Maintaining workflow on the River Seine

It was business as usual for the James Fisher Prolec team throughout lockdown, as they progressed a dredging project on a section of the River Seine in France. 

The work, for French marine and river works company VINCI Construction Maritime et Fluvial (VCMF), required the dredging of an area of the river at the Barrage des Poses dam. But with lockdown in place on both sides of the Channel, the Prolec team had to come up with a solution which could overcome enforced travel limitations while still meeting VCMF’s challenging project schedule. 

 Prolec’s advanced PCX solution was selected, specified and tailored to meet VCMF’s needs, and the team chose to work closely with its partners, Tolk & Düsterhus (T&D), machine control specialists who have installed Prolec equipment across Germany and the Netherlands. T&D were able to install the system and implement it seamlessly with VCMF’s pre-existing GPS solution and machine configuration. Importantly, T&D was able to handle all travel restriction documentation, thereby minimising the risk of potential lead-time disruptions.  

‘We’ve worked with T&D in the past, and we were confident that their experience in using the PCX system as well as GPS solutions made them an ideal choice,’ 

adds Chris Mead, senior software technical lead at Prolec. 

VCMF’s dredging operations now benefit from the superior accuracy and productivity of PCX, which mitigates the risk of over excavation and costly reworks. 

The customer has been delighted with the resourcefulness shown by the Prolec team in overcoming the many obstacles presented by Covid-19:

‘We found James Fisher Prolec to be highly organised and efficient. The skilled engineering team completed the system’s delivery and installation quickly and effectively to minimise downtime for our operations’

,says Benjamin Peltier, equipment manager at VCMF.