The Hambantota Port Development project is planned to develop a major industrial and service port on the southeast coast of Sri Lanka. The construction of Phase 1, which included two breakwaters, navigational channel, turning basin and several quays, started in January 2008 and finished in November 2010. Phase 2 includes excavation of a larger basin, deep water quays and an artificial island. This artificial island will primarily be constructed with excavated materials from the Phase 2 Hambantota Port construction activities; the availability of this material is also the main reason to construct the Island.
CDR International BV has performed a Value Engineering Study to optimize the Breakwater Revetment design (originally using concrete units). As large volumes of rock would become available from the excavation, efforts have been made to come up with an optimized design using this rock as efficiently as possible. This resulted in an Icelandic type Berm Breakwater making optimum use of the excavation yield. Significant cost savings were made by replacing expensive concrete units with the berm breakwater design. The latter design was verified by model testing in China. During construction specialist rock blasting and operations advice was provided, resulting in high output yields for the large marine rock boulders; the yield of 5-10T Rock increased from 2.8% to 9.7%.