Project Challenges
A program of this scale presents compounding technical, regulatory and operational constraints. Concurrent projects sharing a single port, record-length cargo, and external disruptions including bushfires and a global pandemic each demanded engineered responses rather than conventional workarounds. The principal challenges, and the solutions ARES delivered against them, are outlined below.
Two mega-projects, one port
Running Yandin and Warradarge simultaneously meant double the cargo, double the equipment and double the storage demands at Henderson. To keep pace, ARES deployed two brand-new 70T reach stackers, which are faster and more manoeuvrable than traditional cranes, to sustain an unprecedented run rate while still receiving cargo from incoming ships.
Record-breaking blades on tightly regulated roads
At 73.6m, the V150 blades were the longest ever transported on Australian roads, and every individual component movement required a dedicated transport permit that could only be lodged 28 days ahead of the move. ARES developed the transport methodology in consultation with Main Roads WA, engineering a motorway routing that bypassed the Perth metropolitan area. Convoys of three departed at approximately midnight and arrived on site by sunrise, with permit sequencing and convoy scheduling managed in lockstep across hundreds of discrete movements.
Overweight nacelles
The cargo manifest revealed a problem: each nacelle far outweighed every other component, which would normally force the use of an oversized (and expensive) crane at both port and site. ARES designed and fabricated a custom set of hydraulic jacks that lifted nacelles on and off trucks without a crane, saving Vestas significant site costs.
Bushfires, then a pandemic
Major WA bushfires disrupted mobilisation, and the arrival of COVID-19 imposed strict constraints on rotating interstate crews. New protocols, permits and PPE were introduced without slowing the delivery schedule.
