Floods that have plagued Venice will soon be a thing of the past.  The huge tidal barrage which will protect Venice from tidal surges is set to raise its gates.

The project, begun in 2003 and consisting of 78 vast gates that can rise up from the seabed and seal the three entrances to the Venetian lagoon, holding back storm surges and high tides is nearing completion. It is hoped that the MOSE barrage project will complete in 2015 but already two sets of gates have been installed.

Custom Covers were employed by Proserve Marine Construction Engineers to help manufacture the protective covers for their automated foundation grout bag system. This system was designed by Proserve and is used to create the foundations of the tidal gates on the Venetian lagoon sea bed. The system helps anchor huge concrete caissons which hold the tidal gates. Each Concrete caisson weighs 20,000 tonnes and after casting, the 2.5m wide 25m long concrete grout bags are fixed to the bottom of the caisson and enclosed inside a protective PVC cover supplied by Custom Covers.

The scale of the problem one of the three inlets to the lagoon where the barrage is located	Schematic of the barrage in action	The 22000 tonne caissons being manufactured

Custom Covers supplied Proserve with 8 km of PVC, cutting 268,000 holes in the process. James Hawkwood from Proserve commented “All the covers were supplied as and before the programme dates and we are due to complete all manufacture and supply on time in which the help from Custom Covers has been vital”.  Robert Sanders MD at Custom Covers said: “we were very pleased that Proserve came to us for this element of the MOSE project and we are proud to be involved in this iconic project”

For more about this project click here
 

The Caisson being floated into position	The grout bag protective cover in position	The grout bag protective cover in position sideways