DEME needed a maintenance-dredging spread in Mumbai fast. Aeromarine took ASL Bulan — a 32m, 2,000HP multicat — and engineered, fabricated, installed, wired and commissioned a complete hybrid Water Injection Dredger / plough system on the hull, afloat, handing the vessel back to DEME running in 20 days.
20
DAYS, KEEL TO COMMISSIONED
2
HK700 DREDGE PUMPS FITTED
100%
WORK DONE AFLOAT, NO DRY-DOCK
1
HYBRID WID / PLOUGH SYSTEM
CLIENT
DEME (Dredging, Environmental & Marine Engineering), for vessel ASL Bulan
SCOPE
Fabrication, installation, electrical & commissioning of a hybrid WID/plough system
WORK
Full turnkey conversion executed afloat, alongside — no dry-docking
DELIVERED
A running Water Injection Dredger handed over to DEME in 20 days
CLIENT · DEME (DREDGING, ENVIRONMENTAL & MARINE ENGINEERING)
VESSEL · ASL BULAN — IMO 9786566, OPERATED BY ASL MARINE
THE CHALLENGE
ASL Bulan (IMO 9786566, GT 467) is a Bureau Veritas-classed multi-purpose multicat, built 2016, fitted with a single Heila HLRM 280/3SL knuckle-boom crane for anchor-handling, towage and civil marine work. DEME’s requirement was to convert that platform into a hybrid Water Injection Dredger: a system that jets pressurised water through a header on a towed plough to fluidise cohesive silts and muds into a near-liquid density current that flows off under gravity and tide, with the same plough able to fall back to straight mechanical ploughing on ground the injection jets cannot break down. That called for two owner-furnished HK700 dredge pumps in deck-mounted containers, a DN900 suction/DN450 discharge piping run down each side of the hull to the plough, A-frame gantries and winches to deploy and recover the tow, and full pressure/flow/slack-wire instrumentation feeding back to the wheelhouse — engineered onto a live hull, alongside, with no dry-docking and no underwater hull work, against a hard 20-day handover to DEME.
Twenty days, afloat, no dry-docking — a standard multicat rebuilt into a running Water Injection Dredger for DEME’s Mumbai operations.
WHAT AEROMARINE DID
- Engineered and fabricated the complete DN900 suction / DN450 discharge piping run to DEME’s drawings — straight lengths, elbows, and 9+2 pipe supports and brackets — with 35T-rated pad eyes and doubler plates at the plough hitch.
- Fabricated and fitted 2 A-frame gantry foundations, a large winch platform with railing and grating, 2 side platforms, a central platform and 6 stairways, plus hose-hoisting winch foundations, cable ladder (≈80m), light brackets and electrical cabinet supports — all class-compliant deck steel.
- Installed the two owner-furnished HK700 pump containers (≈20T each) onto pre-installed twist-lock foundations, connected all suction and discharge piping, and rigged the A-frames, wire falls and flexible discharge hoses (2 x 3×11.2m runs per side) with hose floaters and clamps.
- Rigged the hybrid plough — sea-fastening eyes, catcher beams, 2-legged hoisting chains — for a unit running approx. 15T empty and 22T filled, and connected the pump discharge elbows directly onto the jetting header.
- Delivered the full instrumentation and electrical scope: 4 pressure sensors, 2 slack-wire sensors and 3 winch encoders wired back to the control desk; new cabling for pump motor fans and winches into the existing switchboard; 2 switch boxes and 10 additional LED deck lights installed.
- Commissioned the complete WID/plough system afloat — pumps run up, piping pressure-tested, plough deployed and recovered on trial — and handed DEME a running Water Injection Dredger in 20 days.
THE OUTCOME · WHY AEROMARINE IS THE FIRST CHOICE
A complete hybrid Water Injection Dredger — HK700 pumps, DN900/450 piping, plough and full instrumentation — now runs off ASL Bulan for DEME, converted and commissioned entirely afloat at Aeromarine’s Mumbai facility in 20 days.
For a global dredging contractor, that turnaround is worth as much as the fabrication quality itself: a conversion executed afloat is a vessel that keeps earning through the job rather than sitting idle in a dry dock. It is a pattern with Aeromarine — fast, class-compliant execution on live vessels, engineered to the client’s own drawings and delivered without the downtime a working dredging contractor cannot afford. Full job scope, drawings and completion records are on file.
