Submarine Magnetic Silencing Facility

Healy Tibbitts Builders, Inc. along with Joint venture partner, Watts Constructors LLC successfully completed the Navy’s $88.1 million Submarine Drive-In Magnetic Silencing Facility project at Beckoning Point, Pearl Harbor. This world class pier facility provides the Navy with the most modern and state-of-the art submarine deperming system in the world. The project replaced an aged, deteriorated and obsolete facility with one that is able to deperm the Navy’s modern fleet of submarines.

The project team overcame many challenges including: meeting the strict “non-magnetic” materials requirement for all marine structures; removing existing mooring systems and 60 km of buried submarine cable; locating and removing sub-surface magnetic anomalies; precision dredging of pier slip; fabricating, transporting and handling long precast concrete piles with a low effective prestress; driving concrete piles in lengths up to 191 feet in highly variable and weak soils; precision installation of subsurface fiberglass magnetometer tubes; installation of long concrete filled fiberglass fender piles; and installation of sub-fleeting trolley rails with machine tolerances.

The project received an “OUTSTANDING” Final Performance Rating from the client, U.S. Navy and was honored with the 2012 Alliant Build America Merit Awards and with the Hawaii’s 2012 Build Hawaii Award of Excellence and the Grand Award as the best 2011 construction project in Hawaii.