When Port Waratah set out to extend the life of its three ageing shiploaders – each at a different stage of their lifecycle – it engaged Aspec Engineering for practical, innovative solutions grounded in decades of site knowledge.
Port Waratah, a cornerstone of the Hunter Valley coal export supply chain, has provided its customers with reliable access to contracted terminal capacity for more than 45 years.
Aspec Engineering NSW manager Robert Gibson said Port Waratah is looking to ensure that the terminal facilities are positioned to meet customer expectations and Hunter Valley coal chain demand beyond 2030. One of the Aspec Engineering’s specialties is life extensions of ageing assets such as shiploaders.
“Key to the Port Waratah loading process are the shiploading facilities – the shiploaders and the wharves,” he told ABHR. “A pre-feasibility study was carried out on the condition and remaining life of three shiploaders.”
“Aspec Engineering was heavily involved in the structural fatigue assessment, which is a key issue in life extension.”
The shiploaders at the site have a large bridge structure that spans 50 metres.
Because there are heavy masses moving regularly on the bridge structure, with variations in load, metal fatigue is an issue that needs to be addressed.
“The outcome of those studies was that the oldest shiploader is being replaced, and the two newer machines are having major overhauls,” Gibson said.
To support Port Waratah in executing this strategy, Aspec Engineering has been appointed as the design engineer for the two shiploader refurbishment projects, and design auditor for the replacement machine.
A trusted partner
The company’s relationship with Port Waratah can be traced back to when Aspec Engineering was founded in 2003.
For more than 20 years, Aspec Engineering’s team has been a trusted engineering partner of Port Waratah, providing local engineering support for terminal operations and asset management – especially when it comes to shiploaders, stackers, and reclaimers.
“A big emphasis for Aspec is that we work very closely with our clients to provide pragmatic technical advice, targeted at their specific business needs – that’s the way we like to operate,” Gibson said.
“We can move quickly thanks to our detailed knowledge of the site. Port Waratah is our biggest New South Wales client and a key part of the state’s economy. We are very proud of our association with Port Waratah.”
Fighting fatigue
Aspec Engineering’s director, Adam Mayers, said the top priority in the two shiploader refurbishment projects was ensuring adequate fatigue life of the bridge.
“It’s a fundamental issue that affects the life of the asset,” he said. “We completed detailed calculations to estimate the life of the machine which suggested there was potentially a fatigue issue.”
This analysis was successfully used to target inspection locations and identify defects.
Of the two shiploaders receiving major overhauls, the project involved not only solutions to repair the defects but extending the life of the machines and reducing the likelihood of similar defects in the future.
“In standard practice, replacing fatigued steel components entirely is often the first consideration,” Mayers explained. “However, in this case, other more feasible, less intrusive repairs needed to be considered – taking into account access, constructability, and other constraints.”
Faced with this, the Aspec Engineering team dived deep into the problem and leveraged its experience to find techniques that have previously worked in other industries – primarily the bridge maintenance sector.
“The team developed a blended refurbishment strategy which combines fatigue repairs, weld improvements and a pragmatic inspection regime, to successfully chart a course to address the defects and implement improvements to achieve the required life extension,” Mayers said.
“We used fracture mechanics to quantify how existing defects might grow over time and under what conditions they could become critical,” Mayers said. “This allowed us to prioritise repairs and implement life extension techniques with confidence.”
This approach balanced safety, cost, and operational continuity – extending the life of two of the shiploaders without requiring full-scale replacements.
Engineering expertise
Aspec Engineering has a lot of experience when it comes to asset management of dynamic structures. The company has carried out similar work on dozens of other machines, across the full equipment lifecycle – from new machines to those that are operating beyond their design life and require life extension.
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It has an established process, which has evolved over time and places a large emphasis on knowledge management and sharing project experiences within the business. This was important for the Port Waratah project, which had a compressed engineering phase, and required an efficient engineering approach.
“It was quite an aggressive schedule to complete all of the engineering – especially with the refurbishment projects,” Mayers said.
One of the reasons the company was able to move so quickly was thanks to its history working with Port Waratah and its emphasis on good project records.
“A lot of time can be spent trying to reinvent the wheel or searching for past knowledge,” he said. “That’s part of the reason we were able to do the work in a compressed timeframe. We’re not coming up to speed – we’re already at speed when we start the job and we make sure past project knowledge is easily accessed and leveraged to achieve the desired outcome for our clients.
“We’re extremely proud of our team for delivering on time, on budget, and providing everything that was asked of us. All of the complex engineering work was done in under six months.”
Looking ahead
Aspec Engineering will continue to work closely with Port Waratah over the coming years to deliver the remaining stages of this critical project.
Mayers highlighted the collaborative nature of the partnership.
“Port Waratah has a lean and highly capable team that brings a cooperative and forward-thinking approach to the table.
“These life extension projects are not just maintenance – they are strategic investments in Port Waratah’s future,” he said. “We are humbled to be working alongside them and appreciate being selected as their partner for this work.”
“We are proud to have contributed to this phase of Port Waratah’s journey,” Gibson said. “Their commitment to proactive asset management and collaborative delivery continues to set the standard in the industry.”
