In June, Mayor Marie Gilmore of Alameda welcomed a new Bay Area resident to her city: D.B. Alameda, the first derrick barge to be built in Alameda in 30 years, is a 100-ton rated marine vessel recently built and ready for service in the San Francisco Bay.
D.B. Alameda driving 66” diameter by 115’ long steel pipe piles at the BP Lubricants Terminal in Richmond, CA. Photo courtesy of Power Engineering Construction
Published: July, 2013
In June, Mayor Marie Gilmore of Alameda welcomed a new Bay Area resident to her city: D.B. Alameda, the first derrick barge to be built in Alameda in 30 years, is a 100-ton rated marine vessel recently built and ready for service in the San Francisco Bay.
A derrick barge is essentially a floating construction site with the capacity for heavy lifting, pile driving, excavating and dredging. Power Engineering Construction of Alameda has used derrick barges to reconstruct piers, such as Pier 15 and 17 in San Francisco Bay for the new Exploratorium, to drive piles for local oil refineries, to install massive-size fenders on the Bay Bridge and to build marinas on the Delta.
In 2012, after leasing barge equipment for many years, Power Engineering decided it was time to make the investment and build the ideal barge for its operations. A new derrick barge had not been built in Alameda since 1976. Starting with a Clyde Frame 9 winch, Power Engineering’s team of engineers, fabricators, welders, electricians, hydraulic technicians and rigging specialists built a 100-ton crane mounted on a 60’ x 130’ barge. The crane has 140 feet of boom, four drums and is outfitted with the most sophisticated hydraulic/electric equipment available. Fabrication was completed in just 11 months.
Final assembly and testing were done in November 2012, Cal-OSHA certification was completed and the crane put into service. Between projects, D.B. Alameda is docked at Alameda Point along with the USS Hornet and Alameda’s MARAD fleet.
