Baird developed and implemented a very large scale shore protection project, from concept through to completion, of final design documents and periodic construction service input. The project now successfully protects 4.5 miles of coast from erosion.

Project Highlights

This coastal protection project won the 2016 Award of Excellence by the Canadian Consulting Engineering Awards.

A large port was constructed in the early 1960s to service the city of Cotonou, the capital of Benin, West Africa.  This deep draft port has a 12 m deep access channel. Most of the one million m3/year of longshore sand transport is interrupted by the port structures, fillet beach, navigation channel and coastal inlet, resulting in severe downdrift erosion for several miles. Baird completed two tasks as the Engineer of Record and prime consultant on this project: design of shore protection for the eroding coast downdrift of the harbour and sedimentation assessment for the harbour and coastal inlet.

For the navigation element of the project, Baird completed detailed assessment of historic dredging, channel sedimentation modeling, channel design and evaluation of updrift jetty extension. The shore protection project included the restoration and improvement of an existing headland structure. An average of 300,000 m3/year has been dredged from the channel.

The primary focus of the project was to develop final design construction plans and specifications to protect 4.5 miles of coastline that has eroded up to 2500 ft in the last 40 years.  The adopted design consists of a 1000 ft-long breakwater, an 820 ft-long revetment, seven long groins, each 525 ft long, and 800,000 cy of beachfill. Baird provided all engineering services from conceptual design through to final design drawings and technical specifications, and then provided periodic construction support.