Two new shipyards ? different concepts

Completely new shipyards are rare, but two yards that stand out are the Kvaerner Philadelphia yard in the US and

Yantai Raffles

in China.

While the Philadelphia yard has been designed primarily to build containerships, the Chinese yard has been designed to be flexible to accommodate a wide variety of vessels including offshore platforms.

The Philadelphia yard stems from a December 1997 agreement between Kvaerner ASA & publicly controlled PSDC (Philadelphia Shipbuilding Development Corporation) to create a commercial shipyard in the States. This meant building a state-of-the-art facility using modern shipbuilding equipment and European shipbuilding methodology, including self-directed teams. It also meant extensive training for the workforce.

The shipyard project itself started early 1998 in the western corner of the former Philadelphia Naval ShipYard (PNSY activities closed down in 1995). It encompasses a total of 112 acres (about 45 ha), which means that the yard is quite compact for a throughput of 25,000 ton steel/yr. The project was publicly funded through US local, state and federal funds with the government funding the initial construction of the yard, with the remaining funds meant for an extensive five-year training plan for the workforce etc.

Repeated success

Kvaerner?s approach was to repeat the Warnow story (renovation of the yard in early/mid 1990s) as downscaled to 25,000 ton/yr steel capacity. “The project work itself was primarily driven by Kvaerner Shipbuilding experts from Europe, with the assistance of Kvaerner Construction Inc (today part of Skanska) on the civil construction side,” says Pertti Rinta-Panttila, VP Planning at Kvaerner Philadelphia Shipyard.

Production facilities were designed based on the experience from Europe (especially from Warnow), and early on it was decided that everything should be new on the new Kvaerner Philadelphia Shipyard (KPSI), with following exceptions, explains Rinta-Panttila:

l Dry dock # 4 (333m x 45m) to be upgraded, including adding an intermediate dock gate to allow tandem building and a skidding system to move the 85 m long part of the vessel from the ?inner? dock to the ?outer? dock

l Dry dock # 5 (same size as 4) to be upgraded to an outfitting basin

l Old administration/storage building to be partly renovated for storage and maintenance

purposes

l 70 ton outfitting crane to be upgraded from one old PNSY cranes to be used by the dock # 5

l 16 ton magnetic crane (old PNSY crane) to be upgraded to be used as the plate and profile handling crane at KPSI steel storage

Buildings demolished

All other buildings on site were demolished in 1998 and, between 1998 and 2000, the new KPSI was built.

The yard today

is equipped with a 38,500m2 fabrication and assembly workshop that is equipped with a large panel line.

The fabrication and assembly shop also has an outfitting shop and a curved panel line, and a section assembly shop.

For transport, the yard is equipped with a 660 ton gantry crane + two 50 ton slewing cranes around dock # 4. It also has two 420 ton heavy lift transporters with a combined max capacity of 750 ton. A 33,000m2 heavy-duty bituminous road way and 57,000m2 heavy-duty crushed stone area have also been put in.

European equipment

Rinta-Panttila told The Motor Ship: “A large proportion of the equipment was purchased from Europe, well-known companies such as IMG, Messer-Griesheim, Kranendonk, Heussler, Grabener, Ploeg, Hugh Smith, Konecranes, ABB, Wallace-Coast, KIROW etc. All equipment was based on the most modern proven technology, development prototypes were intentionally avoided.”

The yard project faced the normal big project problems, including both cost and schedule challenges for various reasons. “Especially, the cost level of civil construction in Philadelphia area was an unpleasant surprise,” says Rinta-Panttila. He explains that because of that the scope had to be adjusted during the process and that?s why some further investment is still needed to finalise the original target, which is to reach the 25,000 tons steel/year capacity.

Production at KPSI started in early 2000, with plate for the first container vessels (CV 2600) started on March 31 2000. “The start up was intentionally quite slow, and gradually production has reached its level today,” says Rinta-Panttila. “The CV 2600 vessel is a ?US cousin? for several vessels built at Kvaerner Warnow in1990s.”

Hindsight

When asked what should have been done differently in the KPSI yard project, he answers that the yard, in general, has proven to be functioning, but that maybe the biggest mistake was the under-estimation of the civil construction cost level in Philadelphia area. “To reach the original ideal scope would have meant having more funding available, but with the cost constraints some further scope adjustments in the beginning would have created a more balanced yard today (maybe also slightly down-scaled from the original capacity levels), and also the need for additional investments would have been minimised,” says Rinta-Panttila.

Kvaerner?s own financial situation in 2000 and 2001 increased significantly the challenges at KPSI.

The production lines and equipment have proven to function after normal start-up problems. “The biggest challenge today is to learn to utilise them in the most optimal way, a lot of development has occurred during the nearly three-year operational period, but a lot of opportunities for further improvements still exist.

“The biggest challenge with KPSI has been and today still is on the ?soft? side – recruiting and training the proper workforce and organisation for the yard.”

In this area KPSI has found out, the hard way, that there didn?t really exist the huge pool of experienced and efficient shipbuilders as a heritage of the closed Naval Yard. Recruiting faced big challenges from the beginning and the good condition of US economy in general made it even tougher. Also, the Kvaerner training approach didn?t work out the way it was expected (as it had in Europe). “Several changes in the On the Job Training (OJT) approach have been made, and that process is still ongoing,” says Rinta-Panttila. During the past year, several shipbuilders from other Aker-Kvaerner Yards have been training the KPSI workforce on the job, and that method has been a clear boost to the efficiency of the yard.

The yard today

Today KPSI has about 850 employees and, out of those the production workforce numbers about 630. In addition KPSI has about 200 subcontractors on-site and, also assistance from other Aker-Kvaerner yards.

KPSI has a firm contract for two CV 2600 container vessels from Matson Navigation Company. The first vessel has all the steel units on it and will be launched early this year, with delivery scheduled for the summer. Vessel 002 is proceeding well in production, with the keel laying planned for March 2003, and delivery spring 2004. “All the signs today show very good development in efficiency and productivity in vessel 002,” says Rinta-Panttila. The production start of a third, similar container vessel was in January. He finishes by saying that “the yard?s personnel and management are looking forward for the future ? this yard has excellent possibilities to meet the market needs in US and the productivity and efficiency targets set in the beginning of the yard project”.

Yantai Raffles

Brian Chang, CEO of

Yantai Raffles

was the person who had the foresight to see the success of the yard. He built, owned and successfully operated the Promet Yard from 1971 to 1994. It was during this time that he foresaw that shipbuilding would not be an everlasting industry in Singapore and therefore went searching for a new location to set up a new shipyard ? “keeping in mind that eventually the shipbuilding industry will have its point of gravity in China” explains Philip Schreven, project engineer at the yard.

From this search it appeared that the Yantai site provided potential to develop a new shipyard. Schreven explains: “The rock solid land ensures the capability to take heavy loads without having to invest in expensive pile foundations, similarly construction of one of the world?s largest dry-docks did not require pile foundations.” The dry climate in Yantai ensures minimum downtime for construction and the area is not subjected to hurricanes or other threats from nature. The shipyard location provides unrestricted access to the sea, hence a heavy-duty quayside was constructed, directly accessible for ocean-going cargo carriers. Neither water depth nor bridges obstruct the entrance. Another advantage of the location was that in addition to delivering equipment directly to the shipyard, Yantai also has at its disposal a substantial container port at minimum distance from the shipyard. Furthermore, with Yantai being a middle-sized Chinese city, it provides a vast potential workforce.

Yantai-Raffles Shipyard builds for the offshore oil and gas industry, ie (deepwater) floating production and/or storage platforms, offshore construction/drilling platforms and vessels, anchor handling supply vessels, etc and, as such the yard does not avoid prototype projects.

To accommodate the construction of this variety of projects, the project-orientated yard has been set up to provide maximum flexibility. That is, two construction bays are covered by 370 tonne gantry cranes with a hook-height of 60m and a span of 100m. Furthermore, what Yantai claims is the world?s largest onshore pedestal crane, enables modules or heavy equipment to be lifting on at outfitting stage, creating The crane has a capacity of 2,000 tonne at 30m using its main hooks, and a jib hook capacity of 200 tonne at 85m.

The yard has a substantial blasting and cutting capability (four CNC plasma underwater cutting machines) together with the piping shop provide the projects with their required material.

Said Schreven: “Of course the yard layout in Yantai was established using the experience gained in Promet.” The physical layout of Yantai however does not match that of Promet. He explains: “What I mean is that lessons learned at Promet have of course been applied in Yantai, but the tools (gantries, 2,000-tonne crane, big dock and such were not present at Promet) are different.”

The layout of Yantai came about by aiming at getting the right tools, arranged in such a way that they can accommodate a wide variety of offshore projects. Hence the two large construction bays served by two gantries with adequate lifting capacity, hook height and span enabling them to fit over just about any offshore project. The gantry cranes and the 2,000 tonne pedestal crane are of Chinese manufacture, as are the blasting plants.

“The 2,000 tonne enables us, for example, to manufacture the deckhouse of an AHTS at another location in the yard and lift it onto the hull at a later stage. In this way we can build pieces and modules, anywhere in the yard.” He explains: “If we did not have the crane this would be impossible and the deckhouses would have to be built in the same spot as the hull ? because of the 2,000 tonne crane we have flexibility.”

Projects are built onshore as much as possible, ensuring minimum docking time for completion. Yantai-Raffles Shipyard uses state of the art 3-D software from the earliest possible stage (bidding stage) all the way to delivery and beyond (maintenance). This software produces a virtual reality environment providing maximum understanding of the project even before steel has been cut.

“The 3-D software, FEM-software, etc we use and other software, such as ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning; similar package to SAP) are mostly American ? the 3-D software for example is from IBM-Dassault Systemes; the same as used by Boeing and Airbus,” explains Schreven.

He concludes by saying: “The Chinese government facilitates easy expandability, which in the future will take place based on the same principles as the shipyard has been built on during the past six years.”