Steel sheet piles have been used for over a century to build cofferdams in rivers and canals. The interlocks of hot rolled sheet piles are quite watertight, sufficiently to limit the amount of water seeping through them into the cofferdam. However, for high water pressure, interlock sealants or additional measures may be taken to reduce the amount of water ingress.

Small cofferdams are usually built with standard corrugated sections, preferably Z-piles.

Deep cofferdams, for instance to build locks and dams in rivers, require multiple strutting levels, of for even deeper cofferdams, such as in the Mississippi river in the USA, large cellular structures using AS 500 sections were used several times. The advantage of steel sheet piles is that they can be recovered and even re-used in the same project a few times.

Despite the fact that they are quite rare, groynes in rivers to protect the riverbank from erosion can also be built with steel sheet piles. A recent project in La Pastora in Peru (2015) used thousands of tonnes of the HZ-M/AZ system for this uncommon application.

Steel sheet piles are an excellent solution for regeneration programmes of old wharfs along rivers and canals, or in inland ports, as well as for rehabilitation of land along rivers and canals. Rochester Riverside is a quite recent project in the UK that illustrates this type of application.