Abstract:
Land reclamation is used to describe two different activities. In the first sense, it involves modifying wetlands or
waterways to convert them into usable land, usually for the purpose of development. It can also be a process in
which damaged land is restored to its natural state. In both cases, the term is used to refer to some sort of
process that is designed to fundamentally alter the characteristics of a piece of land to achieve a desired end
goal. The need for additional port capacity in Kenya has rapidly risen over the last few years due to
globalization. Due to high cost of land procurement, land reclamation has become a very promising alternative
for expanding and constructing new ports. The presence of soft marine clay poses a major challenge for port
development as it requires ground improvement. The Mombasa Port Development Project in the Republic of
Kenya involved the filling of approximately 6 million cubic metres of sand for the land reclamation of a total
area of about 49 hectares. Land reclamation was carried out using fill materials obtained from dredging
granular material from the seabed at the borrow source situated near Tiwi in Kwale County. The ground
improvement technique that involved combination of prefabricated vertical drain (PVD) with preloading was
successfully applied in this project to improve the underlying compressible soils. The project comprises the
installation of prefabricated vertical drains and the subsequent placement of surcharge to accelerate the
consolidation of the underlying marine clay. The objective of the research is to assess the disparity of
performance of ground improvement and to validate the performance of the prefabricated vertical drain
system. Several geotechnical instruments were installed to monitor the degree of consolidation at both areas
with PVD and areas without PVD as control area. This paper provides a case study of the ground improvement
works carried out with prefabricated vertical drains at the Mombasa Port Development Project will attain a
higher degree of consolidation than the control area by about 60%.
