Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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S.M.A. said:
I suspect Putin is happy with the delay, I suspect cash flow is an issue right now and the penalty incurred by France reduces the costs of the ships to Russia.
New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy
- Thread starter GAP
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I suspect Putin is happy with the delay, I suspect cash flow is an issue right now and the penalty incurred by France reduces the costs of the ships to Russia.
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Musing time ---
I have been hard on Irving for the high price of their initial design contract, especially when compared to the price the Danes paid for their frigates.
Suppose, just suppose, that some of that price is going to sort out stuff that the Danes had already figured out on their other ships, specifically all the systems they were going to put into the hull.
Weapons were already determined, and how they would integrate, through the Danish Stanflex module system.
Did the Danes have current, modern,standards for a common bridge, engine room and CIC with existing simulators?
How about standards for radars and sonars?
Engines?
If all of those questions were answered ahead of the Huitfeldt contract then the design work and the associated costs would be significantly reduced.
Is it possible that one of the reasons for the Irving delay and cost is to get answers to some/all of those questions for both the AOPS and the CSC to ensure maximum commonality between the classes and reduced construction, operation and maintenance costs in the long run?
Or am I being overly optimistic?
I have been hard on Irving for the high price of their initial design contract, especially when compared to the price the Danes paid for their frigates.
Suppose, just suppose, that some of that price is going to sort out stuff that the Danes had already figured out on their other ships, specifically all the systems they were going to put into the hull.
Weapons were already determined, and how they would integrate, through the Danish Stanflex module system.
Did the Danes have current, modern,standards for a common bridge, engine room and CIC with existing simulators?
How about standards for radars and sonars?
Engines?
If all of those questions were answered ahead of the Huitfeldt contract then the design work and the associated costs would be significantly reduced.
Is it possible that one of the reasons for the Irving delay and cost is to get answers to some/all of those questions for both the AOPS and the CSC to ensure maximum commonality between the classes and reduced construction, operation and maintenance costs in the long run?
Or am I being overly optimistic?
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Kirkhill said:
You cant really use the danish price as a guideline for what a modern frigate should cost, because it is little more than a smoke and mirrors number. The official project cost is just the price that was thought to be acceptable to the public/ taxpayers.
The ~330 million dollar per ship often quoted is a result of several different factors: Use of VERY creative accounting, employing cheap baltic labour, building the ships at an efficient and modern civilian yard, heavy reuse of existing weapons/equipment/items (worth $70 million per ship alone), a lot of "fitted for, not with" kit + not including a lot of the weapons and ammunition costs.
http://www.ndia.org/Divisions/Divisions/International/Documents/U.S.-Denmark%20Defense%20Industry%20Seminar/Danish%20frigate%20program%20visit%20USN%20May%202014.pdf
Then there is the fact that they were basically half a gift from the (now late) owner of the Lindø yard (OSS) , Mr Mærsk McKinney Møller , who happened to be very patriotic AND fond of the navy. OSS actually lost money building the Support ships and frigates, so without Mr. Møller they would not have been built in Odense. He alone kept the Yard alive and made sure they got the order. When he stepped down as chairman/head of the board at OSS, the decision was immediately made to close the yard as soon as the frigate order was completed.
In short...the real price for a fully armed and equipped Iver Huitfeldt in RDN service is going to be in the vicinity of $400-450 million...and for anybody else probably at least 500-550 million, in todays dollars possibly somewhat more.
.
Yes ...most derived from work on the Absalon class, some on earlier StanFlex vessels.
How about standards for radars and sonars?
That decision was actually made pretty late in the design process , after overall size, hull form and superstructure design was settled on. There were design drafts showing both AEGIS/SPY-1 and another version with SAMPSON/ CEA-MOUNT and SMART-S Mk2 . Both systems was in the running against SMART-L/APAR but ultimately lost out and the contract with Thales Netherlands was signed in December 2006.
Well , using the Absalon design as a basis for the frigates, undoubtedly saved a lot of time and money.
However, they are not as similar as outward appearances would suggest and quite a lot of redesign changes was necessary on the Huitfeldts.
No, i think it's very sensible explanation. Having in mind all the recent and ongoing military procurement scandals , both in Canada and elsewhere ,and with everything at stake, you cant blame Irving for wanting to do there "homework" properly.
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Really enlightening MKP and thanks again.
Having said all of that though, it still strikes me that at MUSD 500-600 the Huitfeldts still represent a cost effective solution when compared to some of the other offerings on the market.
Having said all of that though, it still strikes me that at MUSD 500-600 the Huitfeldts still represent a cost effective solution when compared to some of the other offerings on the market.
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Hi Mike,MikeKiloPapa said:
I think the design is a great choice for Canada, however there is no way we will get the ships for even under $600 million each. I will be shocked, and pleased, if Irving can deliver the ships for $1 billion each, and this is more realistic. Again, if it is less I will be pleased, but it won't happen. I understand the budget for the 15 ships was $26 billion, so that would be just over $1.7 billion each, so how does one make an Iver cost $1.7 billion, which is what Irving will be thinking? Now, if the budget numbers come down, then great, but when does that ever happen?
I also hope we go with anti-ballistic quality steel, and am wondering if they can increase the number of MK41 cells from 32 to at least 48, while keeping the extra ESSM lauchers, so increase the length slighty, al least on the Destroyers.
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AlexanderM said:
I know and i agree....the ~$600 million figure was my estimate of the IH's being built in Denmark(and Estonia/Lithuania) for a foreign navy
There is of course a lot of unknowns involved, even when choosing an existing design. A lot depends on the level of "Canadiazation " being applied to the selected design.
If you where to choose the IH for instance, i would expect you to want a different CMS (SAAB 9LV/LM Canada instead of Terma's C-Flex ) , a locally produced Platform/Machinery Management system in place of Logimatics IPMS, Decoy and self protection systems (MASS instead of SKWS), and possibly changes to the propulsion and power generating systems( perhaps going to CODAG or CODLAG setup)etc etc
Integrating all these new systems is going to add to the project cost, but if Irving cant build the ships for less than a Billion Can$, then they are doing something wrong.
Actually lengthening of the hull is not required to increase the VLS complement. Since Canada has little use for the Stanflex positions these slots could instead be used for additional MK41's( they have the size and structural strength to accommodate the larger launchers) . I'd suggest ditching the MK48 ESSM VLS and Harpoon launchers, and go to a MK41 only solution. That would give you a total of 64 VLS for SM2/ SM3/ SM6 , ESSM , LRASM, ASROC and possibly TAC-TOM's.
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Yes , one should think so, but despite that, Naval Team Denmark ( http://www.navalteam.dk/) has found it difficult ( read: damn near impossible ) to successfully market their ship designs.
The truth is....they simply cant compete with the much larger Dutch, German, French, Italian and Spanish yards, who all receive massive backing and support, political as well as financial, from their respective governments. So despite initially gaining a lot of foreign interest and positive feedback, orders have gone to the big established builders, who have offered favorable deals involving huge off-sets , tech transfers, industrial cooperation etc etc . Something NTD unfortunately haven't been able to match.
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MikeKiloPapa said:
The optics of this would be interesting, as in how could Irving charge a ridiculous price for ships that were so affordable. This may actually swing things in favour of getting a reasonable price, however once a price is set, 26 billion for 15 ships, it is very trickly to go back, especially in Canada. The justification would end up being right over the top.
If I'm not mistaken, the navy wants room for mission modules (containers), at least they did, and the Ivers have the room. So they can pick and choose what they want in the Frigates vs the Destroyers. Great to know they can go up to 64 vls, this is the kind of flexibility that makes the design so ideal for our needs.MikeKiloPapa said:
Thank you for all the great information!
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This is what has been happening on the West Coast. It seems it takes a day or two to build a modern shipyard.
http://www.seaspan.com/shipyard-modernization-project/
And the East Coast has been making progress as well.
http://www.irvingshipbuilding.com/irving-shipbuilding-news.aspx
Reminder on Schedule -
Vancouver
3x Fisheries Vessels - steel cut late 2014 (now) with first vessel delivered 2016 (2 years)
1x Oceanographic Vessel steel cut - steel cut 2016 with delivery 2017 (3 years)
2x JSS - steel cut 2016 with deliveries in 2019 and 2020 (5 years)
1x Polar Icebreaker - steel cut 2018 to be delivered in 2021 (7 years)
5x 65m Multi Task Vessels
5x 75m Offshore Patrol Vessels
Halifax
6-8x AOPS - steel cut 2015 with first vessel delivered in 2018 (4 years)
12-16 CSC - steel cut 2020 with first vessel delivered in 2025 (11 years)
That schedule means that Canadian industry has been able to plan with a 20 to 30 year horizon with some confidence that they will get their investments back and the government will have supplied an industry that when the planned vessels reach 25 years of age there will still be an industry around to build new ships.
Admittedly the RCN and the Coast Guard could do with more vessels faster.
I wonder though, if, once the government gets the programme up and running, and ships start being built, and unions and management become convinced the programme is here to stay, (perhaps it will require re-election of the government failing an unlikely all-party agreement on military expenditures) if the government couldn't be convinced to buy some additional vessels either from offshore or even from other Canadian yards. Davie's docks are available produce additional ships. And there are other yards available to produce vessels of under 1000 tonnes.
Just wondering....
http://www.seaspan.com/shipyard-modernization-project/
And the East Coast has been making progress as well.
http://www.irvingshipbuilding.com/irving-shipbuilding-news.aspx
Reminder on Schedule -
Vancouver
3x Fisheries Vessels - steel cut late 2014 (now) with first vessel delivered 2016 (2 years)
1x Oceanographic Vessel steel cut - steel cut 2016 with delivery 2017 (3 years)
2x JSS - steel cut 2016 with deliveries in 2019 and 2020 (5 years)
1x Polar Icebreaker - steel cut 2018 to be delivered in 2021 (7 years)
5x 65m Multi Task Vessels
5x 75m Offshore Patrol Vessels
Halifax
6-8x AOPS - steel cut 2015 with first vessel delivered in 2018 (4 years)
12-16 CSC - steel cut 2020 with first vessel delivered in 2025 (11 years)
That schedule means that Canadian industry has been able to plan with a 20 to 30 year horizon with some confidence that they will get their investments back and the government will have supplied an industry that when the planned vessels reach 25 years of age there will still be an industry around to build new ships.
Admittedly the RCN and the Coast Guard could do with more vessels faster.
I wonder though, if, once the government gets the programme up and running, and ships start being built, and unions and management become convinced the programme is here to stay, (perhaps it will require re-election of the government failing an unlikely all-party agreement on military expenditures) if the government couldn't be convinced to buy some additional vessels either from offshore or even from other Canadian yards. Davie's docks are available produce additional ships. And there are other yards available to produce vessels of under 1000 tonnes.
Just wondering....
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Maybe they are going for a bigger more capable design , than the "eurofrigates" that have been proposed so far ? Perhaps something more along the line of a Type 45 or an evolved Arleigh Burke design ?AlexanderM said:
That , at least , would go a ways to explain the sticker price
Does that figure include the cost of the Halifax Shipyard Modernization project ?
you are most welcome :bowing:
Since i'm going to occasionally be working with the RCN in the arctic
, i take great interest in your navy and your very ambitious shipbuilding program(of which i am slightly envious , i must admit ) Though the Royal Canadian Navy is much larger than ours , i nonetheless think we have a lot in common and face a lot of the same challenges in the future ( stupid shortsighted politicians, lack of funds* and increased activity in the arctic etc etc)
*An active foreign policy coupled with an unwillingness to allocate the required resources , necessitated by said policy, has brought the RDN close to breaking point both in terms of manpower and equipment.
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One thing to keep in mind is the actual contractual framework the ships are being built around; under NSPS, each yard has separate contracts for design and build only. ISSC for AOPS/JSS (aka AJISS) is completely separate from the two independent build contracts. The CSC design/build will also be a different contract, then yet another contract for the ISSC.
Short of specifying specific equipment in the requirements (which our contracting authority won't let us do), it's very difficult to get common equipment. It makes all the sense in the world to build two platforms at the same time, and have them use common equipment (same platform management system for example), or even better use similar equipment to what is on the post-FELEX Halifax Class ships. It's a huge challenge to do though with how our procurement system and performance based statement of requirements are.
The one thing that may help is that the AJISS contract may be awarded prior to the JSS build starting, so the prime for that may be able to offer input to VSL on the choice of equipment; but AOPS will already be too far down the path, particularily on long lead items.
One other interesting part is because the build and ISSC contracts are separate, Canada will be buying all initial spares from the builder, but the preferred sparing arrangement for ISSCs is for the contractor to own all the spares, so will they buy them off us? Then there is trying to account for contractor owned spares in DRMIS (our particularized SAP program), which is required under the 'total asset visibility' policy!
:stars:
Short of specifying specific equipment in the requirements (which our contracting authority won't let us do), it's very difficult to get common equipment. It makes all the sense in the world to build two platforms at the same time, and have them use common equipment (same platform management system for example), or even better use similar equipment to what is on the post-FELEX Halifax Class ships. It's a huge challenge to do though with how our procurement system and performance based statement of requirements are.
The one thing that may help is that the AJISS contract may be awarded prior to the JSS build starting, so the prime for that may be able to offer input to VSL on the choice of equipment; but AOPS will already be too far down the path, particularily on long lead items.
One other interesting part is because the build and ISSC contracts are separate, Canada will be buying all initial spares from the builder, but the preferred sparing arrangement for ISSCs is for the contractor to own all the spares, so will they buy them off us? Then there is trying to account for contractor owned spares in DRMIS (our particularized SAP program), which is required under the 'total asset visibility' policy!
:stars:
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I beleive the said program was $300 million and is now complete.MikeKiloPapa said:
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For those thinking of the CSC:
Navantia positions itself for the Canadian Surface Combatant program
FRIDAY OCTOBER 3, 2014 12:09
Navantia is currently participating in the Canadian Surface Combatant program (CSC) in collaboration with the American Lockheed Martin and using the experience embodied in the F-100 frigates for the Spanish Navy, the F -310 Norwegian and Australian AWD destroyers. The CSC will replace the Halifax-class frigates and Iroquois class destroyers, so the possibility of two types of vessels using the same hull and include advanced air defense capabilities is proposed, which would benefit Navantia for having the Lockheed Martin Aegis system installed on all three ships.(JNG)
(...SNIPPED)
Defensa.com (original article in Spanish)
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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You don’t have to go far to see the most visible sign of Seaspan’s $155 million two-year overhaul of Vancouver Shipyards. Just look up — way, way up.
Since the spring, a massive new gantry crane — the largest in Canada — has stood 80 metres tall on the shipyards site at the foot of Pemberton Avenue.
Its presence on the North Vancouver waterfront sends a message: that the shipyards are back as an economic engine, on a scale not seen since massive federally-supported contracts halted 30 years ago.
This time around, Ottawa is again fuelling the resurgence of the West Coast shipyard industry, with its national shipbuilding program.
In 2011, Seaspan won the right to negotiate contracts to build seven federal non-combat ships, worth an estimated $8 billion.
Those ships include two massive navy joint support ships and a polar icebreaker.
But to ready itself to do that work, the shipyard had to reinvent itself. It had to “go big.”
The $18 million gantry crane is indicative of that new scale. It was shipped in three pieces from China in a heavy lift ship.
To put it up, the company contracted by Seaspan to provide it had to first take apart a second 1,600-tonne 110-metre-tall crawler crane in Russia, put it on a ship, then offload it at Lynnterm Terminal. “It took 82 trucks to get it from Lynn Terminal to our property,” said Tony Matergio, vice-president and general manger of Vancouver Shipyards. “It’s just a monster.”
The crawler crane is long gone now, but the permanent gantry crane, dubbed “Big Blue”, will do the heavy lifting when building for the first national shipbuilding contract gets underway next year.
Its job will be to move massive pieces of ship, weighing anywhere from 80 to 300 tonnes, into place for final assembly.
That approach to building ships would be foreign to those who worked at places like Burrard Dry Dock and Versatile Pacific — North Vancouver’s iconic shipyards of the past.
“If you wind the clock back quite a number of decades, ships were built one piece of wood or one piece of steel at a time and erected on the berth,” said Matergio. “Pipefitters and electricians would show up when the ship was floating.”
Those days are gone, he said. Today, large shipyards operate more like manufacturing plants, building modular pieces on what is essentially an assembly line.
Vancouver Shipyards has gone from a yard that mainly built and repaired barges and small vessels to one designed for large ship construction — a very different facility.
To help with the design of the new system, Seaspan brought over experts from STX Korea — a huge modern shipyard — for advice early in the process.
“For shipyard design, part of it is how much land you have to deal with. Part of it is the particular type of ships (you will be building),” said Matergio. “Shipyards are designed to build the particular product they’re good at.”
In the new shipyard, steel plates that arrive on a flatbed truck come first to the sub-assembly building, where they are cut by two new state-of-the-art computer-controlled cutters, including a plasma cutter.
Steel is brought to the shipyard as it’s needed. “Years ago we’d buy all the steel for the ship the same day and it would show up and we’d store it,” said Matergio. “We don’t do that anymore. We just have it delivered as required.”
A computer program with instructions on how to cut each piece of steel is transmitted to the robotic cutter remotely from the shipyard’s technical office.
The machine is extremely accurate — down to millimetres, said William Clewes, Vancouver Shipyards’ director of operations.
When it comes out, each piece of cut steel is automatically etched with a number indicating which project it is for and how it fits together with other components. Then it gets collected with other pieces needed for the next step in assembly and put together in a kit.
Once the shipbuilding program is fully up and running, there’ll be pieces of steel continuously moving on to the next station. Most parts of the shipyard will operate 16 hours a day, five days a week.
Everything in the sub-assembly building is new, said Clewes. “Including the building.”
About two-thirds of the $155 million spent modernizing Vancouver Shipyards and about $15 million spent on Seaspan’s Victoria Shipyards — where final sea trials and testing of vessels will take place — was spent on new buildings and facilities. One-third was spent on equipment, which came from countries around the world.
A new 1,000-tonne Nieldand cold forming press in the forming shop next door, for instance, came from Holland. It’s technology used throughout the world that allows shaping of steel into three-dimensional pieces without heating it — even the two-inch thick steel that will eventually be used for the polar icebreaker.
Another centrepiece of the modernized shipyard is the “panel line” — where large flat pieces of steel are welded together and reinforced with angle bars.
A robotic single-sided welder at one end of this assembly line can weld two 18-millimetre thick plates together in one pass — and take a fraction of the time it would have before — 20 minutes as opposed to several hours.
As the large steel panels move down the conveyer, hydraulic arms press angle bars into place on the panel, where they are automatically “tack welded” into place before moving down to a final station where a robotic welder with six welding heads can weld three bars at a time.
There are fewer people doing this work than there would have been on the task in the past. Each machine generally has one welder and one crane operator.
But neither Clewes nor George MacPherson, president of the B.C. Shipyard General Workers Federation — which represents many of the trades at the shipyard — are concerned about that.
Work is simply concentrated in other areas of shipbuilding, farther along in the process, said Clewes.
“Stuff that’s left requires higher skill,” said MacPherson. “There’s still a lot of manual labour.”
There are about 200 people working in trades at the shipyards today, but that is expected to dramatically increase to about 1,000 people within the next three years.
The company, which currently has 17 apprentices working in Vancouver Shipyards, expects to hire more apprentices by next year and re-train those who are already qualified with transferable skills from other industries.
Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of interest.
“It’s a well-paid job and it looks like it’ll be a well-paid job,” said MacPherson, citing an average rate of pay of about $38 an hour, plus benefits.
Unlike many existing jobs that fit that description, a job at the shipyards lets local workers stay home and see their families, says MacPherson, “as opposed to going to Fort McMurray.”
Jacob Burnikell, a 35-year-old welding foreman who’s been working on and off in shipyards for the past seven years, understands that. “This is huge for North Vancouver,” he said. “The opportunity to have that many jobs accessible potentially for a long period of time is huge for any community.”
Of the 35 people who report to him now “probably eight or 10 of those could be in Alberta or up north, but they’re here,” he said.
“I’ve got some good young people coming back now. They’re ready to work at the shipyard.”
It’s a definite improvement over downturns in the past where he’s had to lay people off. “You build a team then you lose that team,” he said. “Hopefully (now) the crew I have will see the start of the vessel and the end of the vessel.”
In the block assembly shop, telescoping pins — or pin jigs — support pieces of shaped steel while they are manually welded into larger pieces.
At the end of the shop are two large chunks of what will eventually be the new cable ferry — one piece upside down. At this stage, pieces are often built upside down and turned over, said Clewes. “It’s easier for a welder to weld down than to weld above him.”
Under the new system, workers who arrive at a dedicated workstation will start the day with a work order detailing their tasks. “All the material will be there, all the tools will be there,” said Clewes.
Welding torches hang from cranes inside the shop, fed by 500 lb spools of welding wire. “Guys don’t have to carry stuff into the work area,” said Clewes. “They just drop it from the crane.”
From here, bigger assembled pieces might go into a new paint shop — where state-of-the-art ventilation and dust recovery systems have been installed. Or they may head into one of several “pre-outfit” bays, where the mechanical parts of the ship including engines, pipes, cables and electrical systems will be installed before the large modular blocks are put together — a radical departure from shipbuilding of the past.
The systems going into the large ships will come from around the world. Seaspan already has partnership agreements with the Canadian subsidiaries of a number of multinational companies —ImTech Marine Canada, Thales Canada, Computer Sciences Corporation and Alion Canada — specializing in marine technology and defence contracts.
Two new self-propelled modular transport systems — up to 32 rolling axles that can lift 1,000 tonnes and are operated by remote-control chest backs — will then take the massive blocks of the ship to the pre-erection area of the yard to be put together under huge multi-storey shelters.
When the blocks are 150 or 200 tonnes, the gantry crane will lift them on to the berth. “That’s when they form a ship, when they put them together,” said Clewes. “Those blocks will be put together like large Lego blocks.”
When the ship is built, it will move on to a load-out pier, be put on a floating dry dock, taken to deep water and floated off. The last five per cent of the build, including final testing, will be completed at Seaspan’s Victoria Shipyards — near to the Canadian navy base at Esquimalt.
The joint support ships won’t be the first ships built at the modernized yard, but they are certainly the biggest ships that are part of the contract and ones that have attracted the most attention.
Both the parliamentary budget officer and the auditor general have questioned whether $2.6 billion set aside by Ottawa will be enough to build two ships, noting the government hasn’t adjusted that figure in a number of years, despite delays in deciding to build the ships.
The political ante in getting the ships built was also recently upped when Ottawa announced it will decommission two of its existing support ships earlier than expected over concerns about their structural integrity.
When finished, the 173-metre ships will be the biggest vessels ever built in western Canada.
But depending on when contracts get signed with Ottawa, Seaspan isn’t expected to start building those ships until late 2016 or early 2017.
To start off, Seaspan will ramp up its production with three fisheries science vessels. The contract for the first of those — a 55-metre research vessel — and production on it is expected to start in earnest in the spring.
Six months after the first ship is begun, the second vessel will be started and eight months after that, work on a third will begin. A 78-metre oceanographic vessel will follow.
In fact, two of the large modular blocks currently being built at the shipyard alongside the new cable ferry will eventually form part of the hull of the first fisheries vessel. Building the two blocks — which will each measure 12 by 12 by 10 metres — allows the company to test its equipment and procedures before production pressure mounts.
Not that anyone’s complaining.
To date, Ottawa has signed an “umbrella agreement” with Seaspan, indicating its intention to go ahead with the first seven vessels. A further 10 ships worth about another $3 billion have also been announced.
In rough terms, that’s about 15 years of work, say shipyard bosses. And they are confident there will be more to follow.
That’s good news for people like Burnikell, who got his start in shipyards years ago when a friend told him about an outfit looking for someone to wash the bottom of the boats. “I rolled out the pressure washer and a foreman came over and said, ‘You don’t want to wash boats. I need some help fitting this plate.’”
He hasn’t looked back since. “Everybody’s who’s in the shipbuilding industry, they have a big sense of pride of workmanship,” he said.
The modernization project represents a spectacular turnaround for an industry that struggled to stay afloat in the decades since large federal contracts dried up at the end of the 1980s and B.C. Ferries — once a mainstay of the business — opted to build its large new ferries in European shipyards.
At the end of this two-year upgrade however, Matergio has no hesitation saying, “We are Canada’s most technologically advanced shipyard.”
In the short term, “Our order book is full,” he said.
But in the long term, he sees the federal contract as the beginning, not the end, of the future for the shipyard industry.
Burnikell is looking forward to working on the big ships. “There’s something extremely special about building a vessel and launching a vessel,” he said. “Knowing that vessel is going to be around for a long time. At the end of the job you know it’s going to have some adventures behind it and it’s going to be because of you.”
He likes talking about the heydays of the shipyards with some of the old-timers. They tell him about the best days, he said, “‘When we were building ships. When everyone was going.’”
“All of them say, ‘It’s coming. It’s coming again.’”
- See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/heavy-metal-seaspan-s-155-million-upgrade-fueling-renewal-of-the-industry-1.1664728#sthash.BLgQmp2T.dpuf
Since the spring, a massive new gantry crane — the largest in Canada — has stood 80 metres tall on the shipyards site at the foot of Pemberton Avenue.
Its presence on the North Vancouver waterfront sends a message: that the shipyards are back as an economic engine, on a scale not seen since massive federally-supported contracts halted 30 years ago.
This time around, Ottawa is again fuelling the resurgence of the West Coast shipyard industry, with its national shipbuilding program.
In 2011, Seaspan won the right to negotiate contracts to build seven federal non-combat ships, worth an estimated $8 billion.
Those ships include two massive navy joint support ships and a polar icebreaker.
But to ready itself to do that work, the shipyard had to reinvent itself. It had to “go big.”
The $18 million gantry crane is indicative of that new scale. It was shipped in three pieces from China in a heavy lift ship.
To put it up, the company contracted by Seaspan to provide it had to first take apart a second 1,600-tonne 110-metre-tall crawler crane in Russia, put it on a ship, then offload it at Lynnterm Terminal. “It took 82 trucks to get it from Lynn Terminal to our property,” said Tony Matergio, vice-president and general manger of Vancouver Shipyards. “It’s just a monster.”
The crawler crane is long gone now, but the permanent gantry crane, dubbed “Big Blue”, will do the heavy lifting when building for the first national shipbuilding contract gets underway next year.
Its job will be to move massive pieces of ship, weighing anywhere from 80 to 300 tonnes, into place for final assembly.
That approach to building ships would be foreign to those who worked at places like Burrard Dry Dock and Versatile Pacific — North Vancouver’s iconic shipyards of the past.
“If you wind the clock back quite a number of decades, ships were built one piece of wood or one piece of steel at a time and erected on the berth,” said Matergio. “Pipefitters and electricians would show up when the ship was floating.”
Those days are gone, he said. Today, large shipyards operate more like manufacturing plants, building modular pieces on what is essentially an assembly line.
Vancouver Shipyards has gone from a yard that mainly built and repaired barges and small vessels to one designed for large ship construction — a very different facility.
To help with the design of the new system, Seaspan brought over experts from STX Korea — a huge modern shipyard — for advice early in the process.
“For shipyard design, part of it is how much land you have to deal with. Part of it is the particular type of ships (you will be building),” said Matergio. “Shipyards are designed to build the particular product they’re good at.”
In the new shipyard, steel plates that arrive on a flatbed truck come first to the sub-assembly building, where they are cut by two new state-of-the-art computer-controlled cutters, including a plasma cutter.
Steel is brought to the shipyard as it’s needed. “Years ago we’d buy all the steel for the ship the same day and it would show up and we’d store it,” said Matergio. “We don’t do that anymore. We just have it delivered as required.”
A computer program with instructions on how to cut each piece of steel is transmitted to the robotic cutter remotely from the shipyard’s technical office.
The machine is extremely accurate — down to millimetres, said William Clewes, Vancouver Shipyards’ director of operations.
When it comes out, each piece of cut steel is automatically etched with a number indicating which project it is for and how it fits together with other components. Then it gets collected with other pieces needed for the next step in assembly and put together in a kit.
Once the shipbuilding program is fully up and running, there’ll be pieces of steel continuously moving on to the next station. Most parts of the shipyard will operate 16 hours a day, five days a week.
Everything in the sub-assembly building is new, said Clewes. “Including the building.”
About two-thirds of the $155 million spent modernizing Vancouver Shipyards and about $15 million spent on Seaspan’s Victoria Shipyards — where final sea trials and testing of vessels will take place — was spent on new buildings and facilities. One-third was spent on equipment, which came from countries around the world.
A new 1,000-tonne Nieldand cold forming press in the forming shop next door, for instance, came from Holland. It’s technology used throughout the world that allows shaping of steel into three-dimensional pieces without heating it — even the two-inch thick steel that will eventually be used for the polar icebreaker.
Another centrepiece of the modernized shipyard is the “panel line” — where large flat pieces of steel are welded together and reinforced with angle bars.
A robotic single-sided welder at one end of this assembly line can weld two 18-millimetre thick plates together in one pass — and take a fraction of the time it would have before — 20 minutes as opposed to several hours.
As the large steel panels move down the conveyer, hydraulic arms press angle bars into place on the panel, where they are automatically “tack welded” into place before moving down to a final station where a robotic welder with six welding heads can weld three bars at a time.
There are fewer people doing this work than there would have been on the task in the past. Each machine generally has one welder and one crane operator.
But neither Clewes nor George MacPherson, president of the B.C. Shipyard General Workers Federation — which represents many of the trades at the shipyard — are concerned about that.
Work is simply concentrated in other areas of shipbuilding, farther along in the process, said Clewes.
“Stuff that’s left requires higher skill,” said MacPherson. “There’s still a lot of manual labour.”
There are about 200 people working in trades at the shipyards today, but that is expected to dramatically increase to about 1,000 people within the next three years.
The company, which currently has 17 apprentices working in Vancouver Shipyards, expects to hire more apprentices by next year and re-train those who are already qualified with transferable skills from other industries.
Not surprisingly, there has been a lot of interest.
“It’s a well-paid job and it looks like it’ll be a well-paid job,” said MacPherson, citing an average rate of pay of about $38 an hour, plus benefits.
Unlike many existing jobs that fit that description, a job at the shipyards lets local workers stay home and see their families, says MacPherson, “as opposed to going to Fort McMurray.”
Jacob Burnikell, a 35-year-old welding foreman who’s been working on and off in shipyards for the past seven years, understands that. “This is huge for North Vancouver,” he said. “The opportunity to have that many jobs accessible potentially for a long period of time is huge for any community.”
Of the 35 people who report to him now “probably eight or 10 of those could be in Alberta or up north, but they’re here,” he said.
“I’ve got some good young people coming back now. They’re ready to work at the shipyard.”
It’s a definite improvement over downturns in the past where he’s had to lay people off. “You build a team then you lose that team,” he said. “Hopefully (now) the crew I have will see the start of the vessel and the end of the vessel.”
In the block assembly shop, telescoping pins — or pin jigs — support pieces of shaped steel while they are manually welded into larger pieces.
At the end of the shop are two large chunks of what will eventually be the new cable ferry — one piece upside down. At this stage, pieces are often built upside down and turned over, said Clewes. “It’s easier for a welder to weld down than to weld above him.”
Under the new system, workers who arrive at a dedicated workstation will start the day with a work order detailing their tasks. “All the material will be there, all the tools will be there,” said Clewes.
Welding torches hang from cranes inside the shop, fed by 500 lb spools of welding wire. “Guys don’t have to carry stuff into the work area,” said Clewes. “They just drop it from the crane.”
From here, bigger assembled pieces might go into a new paint shop — where state-of-the-art ventilation and dust recovery systems have been installed. Or they may head into one of several “pre-outfit” bays, where the mechanical parts of the ship including engines, pipes, cables and electrical systems will be installed before the large modular blocks are put together — a radical departure from shipbuilding of the past.
The systems going into the large ships will come from around the world. Seaspan already has partnership agreements with the Canadian subsidiaries of a number of multinational companies —ImTech Marine Canada, Thales Canada, Computer Sciences Corporation and Alion Canada — specializing in marine technology and defence contracts.
Two new self-propelled modular transport systems — up to 32 rolling axles that can lift 1,000 tonnes and are operated by remote-control chest backs — will then take the massive blocks of the ship to the pre-erection area of the yard to be put together under huge multi-storey shelters.
When the blocks are 150 or 200 tonnes, the gantry crane will lift them on to the berth. “That’s when they form a ship, when they put them together,” said Clewes. “Those blocks will be put together like large Lego blocks.”
When the ship is built, it will move on to a load-out pier, be put on a floating dry dock, taken to deep water and floated off. The last five per cent of the build, including final testing, will be completed at Seaspan’s Victoria Shipyards — near to the Canadian navy base at Esquimalt.
The joint support ships won’t be the first ships built at the modernized yard, but they are certainly the biggest ships that are part of the contract and ones that have attracted the most attention.
Both the parliamentary budget officer and the auditor general have questioned whether $2.6 billion set aside by Ottawa will be enough to build two ships, noting the government hasn’t adjusted that figure in a number of years, despite delays in deciding to build the ships.
The political ante in getting the ships built was also recently upped when Ottawa announced it will decommission two of its existing support ships earlier than expected over concerns about their structural integrity.
When finished, the 173-metre ships will be the biggest vessels ever built in western Canada.
But depending on when contracts get signed with Ottawa, Seaspan isn’t expected to start building those ships until late 2016 or early 2017.
To start off, Seaspan will ramp up its production with three fisheries science vessels. The contract for the first of those — a 55-metre research vessel — and production on it is expected to start in earnest in the spring.
Six months after the first ship is begun, the second vessel will be started and eight months after that, work on a third will begin. A 78-metre oceanographic vessel will follow.
In fact, two of the large modular blocks currently being built at the shipyard alongside the new cable ferry will eventually form part of the hull of the first fisheries vessel. Building the two blocks — which will each measure 12 by 12 by 10 metres — allows the company to test its equipment and procedures before production pressure mounts.
Not that anyone’s complaining.
To date, Ottawa has signed an “umbrella agreement” with Seaspan, indicating its intention to go ahead with the first seven vessels. A further 10 ships worth about another $3 billion have also been announced.
In rough terms, that’s about 15 years of work, say shipyard bosses. And they are confident there will be more to follow.
That’s good news for people like Burnikell, who got his start in shipyards years ago when a friend told him about an outfit looking for someone to wash the bottom of the boats. “I rolled out the pressure washer and a foreman came over and said, ‘You don’t want to wash boats. I need some help fitting this plate.’”
He hasn’t looked back since. “Everybody’s who’s in the shipbuilding industry, they have a big sense of pride of workmanship,” he said.
The modernization project represents a spectacular turnaround for an industry that struggled to stay afloat in the decades since large federal contracts dried up at the end of the 1980s and B.C. Ferries — once a mainstay of the business — opted to build its large new ferries in European shipyards.
At the end of this two-year upgrade however, Matergio has no hesitation saying, “We are Canada’s most technologically advanced shipyard.”
In the short term, “Our order book is full,” he said.
But in the long term, he sees the federal contract as the beginning, not the end, of the future for the shipyard industry.
Burnikell is looking forward to working on the big ships. “There’s something extremely special about building a vessel and launching a vessel,” he said. “Knowing that vessel is going to be around for a long time. At the end of the job you know it’s going to have some adventures behind it and it’s going to be because of you.”
He likes talking about the heydays of the shipyards with some of the old-timers. They tell him about the best days, he said, “‘When we were building ships. When everyone was going.’”
“All of them say, ‘It’s coming. It’s coming again.’”
- See more at: http://www.nsnews.com/news/heavy-metal-seaspan-s-155-million-upgrade-fueling-renewal-of-the-industry-1.1664728#sthash.BLgQmp2T.dpuf
Colin Parkinson
Army.ca Myth
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Been a long time since they had a government new build so they had to survive in the real world.
J
jollyjacktar
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They are also putting out feelers for 6B HT's as well. I'm sure they're looking at other trades too.
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