SoC
scenario? N

Scenario C-a (ScC-a) Costs/benefits subscenarios

Scenario C-b (ScC-b) by means of weighing(sub%)
or averaging.
Scenario C-c (ScC-c)

Figure 3: Decision model used within Quay2k30 in order to select the optimal location specific quay design.
The route by Scenario C (ScC) can be split up into subscenarios when necessary as the picture
shows.
.
4.2. Critical parameters for the quay lifetime expectancy
The actual technical lifetime of a quay is actually not the main issue, but the economic lifetime. When
considering the factors that determine the economic use of a quay, the next factors can be identified:
- Logistic requirements (type of cargo, type and size of ship, type of innerland transport)
- Traffic requirements (vessel traffic requirements tend to separate the coastal traffic from the overseas traffic,
leading to changing planological plans in the harbour area)
- Load requirements (increase of quay load due to larger and more heavily loaded containers and cranes)
- Maintenance requirements (availability of the quay so lack of maintenance is a factor with increasing
importance)
All these requirements lead to the observation that exploitation of a quay:
- Is dependant on global and local requirements and is not an issue that can be tackeled in a generalised
manner at harbour level. The variety of factors that influence the economic lifetime of a quay is wide which
can lead to a large variation of development of the functional packages of requirements (FPoR) within 1
km2.
- Instead of focussing on the life cycle performance of a quay the evaluation actually considers the life cycle
economics of a specific area with a quay as a timely “tool”. So the approach is to decide which type of quay
will most economically fullfil the functional requirements at a specific location. If for a specific location it

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 can be foreseen that its current use will be as a quay function, and its next use might be a route border or
maybe as the ships route itself, then a reusable caisson might be worthwile. The remaining value of a
caisson at a certain time can lead to a costeffective use on that specific location.
- Relies upon the explicit specification of the future development of functional needs for a specific spot. This
can be called the “functional life scenario” (FLS) for a specific spot. In order to provide “information” (data
that can be handled) to the designers of the quay these functional needs need to have the format of the
development of functional requirements at a specific time. An example of such a development is given in
Table 1 below.
- In order to evaluate quay performances, suppliers should be invited to specifiy their quay in terms of cost
development in time when benchmarked against the FLS’s for the specific location.

Scenario:
FPoR(T)
Retaining Load bearing Function
Tijd (T) height capacity of location Probability:
Now (Quay “X”) 26 metres 40 kN/m2 Quay 1
April 2010 26 metres 50 kN/m2 Quay 25%
April 2010 28 metres 60 kN/m2 Quay 15%
April 2010 - - Fairway 10%
April 2020 26 metres 50 kN/m2 Quay 35%
April 2020 28 metres 60 kN/m2 Quay 15%
April 2020 30 metres 80 kN/m2 Quay 10%
April 2020 - - Fairway 20%
Table 1: Example of a Functonal Life Scenario for a specific location in the harbour area.
4.3. Developments for Port of Rotterdam
Cargo forecasts for the port of Rotterdam can be represented by figure 4.
Current and Forecasted goods flow (MTon)

250
Wet bulk goods
200

150 Dry bulk goods

MTon

100 Containers

50 Ro-Ro
0 Other mixed
2002 2010 2020 2030 cargo
Year

Figure 4: Forecast of goods flow until 2k30.

The figure shows that container traffic presents the fastest changing type of cargo flow with a percentual change
in time with a factor 3,2. Therefore the trends within this sector provide the framework within which the largest
part of the quay’s will be constructed in the future.
4.4. Developments in container traffic
For the container traffic the following trends have been spotted that are of importance for the FPoR of
Quay2k30:
- Growth of ship size to 12,5kTeu over time to 2020.
- Increase of productivity by use of twinlift (2*20ft containers) and tandemlift (2*40ft), leading to a quayload
of 50 kN/m2.
- Increase of ship width leading to langer crane reach which also tends to increase the quay load
- Increase of separated handling of goods for inland and shore traffic (smaller ships) with respect to overseas
traffic (large ships) in order to separate the probability of collisions between various types of ships
- Only a slight increase in contract depth before the quay, which tends to grow asymptotically to a contract
depth of 22 mtr.

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4.5. Current quay performance
As far as current quay performance is concerned, the following main observations have been made:
- Time required for maintenance conflicts with the time needed for loading/uploading operations. The
tendency for increased availability of quays makes that quays should be constructed with less maintenance
demand as currently present.
- The current maintenance demand is from an owners cost-point of view limited to about 1,2% of the
investment costs per year. On a NPV base this represents over 25 yr’s a total sum that amounts to 15%
(margin ¼ of this value) of the investment. Since investments are huge, this figure makes clear, especially
when indirect costs are taken into account as well, that reduction of maintenance costs is worthwhile.
- Current maintenance risks are caused, as determined by performing a FMECA (see ref. 2), in order of
importance by anchorrods, fascine material, anchor systems of the retaining walls, scour protection,
fendering, quay fixtures such as ladders etc. (furniture). These risks need to be managed by incorporating
technical life-time specification in the product specification for the local conditions of use.
- Requirements with respect to availability are currently not systematically evaluated during the design phase
of a quay. Given future trends a benchark of the design with respect to availability is necessary.
5. Quay Concepts
In order to assess which type of quay is optimal for a specific location, available and new quay concepts have
been grouped as shown in Table 2.

of use
Quay group:
Year
(# refers to Figure 2)
Quay type: Single use Adaptable Reusable
Lightweight blockwall (#1) Now X
Synthetic blockwall Now X
Triagular caisson Now X
Rectangular caisson (#2) Now X
Frozen soil quay >10 X X
Pile supported deck constuctions annex. multiple Now X
use quay construction
Floating quay Now X X
Terre Arméé wall (#3) Now X X
Combiwall (steel-wall) Now Limited Limited
Diaphragm wall Now Limited
Block wall Now X
Pneumatic caisson Now X X
Table 2: Grouping of various quay concepts for performance analysis.
Examples of some concepts are shown in figure 5. The costs of realisation and the perfomance in a specific
situation have been analysed by including the various costs in an costs asessment calculation.

Figure 5: Examples of quay concept (ref. 5). From L to R, #1 is Block wall, #2 is Caisson, #3 is terre arméé
concept..
In the following the cost will be considered that arize when using a specific type of quay at a specific location,
given a scenario for the FPoR. On a group level the costs of construction and maintenance have been
determined. This includes the costs and rental losses that will arize when for instance the construction needs to
be modified at a certain moment in time. An illustrative example of this assessment can be seen in table 3.
The concepts that are presented in Table 3 all meet the next design criteria at T=0:
Contract depth = 18 metres. Quay load = 40 kN/m2.
The scenario’s are desribed as follows:
Depth increase: Contract depth = 20 m at 12,5 yr, 22 mtr at 25 yr.

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Load increase: Quay load = 60 kN/m2 at 12,5 yr, 80 kN at 25 yr.
When a specific design has been overdesigned, it may meet these scenario’s and in that case the costs for all
scenario’s will be equal. In order to make this example illustrative, we’ve chosen designs such that this is not the
case. For reasons of simplicity, we’ve omitted the uncertainty in the various costs that are present and that are
included in the total cost calculations.

Single use quay

Adaptable quay

Depth incrrease
Scenario’s: Reusable quay

Load increase

Load incrase
Depth incr.

Depth incr.
No change
No change

No change

Load inc.
Overall

Overall

Overall
Construction costs 36 36 36 36 40 40 40 40 60 60 60 60
Maintenance costs 5,8 5,8 5,8 5,8 6,4 6,4 6,4 6,4 6 6 6 6
Upgrade costs - 18 10 5,6 - 8 4 2,4 - 12 - 2,4
Demolition costs - 5 2 1,4 - - - 0 - - - 0
Indirect costs:
Loss of rental - 2,3 1,2 ,7 - ,7 ,3 ,2 - 1,6 1 ,4
Loss of dues - 1,2 ,6 ,3 - ,3 ,2 ,1 - 0,8 ,5 ,2
PV Asset at 25 yr. -2,3 -2,3 -2,3 -2,3 -4,6 -4,6 -4,6 -4,6 -6,9 -6,9 -6,9 -6,9
Scenario probability (%) 60 20 20  60 20 20  60 20 20 
Total: 47,5 44,5 62,2
Table 3: Illustrative example for evaluation of Quay 2k30's performance (Costs in M€/km Quay length with
timewindow = 25 yr; negative costs = yields). The “overall” costs are determined by combining costs
coupled to a scenario with the probability of the scenario (beforelast row). The totals are determined
by summing the various overall costs minus the asset value at 25 yr.
Location dependant specific scenarios should be taken into account. In every evaluation, the exact scenario
should be written down explicitly in order to avoid decision errors. For reasons of clarity, the assumptions that
are related to the calculated NPV costs, should be written down explicitly as well. When using other quay design
characteristics, the results will change. The principle for benchmarking the quay’s performance, nevertheless
stay’s the same.

6. Conclusions
This project has led us to the next conclusions:
- The requirements for Quay2k30 imply that future developments are explicitly stated in terms of location
specific functional requirements. Due to planological changes in the harbour area, one of the possible
scenario’s for the future use of the quay’s location may be “a navigation route for ships”. An adequate cost
evaluation method should cope with this type of changes. The method described in this article has this
characteristic.
- Quay 2k30 has not delivered an actual quay design but a methodology to evaluate the location specific
requirements based on explicitly stated predictions for the future. Uncertainties in these predictions can be
accounted for by simply integrating these uncertainties in the calculations.
- Quay2k30 is a quay that has proven to be the most cost effective solution for the location specific
requirements that are desribed in terms of functional life scenario’s (FLS’s). A scenario is the development
with time of the functional package of requirements (FPoR) for a specific location and shows the sudden
changes in time with their probability of occurrence
- Suppliers of Quay2k30 concepts should specify the costs that are related to the use of their constructions
when confronted with these FPoR’s in time. This actually provides Harbour owners a tool for benchmarking
the performance of proposed quay designs.
- Maintenance costs and availability requirements should be based upon a FMECA. This type of tools should
be implemented on the basis of specific norms and standards in order to safeguard unambigouity amongst
results form different suppliers.
- It is likely that owners of Quay2k30 type harbour facilities are more attractive from an investors point of
view, since they have an explicit strategy in order to cope with the changes that future is about to bring.

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7. Discussion
The project has shown that it is common in professional organisations to discuss changes that are likely to occur
in 30 years time but that it is not common to explicitly predict the likeliness of those changes due to the
uncertainties involved. Besides, due to the wide variety of influence factors that are present, is appears hard to
determine the most reliable source for such predictions. For example, due to competition, trends with respect to
ship growth do not reach very far. At the same time, ship owners have clear interests that the logistic hubs are
very cost effective. Here seems to be a common interest in order to discuss and decide for future trends in terms
of the complete logistic process.

8. References
1. Report “Kade van de toekomst” .
2. IEC 60812. Analysis techniques for system reliability- procedure for failure mode and effect analysis
(FMEA). 1985
3. Prof. Drs. J.K. Vrijling, Ir. J.G. de Gijt. Lecture notes “Waterbouwkundige kunstwerken kademuren”. Ctwa
5315 TU-Delft. Nov. 2000.
4. de Gijt et al. CUR Handboek kademuren. CUR publicatie 211. ISBN 90 3760 282 7. May 2003.
5. Adel F. den, Gijt. J.G. de. Design alternatives for the quaywall in the Yangtzeharbour Port of Rotterdam,
13th International Harbour Congress Antwerpen, March 30 th – April 2nd 2003.

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