Headquartered in Glencrow, Co Donegal, Foyle & Marine Dredging Ltd is a leading maritime construction company which is a dozen years established. Building Ireland heard more from its Project Manager Tomás Rooney on the state of business at the moment for the company and its nomination at this year’s Irish Construction Excellence Awards.
Business is thriving as of late at Foyle & Marine Dredging Ltd and things look like staying that way for some time as the marine construction market continues to flourish.
Operating with 30 direct staff, the company is headed up by its Managing Director Stephen McCormick and has bases in both the Republic of Ireland & UK
It’s a firm which specialises in the undertaking certain types of marine works on projects throughout Ireland and the UK and guarantees clients quality, commitment and excellence with each project.
Project Manager Tomás Rooney has been part of the team at Foyle & Marine Dredging for two years now and filled Building Ireland in on the details of some of its current projects, as well as the Greencastle Breakwater one which saw it shortlisted at May’s prestigious ICE Awards.
“Business is booming, to be honest,” stated Tomás. “We’re fairly specialised in what we do and, look, the name says it all. Dredging is the bread and butter however, along with dredging, we offer marine demolition, underwater rock breaking, construction of sea protection rock structures such as groyne, revetments & breakwaters, reclamation, pipeline outfall installation and tug/workboat services.
“It just seems to be crazy at the moment. We’re in Ireland and the UK only and a lot of our work would be in and around the north of England and Scotland and there’s so much going on up there. A lot of it is driven for offshore energy where they have to deepen harbours and build new piers.
“We have a steady spread of work at the moment and the inquiries that are coming in are not slowing down at all. We can see work here right into the end of next year, so business is booming and it’s a really good time to be at this sort of stuff and there’s no sign of it letting up.”
Dredging, as a process, used to remove the deposits percolated underwater for the purpose of clearing the water pathway for ships to pass; to create adequate space to construct important bridges, dykes and dams and to weed out silt, intoxicants and pollutants from the bottom of the water.
Over the last 12 years, Foyle & Marine Dredging has built up a solid track record of meeting both the projects and clients’ requirements by delivering both a broad range of challenging and alternative projects.
One of the company’s main clients over the past number of years has been Graham Construction for whom it has numerous on-going projects at the minute, as Tomás himself explained.
“As a subcontractor, we’ve just completed a dredging project for Graham Construction in Glasgow on the Clyde River,” said the Project Manager.
“It was a six-week project for us. We went in there and it was a very tight program, and we got it i done and no problem at all.
“We’ve also been over in the Port of Leith for the last 13 months now on a project for Graham Construction which is called ‘The Leith Outer Berth’.
“We’re locked in for another project with Graham Construction again in D3 Belfast which is starting this summer. That’s a big job for us and it’s got a bit of everything; dredging, rock, reclamation and demolition.
To accompany the Graham Construction projects, we have also recently completed (February) a demolition project form Murphy International in Dublin Port, and we are currently preparing our main dredger in Glasgow to mobilise to the Island of Colonsay on the west coast of Scotland for a underwater rock breaking project for George Leslie.
“So, we have plenty going on and a couple more in the pipeline as well.”
This past autumn saw Foyle & Marine Dredging completing a €16.3m for Donegal County Council.
The six-month project at Greencastle, Co Donegal involved the importation and placement of 250,000 tonnes of rock materials, as an extension to the existing breakwater structure.
The primary aim of the breakwater structure was to protect the entrance to the existing Greencastle Harbour and its successful competition delivered a valuable piece of infrastructure that contributes significantly to Greencastle’s maritime activities.
For Tomás Rooney, it was a privilege to be involved in such an intricate and high-scale project which saw the company now up for the ‘Civil Engineering – Over €10m’ gong at the 2024 Irish Construction Excellence Awards.
“The contract signing was April 17, 2023 and we had to start straight away. We reached substantial competition in mid-October, so, all in all, we were five weeks early finishing,” he outlined.
“The project itself was an extension to an existing breakwater and the reason for the breakwater was to protect the existing harbour at Greencastle. The breakwater itself is a rock structure in very deep water and we had to work in water depths of around between 17 to 18 metres from the water level down.
“There were three types of rock and the overall volume of rock was 250,000 tonnes, so it was a tight program in a remote area and the key was the supply of the rock and getting it to the site as quickly as possible.
“We ended up getting four quarries approved for the supply and all of them supplied the core material which was the largest quantity, and then two of them supplied the next level up called underlayer material and then the armoured rock came from one quarry as they were the only ones capable of producing that type of rock.
“All material was brought by road and the installation itself was a combination of land and floating. On land, you had dumpers and a lot of diggers – on the water we had the Tara Marie barge equip with our EX1200 triple boom excavator which is essentially a 190 -tonne digger – The floating excavator was then supported by a split hopper barge and tug which transported the core material to the placement area.
“The key was that we had the equipment to reach and do the work from both floating and land. In a nutshell, equipment and methodology was the key and quarry supply had to go hand in hand with that and it worked. and it took a fair amount of management to make sure of it.”
On being shortlisted at the ICE Awards which took place on May 24th at the Convention Centre Dublin, Tomás added: “It’s absolutely great. We’ve won already in a way, as it’s great to be in that final seven in that category.”
Looking at the months ahead for Foyle & Marine Dredging, Tomás says the company will be eager to take on more projects like the one it successfully completed at Greencastle as it looks to continue its growth and further enhance its excellent reputation along the way.
“We want to secure another main contract of a similar type. The subcontracting work is there and it’ll keep feeding us. The hope though is to secure another project of this type as a main contractor and just go from there,” he concluded.
With their office open from Monday to Friday (8am-5pm), the team at Foyle & Marine Dredging will be happy to hear from you to discuss in detail any marine related projects you may have coming on stream. Give them a call to find out more (see contact details below).
Foyle & Marine Dredging Ltd
Head Office,
Glencrow,
Moville Business Park,
Co. Donegal
F93 DF84
Mobile: 087 222 1953
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.marinedredging.co.uk
This article was published in Building Ireland Magazine, July 2024, Vol 10 No 7
