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On December 11, 2009 Federal Agency of sea and river transport of RF Ministry of Transport carried out conference for problems of dredging fleet for internal waterways.
 
Specialists of state administration of internal waterways departments from almost all regions of Russia, designers, shipyards, universities, Russian River Register (RRR) participated into the conference.
 
Conference was opened by Oleg Shakhmardanov (deputy chief of RosMorRechFlot). He noted the principal importance of concerned question for providing of river transport operation. It is impossible to carry out not only formulated purposes but to maintenance up-to-date dimensions and navigation deeps without building of new dredgers and re-equipment of existing of dredgers, dredging pumps, buoy vessels, surveying vessel and other vessels of state departments of internal waterways taking into consideration considerable age of Russian technical fleet and rate of becoming failed.
 
Gennadiy Egorov, professor, doctor of philosophy, general director of Marine Engineering Bureau (MEB), member of board of directors of ZNT, presidium member of Scientific-Technical Board RRR reported about the results of results of research scientific work "Development of conceptual projects of dredger for sea and internal waterways" made by RosMorRechFlot on behalf of designing group ("Nizhegorodskiy teplokhod" shipyard, RRR, MEB, CRI).
 
It was marked in the report that dredging of 23 million cub. m capacity has been carried out and 90 thousand coastal and floating marks are used to provide sailing safety onto internal RF waterways every year.
 
There were 2580 technical fleet vessels including 2510 ones that could be operated (88.1%) onto balance of state basin management departments of waterways and navigation. 2180 (approximately) technical fleet vessels are put into operation (86.8% of operated vessels or 76.5% of whole amount of vessels) to serve internal waterways every year.
 
During last 10 years amount of dredging vessels has decreased from 210 units down to 168 ones.
 
Standard operating term of 119 vessels from 168 ones will end by the end of 2010.
 
Standard operating term of 151 vessels will be exceeded by the end of 2015
 
Repairs' carrying out and support into operational conditions of technical fleet vessels has also become a trouble that increases every year. These troubles are caused by following reasons:
 
• long term of operation. Average age of marine techniques is more than 30 years, corroded vessels' hulls, constant breakdown of equipment, mechanisms, separate details and construction units require to carry out a lot of repairs, hull works and stops of operational period;
• Specific character, environment and conditions of works with intensive and quick tear of dredging gadgets require to restore timely and to replace tear details;
• There are few shipyards and repair-operational bases that specializes onto these types of repair.
 
Limit tear is typical for such working mechanisms of dredger as main engines, dredger pump, dredger pipeline, dredging gadgets of multi-bucket dredgers, cable power routing, control equipment, etc.
 
Dredgers often stop operation because of mechanisms' breaking caused by significant tear.
 
Automatic control systems of swing winches and bower winch, control of upper scoop gearing are required to be replaced for up-to-date equipment. Control equipment of dredging control mostly have moral and physical tear and require to be replaced, but nowadays this equipment are not produced by Russian factories.
 
There is a tendency of ageing of technical fleet vessels from year to year. Amount of these vessels has also been decreasing. During last years amount of decommission ships has increased from 17 up to 38 per year.
 
It is supposed to lose about third part of the vessels or 796 ones because of decommission basing on this tendency. Among them:
 
• 301 vessels are from working centre, 165 vessels are in cold stack;
• 330 vessels can't be operated.
 
It's necessary to decommission vessels that can not be recovered excluding unique ones (dipper dredger, self-propelled dredgers, rock-crushing dredgers) in the near future.
 
If urgent measures are not taken, there will be 28 vessels that will be in operational conditions with the age of 17 years by 2015.
 
796 new technical fleet vessels will be needed for carrying out planning capacity of route-keeping works, subject to decommission of vessels from working core and vessels' renovation by 2015. This amount includes 81 vessels of dredging fleet, 125 ones of buoy fleet and 59 ones of ecological fleet.
 
It supposed to build 22 dredgers in accordance with Federal purpose plan "Development of RF transport system for 2010-2015".
 
Main approaches towards creation of new generation of dredging vessels with explanation of appearance and main decisions are offered in the report; also these vessels' line is grounded.
 
Report authors recommended to use wider the cheap non-self-propelled dredgers without regular accommodation that can be built by Russian shipyards basing on researches of SPA "Golfstrim". Crew will placed at floating landing stage or at main pontoon of pulp feed-line.
 
Authors offered to build more complex multi-bucket dredgers, and also dipper dredgers, self-propelled dredgers, rock-crushing dredgers according to the procedure of RRR using of elements of existing vessels with placing independent tanks of fuel, oil, bilge water and feces water in existing hulls with replacing of electrical and navigation equipment, cable routing, MDF, automation systems and technical equipment, with decreasing of crew's amount and increasing of accommodation comfort level.
 
Nikolay Ephremov, professor, doctor of science, economics, first deputy of general director of RRR, Mikhail Ayvazov, chairman of board of directors of OJSC "Nizhegorodskiy Teplokhod", Sergey Shtin, technical director of SPA "Golfstrim", Igor Yakimenko, member of board of directors of OJSC "Sudoremontno-sudostroitelnaya korporatsiya", Vyacheslav Gogulin, general director of shipyard "Midel", Lev Preys, general director of designing bureau "Minibot", Nikolay Popov, professor of VGAFT and other colleagues participated in debate.
 
Special interest was attracted by the report of Sergey Shtin who shared his experience of designing, full-complete building and successful operation of up-to-date Russian non-self-propelled dredging pumps (up to 8 units per year) and special equipment for them (soil pumps, milling cutter, elements of pulp feed-line etc.) at hydraulic mechanization shipyard SPA "Golfstrim" (Aleksandrov, Vladimir region) for mining branch. It was marked that those dredging pumps were equipped only by Russian gears. It decreased considerably the cost of gears.
 
Mikhail Ayvazov in his turn reported about completing of fitting-out of dredging pump for RosMorRechFlot by OJSC "Nizhegorodskiy Teplokhod" and mentioned about considerable difficulties in providing of vessel's packaging arrangement that is being built according to the Czech project of 80s of XX century.
 
In the end of conference Oleg Shakhmardanov, deputy chief of RosMorRechFlot, mentioned about the necessity of understanding that technical decisions must be made taking into consideration the limited resources which are allocated for dredging fleet's building. He supported the idea to use wider non-self-propelled dredging pumps and marked that presence of accommodation at operating dredgers with up-to-date sanitary code of vibration and noise will lead to considerable rise in prices of the object. It is necessary to take into consideration the real conditions of vessels' operation that are principally different in the regions of Russia. Special features of dredging works must be also taken into consideration during designing of working elements of dredging pumps.
 
It was decided to distribute to the technical objectives' line of perspective dredgers for the purpose of correction operational requirements and preparation to the vessels' building in accordance with Federal purpose plan "Development of RF transport system for 2010-2015" at the conference.