About us
The Harbour Engineering Department (HED) is a line Department of Government of Kerala, which does investigation, planning, execution and monitoring various projects in coastal area. Mainly, this department does the construction and maintenance of fishing harbours and fish landing centres, fishery infrastructures like hatcheries, ponds, farms, etc., shore-based tourism projects, infrastructures of Ports and coastal roads.
Kerala has most number of fishing harbours in India, and it is because of functioning of HED, as an engineering department specially formed to take up marine projects in coastal sector, which was instrumental and succeeded in getting sanction and financial assistance from the centre. Kerala has 24 fishing harbours including 10 ongoing projects now. All the projects were proposed and submitted to Government of India by this department for sanction and financial assistance, after conduction of investigation works.
Considering expertise in doing marine structures, Government of India have declared and given consultancy status to this department for taking up harbour projects for other maritime states/ institutions. HED is the service department of Fisheries Department for the execution of their infrastructure projects.
Proper investigation and design is essential in marine construction, especially in breakwater construction, as there is no theoretical solution available in most of the cases, and we adopt model studies for this. In tourism projects at seashore, it requires enough experience and specialization in marine engineering for design and construction. So, the Tourism Department declared HED as their service department for doing projects in coastal area. Local Self Government has also declared this department as their service department in doing projects that require specialization in marine engineering.
This department has just started doing numerical model studies after acquiring the software recently. This will help in getting better results in harbour projects, as some of coefficients in the software are directly related to site conditions, with the field experienced agency is doing the model study. Erosion mitigation measures near the harbours can be designed properly and monitored in future.
In general, HED does all types of construction works such as breakwater, groynes, wharfs, jetties, dredging, bridges, roads, buildings, water tanks, beach nourishment /stabilization works, fish ponds/hatcheries/farms.