Kulangsu Island, a national 5A class scenic spot and a national key cultural relic protection unit, was added to the World Heritage List in 2017. It receives more than 12 million tourists annually, thus the huge communication traffic needs to be transmitted through submarine optical cables. In 2017, China Mobile (Xiamen) launched the turnkey project (Songyu Dock-Kulangsu)for submarine cables, which was undertaken by FiberHome and successfully delivered in advance recently.
Kulangsu Island is prosperous, with ports, navigation channels, docks, sea walls, crossover pipelines and other infrastructure densely distributed around the island, which greatly increases the difficulty of project permit application and construction. At the same time, Kulangsu sea area is close to the habitat of the rare animal Chinese white dolphin, which raises very strict requirements for the project.
During the desktop research phase, FiberHome designed a suitable route to bypass the Chinese white dolphin reserve and prepared a special evaluation report of the project construction impact on Chinese white dolphins, which was submitted to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs for approval. In addition, FiberHome convened experts from the national rare species protection field in Beijing to conduct an all-round review, which initiated the further discussion on the protection of rare marine species in marine engineering at China's national level.
During the construction process, the systematic monitoring by the professional Chinese white dolphin noise impact monitoring team showed that the Chinese white dolphin and its activity area had not been impacted by the engineering construction and had been approved by the environmental protection department and the owner unit.
Submarine cable project involves communication and transmission, wet-end products, marine exploration, marine engineering and permit application, etc. The harsh marine environment requires high reliability for the quality of submarine cable series products and submarine cable engineering. Different sea areas have different marine climate and geological conditions, and submarine cable routing has various coordination problems such as ownership conflict, ecological protection, fishery compensation, port and channel regulation, etc. The submarine cable project has its distinct uniqueness and complexity. In the past, when Chinese operators invited tenders for submarine cable projects separately, there was always a gap between the various links. The coordination among the sub-contractors was more complicated, facing problems such as excessive cost and overlong project cycle, which was not conducive to the control of the whole project.
Theturnkey project mode, in which the permit application, material supply and construction of the submarine cable project are integrated, is beneficial to the overall management of the whole project. It can effectively avoid the situation of "everyone minds one's own business without coordination" among the permit applicant, material supplier and construction party, thus greatly shortening the delivery period, improving the overall quality of the project and reducing the project cost.
FiberHome, as the general contractorof the "Songyu Dock-Kulangsu" submarine cable turnkey project, has made good project planning in advance and visited more than 30 relevant departments and units, involving China's State Oceanic Administration, Xiamen Marine and Fishery Bureau, Xiamen Maritime Safety Administration, Xiamen Port Administration, Xiamen Rare Marine Species National Nature Reserve, Xiamen Kulangsu-Wanshi Mountain Scenic Area Management Committee, etc. FiberHome actively communicates the latest laws and policies with all units to solve the coordination problems of relevant interested parties, and apply for licenses and go through various formalities in parallel in multiple ways. The permit application period for submarine cable projects in China is generally about three years. FiberHome however, used only one and a half years to complete a series of demonstrations such as sea area use demonstration, environmental impact assessment, channel impact assessment and navigation safety assessment, and successfully obtained the construction permit. Moreover, in order to reduce the impact on passing ships and tourists around during the construction period, FiberHome overcame the difficulties and constructed in late night to successfully complete the construction task. The successful delivery of Kulangsu submarine cable project has greatly eased the communication tension in Kulangsu Island, tested theturnkey capability of China submarine cable project, and provided successful experience and mode for supporting China's maritime communication industry to go international.
From enterprise |
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