Construction of difficult dry dock in yokohama, Japan

Almost all coastal construction works in Japan today are carried out under variable and severe site conditions and tight budgetary constraints. Construction works are so unstable that civil engineers often meet many difficulties: (1) Soil, water, and climate conditions are not covered by present engineering rules; (2) no appropriate engineering methods for solving them exist theoretically; and (3) project circumstances, despite their simplicity, differ from past empirical data or similar works. There are two components in solving these problems. The first is to strengthen basic engineering through an advanced construction technology. The second, which is the focus of this paper, is to scientifically integrate management technology, together with Japanese quality control or TQC (total quality control), into the construction process, e.g., utilization of statistical methods in execution planning, and participation of all organization members in quality control and QC circle activities. The interaction of both approaches in construction is illustrated in this paper through an actual project for a dry dock built without using cofferdams.