Convergence of naval and commercial shipbuilding standards

Traditionally, naval ships were designed by individual navies to their own rules, through their autonomous engineering houses. Today they are progressively being designed to commercial standards.

In an address to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority?s ?Natship? conference, John Dikkenberg, business manager for the Anzac Alliance, said a revolution was occurring in the way naval ships were adopting commercial design and maintenance standards. The application of these standards brings significant advantages but impose on navies an unfamiliar regime of class rules and survey discipline.

Navies go commercial

Dikkenberg said the growing alignment of warship and commercial design resulted from the drive for lightweight cost effective hulls which forced modern warships to use small thickness scantlings. However, there are unique requirements for structural strength in a number of areas including the mounting of armament, stability, water tight and weather tight integrity, flight deck strength, replenishment at sea requirements and substantial shock tolerance.

The move towards commercial standards also stems from the evolution of commercial rules for noise, vibration, dangerous cargoes, high-speed craft and commercial submarines. Navies also faced greater pressure to meet civil safety standards imposed under the regimes of SOLAS and commitments to Duty of Care.

There is also pressure to reduce manning, the single largest cost of naval vessel ownership, by adopting commercial standards in machinery surveillance and move to totally unmanned machinery spaces. Perhaps the next largest element in the cost of ownership is maintenance. Navies have traditionally used a regime of early preventative maintenance to guarantee high levels of availability. Naval standards are rapidly aligning themselves to commercial practices where the use of condition monitoring, remote assessment and repair by replacement is common. Extended periods between survey dockings are also becoming more prevalent.

Australian experience

With such concepts being explored worldwide, it was inevitable that classification societies would also become involved and discussions between navies and classification societies such as the ABS, GL, DNV and LR over the last decade have produced a set of naval ship rules (NSR). Lloyds Register in particular has worked closely with the former UK?s Defence Evaluation and Research Agency (DERA) to combine the best of the merchant and naval ship design philosophies to develop the NSR. Australia has had the opportunity to interface with many of these and has enjoyed observer status on many of their working groups.

Although a number of societies are attempting to introduce naval rules, across the board the maturity of the rules (with possibly the exception of LR) leaves at lot to be desired. If classification societies are to play a long-term role, they need to define standards that are entirely applicable.

The shift to some commercial standards and commercial regulation of naval standards is beginning to show early results and will ultimately lead to considerable benefits. Around the world today, naval tankers sail inside class rules established by classification societies whilst paramilitary vessels such as the 3,000 tonne French Floreal class surveillance frigates, are built totally to commercial rules. There are however, some dangers and risks such as in the case of damage control capabilities which may be compromised.

Conclusions

Despite the teething problems, Dikkenberg believes the continuing alignment of standards for many of the world?s naval ships is inevitable. There will, however, remain requirements for combatant ships to remain unique and in truth, alignment, as the cynic would say, will be more about society certification than alignment with commercial standards.

Assuming the differences between naval and commercial ships continue to blur, navies may find an avenue to cheaper ships, and certainly those that bring a reduced cost of ownership. For commercial fleets it might see the osmosis of good naval practice into their rules, whilst for the shipbuilding industry in Australia, it might become the catalyst for flexibility.