Twenty-thousand cubic meters of cargo had to be delivered and installed in a crowded neighborhood of Goalpara, Khulna. The project site was accessible only via a narrow one-way road, which was littered with buildings and shops, enmeshed with overhead wires and cables, and continually congested with trucks and lorries. All in all, building the Khulna 150MW Peaking Power Plant was no small feat, and yet, hardly an unfamiliar one for TTL.

This plant is a project by the North-West Power Generation Company Limited (NWPGCL), a subsidiary of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (PDB). Two companies from Spain, Isolux Ingenieria SA and Initec Energia SA, JV, were contracted for the design, construction and equipment on a Turnkey/EPC understanding. These two companies chose TTL for cargo clearance, inland transportation and delivering the equipment to the plant foundation.

The project site surrounding area isn’t just continually busy with local business – the access road that TTL had to use was the same one for Padma Oil Company’s depot. This is a crucial location, as all petroleum products’ supply to Southwest and North Bengal come from this very depot. It was imperative that bringing cargo and building this power plant did not disturb the movement of petroleum.

With these considerations in mind, it made most sense to skip discharging the cargo and bring everything upriver, from Mongla to Harboria. All the gear travelled by barge up the Bhairab river, to a jetty 800 meters away from the project site. Pursuing this option meant that TTL engineers had to construct a temporary jetty along the river embankment. This jetty had a maximum capacity of 600 tons, in line with the heftiest cargo, a gas turbine of 343 tons, and a generator of 233 tons. Students from Khulna University of Engineering and Technology came to test the jetty’s capacity before the cargo arrived.

From the jetty, all cargo had to be moved manually to the project site within a 36-hour window on the weekend, in the interval that Padma Oil Company’s oil tankers were not on the road. The cargo transfer had to be done with great caution, so that the weight of gas turbine or the generator would not cause any damage to the road. Once at the site, these items had to be raised onto pedestals using hydraulic jacks, as the project’s ground level was 2 meters above the existing road level, and the foundation level was just half a meter below that.

Building the jetty, making the cargo transfer to the site and installing the power plant needed the cooperation of Padma Oil Company, government officials and the local community. TTL was able to successfully negotiate on all three fronts, and successfully complete this project without causing any damage to existing structures. Even with the narrow time limits, the Khulna Power Plant was up and running within schedule, and without injury.