New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy

[dapaterson]

The NSS does sustain a lot of jobs; the question of it would be cheaper to buy offshore and invest the delta in something else is really an academic question as that was never an option, as Canada has had a 'Build in Canada' policy since the 60s.  One good thing they did was embed a lot of the data reporting requirements in it.  There is no specific target, but at least they can say the impact of the spending is X, and we get ships as well.

Warships PLUS the core material to make poutine.

https://www.hilltimes.com/2019/06/05/feds-irving-need-to-clean-up-their-act-and-find-a-better-pr-move-than-threatening-reporters/202839

 

[Humphrey Bogart]

Warships PLUS the core material to make poutine.

https://www.hilltimes.com/2019/06/05/feds-irving-need-to-clean-up-their-act-and-find-a-better-pr-move-than-threatening-reporters/202839

They better be serving Cavendish Golden Cut on those Canadian Warships!

 

[Kirkhill]

Scottish Government accused of bungling ferry contract as it nationalises last commercial shipyard on the Clyde

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/08/16/scottish-government-accused-bungling-ferry-contract-nationalises/

Cautionary message to Seaspan and Davie?  Commercial yards and "provincial" ferries resulting in the yards going under?

High tech LNG ferries in Quebec and High tech catamarans in BC.

Meanwhile industry plods along buying low tech stuff that works and cuts their cloth to suit. And occasionally buy up somebody else's vanity project for 10 cents on the dollar.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

The fast cats were an attempt to create a niche for West Coast yards as we could not compete with Asian yards on conventional vessels and did not expect to get any federal contract. the risk was worthwhile, but things got screwed up when the politicians from both sides got involved.

 

[MarkOttawa]

feds try to fix the icebreaker shipbuilding fix that is in for Davie (with video):

Feds amend shipyard search criteria, extend deadline following complaint

The federal government has amended its search for a third shipyard in line for potentially billions of dollars in work following allegations of bias for Quebec’s Chantier Davie yard, but is standing firm in several other areas.

Public Service and Procurement Canada said in a statement Monday it had “corrected” an “inconsistency” in the size of vessel that interested shipyards must be able to build to qualify for consideration as the third yard.

Shipyards will now be required to show they can build vessels that are at least 110 metres in length and 20 metres wide, smaller than the original requirements of 130 metres in length by 24 metres wide.

The original requirement was one of several flagged by Hamilton-based Heddle Marine in a complaint to the Canadian International Trade Tribunal last week as not legitimate or reasonable — and potentially biased toward Davie.

READ MORE: What’s behind the Liberals’ shipbuilding strategy shift? In short — everything

Not only would the condition have disqualified all Ontario-based shipyards — their vessels must be 23.8 metres or less to traverse the St. Lawrence Seaway — but Heddle said in its complaint that the requirement didn’t make sense.

That’s because the third shipyard will be building six new Coast Guard icebreakers measuring only 20 metres in width, according to the government. And those ships will be used in the Great Lakes — meaning they must fit through the Seaway [emphasis added].

Public Procurement spokeswoman Stefanie Hamel did not respond to questions Monday about the reason for the original requirement, saying only that it was “inconsistent in the dimensions of the vessels” the third shipyard would build and launch.

“This inconsistency has been removed to clarify that the required vessel dimensions are 110 meters in length and 20 metres in breadth,” she said in an email.

WATCH: Scrap, don’t fix, storied Coast Guard ship, shipyard says (Jan. 24, 2019)

The government also backed off a requirement that shipyards be able to launch vessels year-round, which Heddle had argued against since the St. Lawrence Seaway is closed through much of the winter for repair.

Heddle, which owns the Thunder Bay shipyards and Port Weller dry docks in Ontario, had noted in its complaint that the government had provided a two-year window for the launch of the first icebreaker.

The amendment “aligns with the stated requirement that the vessels must be delivered within the timeline … without specific reference to a time period during the year in which they must be delivered,” Hamel said.

The government also announced it is extending the deadline for shipyards to apply for consideration as a third yard until the end of the week. Shipyards originally had to submit applications on Monday.

Davie, which has received several federal contracts without a competition in recent years and is located in an area of the country likely to be hotly contested in the fall federal election, declined to comment Monday.

READ MORE: Federal government awards Irving Shipbuilding Inc. $500M contract to maintain navy fleet

Yet the government refused to bend on requiring shipyards to have a contract now or recent experience in building a ship weighing more than 1,000 tonnes or integrating a module weighing that much into “an offshore marine structure.”

That is despite Heddle having complained to the trade tribunal that no shipyard in Canada “is capable of satisfying this requirement except Chantier Davie Canada.”

In an update to potential bidders, the government said: “Canada is satisfied that meeting anyone of the criteria above (together with other criteria in the process) represent(s) the minimum general experience and capability … to prequalify.”

Despite the government’s insistence on the latter requirements, Heddle Marine president Shaun Padulo told The Canadian Press he was cautiously optimistic the other changes would lead to a fair selection process for the third yard.

Heddle plans to partner with Netherlands-based Damen Shipyards, which operates 36 facilities around the world and which Padulo said should satisfy the requirement shipyards have recent construction experience [emphasis added].

“The whole objective of this national shipbuilding strategy was to rebuild shipbuilding capacity and ship-repair capacity,” he said.

“What better way to do that than partner with one of the best shipbuilders in the world and have them set up shop at Port Weller with us. So I’m not too worried about the requirement unless they find another way to try and bounce it from us.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/5815392/federal-shipyard-search-davie-quebec/

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Spencer100]

https://rightof49.ca/the-liberal-old-boys-club-is-alive-and-well/?fbclid=IwAR16ruq4eRlULpChic051gzyrFHlIW9Y6v6oktsdFYiICCkcsLn5pk8v-3Y

A little more political bend here

 

[Spencer100]

More

https://www.nationalnewswatch.com/2019/08/26/feds-amend-shipyard-search-following-complaint-about-bias-toward-quebecs-davie/#.XWSQ1h4pAlS

 

[Navy_Pete]

Some real competition would be good, and Heddle partnering with Damen is interesting. If they could bring in their expertise at the start, they could upgrade the Port Weller drydock into a nice modern facility for building smaller ships. That area has been pretty hard hit with all the local industry shuttering, so would be good for the town to have something other than boomers fleeing Toronto for McMansions.

The drydock opens onto part of the Welland canal, and that section actually gets drained during the winter, but shouldn't be rocket surgery to plan around. If they cover the drydock and put in a crane it could easily be a year round build shed.  There are a few built like that with sliding roofs and wall panels so they can lower in the blocks, and lets them do horizontal builds, which means they can start the cable runs earlier and saves a fair bit of labour/schedule time. The lakers have max heights (due to bridges etc on route) so there is a practical limit that they can work around when figuring out clearances for the overhead crane etc.

Lots of expertise in the area as well, so would just need some delta training for shipbuilding for the trades working in the auto/heavy industry sector locally.

Maybe I'm a bit biased having grown up in the area, but hard not to like a location with a cherry/apple orchard across the road and farmer market down the street, so would be a great posting for the det.

 

[Spencer100]

Saewaymax is the size of the ship if you want to get to the ocean.  They are larger ships on the great lakes but can't get to the ocean.

Seawaymax vessels are 740 feet (225.6 m) in length, 78 feet (23.8 m) wide, and have a draft of 26.51 feet (8.08 m) and a height above the waterline of 35.5 metres (116 ft).

Can Heddle handle seawaymax? 

Not too many ships in the CCG or RCN that are larger.

 

[Dale Denton]

Stretching the smaller jobs/vessel work between Davie and Hamilton should be an option instead of picking the two. The Damen partnership being the primary reason, with access to that giant wealth of knowledge and management available in Canada.

The RCN/CCG presence in Ontario would be a boon to both for the relevance in public opinion down here too. More people seeing RCN and CCG ships here transiting, being built and port visits is a win-win.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Saewaymax is the size of the ship if you want to get to the ocean.  They are larger ships on the great lakes but can't get to the ocean.

Seawaymax vessels are 740 feet (225.6 m) in length, 78 feet (23.8 m) wide, and have a draft of 26.51 feet (8.08 m) and a height above the waterline of 35.5 metres (116 ft).

Can Heddle handle seawaymax? 

Not too many ships in the CCG or RCN that are larger.

They were talking about the Port Weller facility, which is specifically built to handle lakers. Getting to and from the lakes is the limiting factor; there is no point in having a facility bigger than that.

The drydock was big enough to do any of the ships in the Navy inventory (including the AORs); the only issue was the max height and the width of the PRE exceeding the canal width. Both could be removed for the refits, but they also have a facility on the east coast they could use for any final installs for the mast top etc. We've done refits to the 280s and the old steamers in Port Weller, and the CCG had an icebreaker and some other ships run through there, so the drydock isn't an issue.

Think the Polar icebreaker spec exceeded that size by a fair bit, so maybe that would be a standalone project if they need to add in a third yard for CCG work. So conceivably Heddle gets the mid sized ice breaker, and Davie could build Polar?  Polar is too big for the ISI yard, and kind of a pain in the arse for Seaspan (unless they do it at the end of the run of patrol ships run of 12-15).

Honestly it's one to consider outsourcing, or maybe considering doing something like jumping onto the USCG heavy icebreakers if that gets going, and having it fitted for/not with the weapon systems. Sure there are probably some existing OTS designs we could buy and have built at an experienced yard and figure out something (final outfitting?) to give it the veneer of being part of the NSS for saving political face. One of the Russian yards joked about building some for us when they recently launched on of their nuclear ships as well...

In general, building a single bespoke ship is really, really expensive and inefficient. If you did it after a run of medium icebreakers, at least the yard would be set up, but still a lot of sunk one time cost in the design and production engineering.  Wish the NSS included a number of ships in a class as well as tonnage etc for criteria, but such is life.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Heddle Marine has acquired Port Weller Dry Dock a few years (last year?) ago. PWDD is seawaymax, so not a problem except for the Diefenbaker, as already noted.

However, neither Heddle, nor Port Weller has actually built a ship other than minor crafts in the last 20 years. That makes them repair yards - not build yards, and as Colin has mentionned before, it is an important distinction. Davie, on the other hand, has built five ships larger than 1,000 tons in the last ten years (in fact, three of those are well above 3,000 tons ships), with two more on the go as we speak.

To my mind, Heddle, which does not meet the "having built 1,000+ tons recently" criteria, would be better to deal with Davie by keeping Davie's feet to its own fire: the Davie clear statements in the past that the NSS was to select the "lead" yards, but that the intent was that they would employ smaller yard to do block builds for delivery to the leads for assembly , the lead yard having overall responsibility. Both Heddle's original yard and Port Weller Dry Dock are located well to perform such function for Davie.

P.S. Before anybody jumps too quickly (Oops! Too late  ;D) on the Heddle/PWDD band wagon, I just offer two words of caution: HMCS HURON and CCCG HUDSON. And those were refits. Just sayin!

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Speaking of CCGS HUDSON, if my calculations are correct, she should be coming out / have come out of St John's Dockyard's hands just about now - if all went according to plan.

Any body heard anything? Good or bad?

Colin? Not-a-Sig-Op?

Bueller? Bueller?

;D

 

[Navy_Pete]

Heddle Marine has acquired Port Weller Dry Dock a few years (last year?) ago. PWDD is seawaymax, so not a problem except for the Diefenbaker, as already noted.

However, neither Heddle, nor Port Weller has actually built a ship other than minor crafts in the last 20 years. That makes them repair yards - not build yards, and as Colin has mentionned before, it is an important distinction. Davie, on the other hand, has built five ships larger than 1,000 tons in the last ten years (in fact, three of those are well above 3,000 tons ships), with two more on the go as we speak.

To my mind, Heddle, which does not meet the "having built 1,000+ tons recently" criteria, would be better to deal with Davie by keeping Davie's feet to its own fire: the Davie clear statements in the past that the NSS was to select the "lead" yards, but that the intent was that they would employ smaller yard to do block builds for delivery to the leads for assembly , the lead yard having overall responsibility. Both Heddle's original yard and Port Weller Dry Dock are located well to perform such function for Davie.

P.S. Before anybody jumps too quickly (Oops! Too late  ;D) on the Heddle/PWDD band wagon, I just offer two words of caution: HMCS HURON and CCCG HUDSON. And those were refits. Just sayin!

The PWDD facility itself would also require some major upgrades to be able to actually build ships; it's a 1960s era repair yard, and can do a lot (if properly run) but is in no way set up to support modular builds. Not sure if they get the throughput for one of the fancy plasma cutters, but they would need some kind of cut shop, some large welding stations, sections for module assembly etc plus some dedicated cranes.

They have a decent footprint, and the actual dock is good, but would effectively need to bulldoze the yard and start from scratch.

Then you would need a management team that knew how to build ships, experienced designers and production engineers, planners/estimaters etc on top of the trades and line supervisors, so it's a big ask. The existing yards have had to go out of Canada to get a lot of those people, and it's generally a small talent pool with all the countries and commercial yards competing for it.

They are definitely further behind then Davie, but Davie will also have to do some upgrades to the facility and find a bunch of people to do it as well, so not like they can just waltz in and start tomorrow.

Ship repair/conversions is not ship building; the former is like a car mechanic, the latter is like the main factory. Someone needs to do both, but you don't expect the local mechanic to make a car from scratch, or one of the Oshawa plants to rebuild you transmission. They are related but totally different operations that need their own facilities and expertise.

 

[Underway]

As much I would love to see St. Catharines get some love (growing up just down the QEW from there) I very much doubt that PW is even in the running.  Putting aside my regional bias they just can't build without some serious investment ala Irving.  The experience isn't there at all.  Ontario has the capability more than any other place in Canada to rapidly grow a shipyard and PWDD has quite the large footprint, with the potential to grow into the surrounding farmland, and along the eastern face of the canal.  But I just don't see it unless there is some other odd/interesting situation that arises.  On the list of odd would be a submarine yard, but that's just me being fanciful.

 

[Navy_Pete]

Yeah, for comparison purposes think Seaspan invested something north of $140 million, and Irving was $200-300M (maybe more, depends how big the fish got now) in their yard overhauls.

If they focus on smaller ships, PWDD wouldn't be as bad, but think $50-100M probably isn't unreasonable. Don't know if Heddle has that kind of capitol, or would bring in a partner with deep pockets, but it's not an overnight start for sure.

If nothing else, will mean Davie will have to sharpen the pencils and put forward a competitive proposal, so better than a sole source award from that perspective.  That way they won't be able to dodge some of the pretty serious NSS commitments that didn't apply for the Asterix or conversion projects that relate to shipyard improvements and IRBs. Those cost money/time, but forces them to modernize the shipyard practices and helps build the supply chain in Canada, so speeds up the building (long term) and makes maintenance easier.

 

[MarkOttawa]

What the gov't has announced recently about new shipbuilding for the CCG is on reflection truly amazing--and worrying. Effectively out of the blue in May and then August the gov't announced the COMPLETE REPLACEMENT of the entire (and very old) Coast Guard fleet of larger vessels. This gov't had said nothing about this since it was elected and the Harper gov't had only promised a partial renewal of the fleet in 2013 with ten ships to be built by Seaspan in some never never land after all the yard's other work was finished (https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2013/10/07/mark-collins-canadian-coast-guard-shocker-ten-maybe-new-serious-vessels/).

As far as I can see there are no serious timelines for all this new construction and costing is terribly sketchy:

1) For Seaspan (total included the two previously announced and actually costed A/OPVS from Irving):

Canada to spend $15.7B on new coast guard ships, Trudeau says

Canada plans to build up to 18 new coast guard ships at a cost of $15.7 billion in an effort to renew Canada's Coast Guard fleet,  Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Wednesday [May 22]...
]THAT'S CLOSE TO $1 BILLION EACH]

According to a government statement, the $15.7 billion figure is an "early estimate" of the cost for construction, support, infrastructure, project management and cost overruns, or contingency funding. The costs of each ship will be announced, the government said, after contract negotiations have been completed.

The 16 multi-purpose vessels will be used for light icebreaking, environmental response and search and rescue [i.e. NOT VERY BIG] while the two new Arctic and offshore patrol ships will perform duties further offshore...
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-coast-guard-ships-building-trudeau-1.5144903

2) In August icebreakers, clearly for Davie--NO COSTING OR TIMELINE:

Ottawa officially launches process to bring 3rd shipyard into national strategy

The process to bring a third shipyard into the National Shipbuilding Strategy is officially getting underway.

Whichever firm is selected will be tasked with building six newly announced icebreakers that will operate in the Atlantic Ocean and through the St. Lawrence waterways, officials say...
https://globalnews.ca/news/5718947/national-shipbuilding-strategy-third-shipyard/

So a huge shipbuilding program out of nowhere for B.C. and the sudden inclusion (in reality) of Quebec in the government's main shipbuilding "strategy". The only strategy I can see is election politics. And it is striking that the sudden (indeed sloppy) scope, and major expense, of what the gov't says it will do has not received more media attention and analysis.

Mark
Ottawa

 

[Good2Golf]

Ironically, that’s substantially more money than the F-35 purchase was going to be...by a healthy margin!

Nary a peep from any critics...and no real detailed break out of the “early estimate” (which most commonly gets bigger as time passes).

Regards
G2G

 

[FSTO]

Ironically, that’s substantially more money than the F-35 purchase was going to be...by a healthy margin!

Nary a peep from any critics...and no real detailed break out of the “early estimate” (which most commonly gets bigger as time passes).

Regards
G2G

Yes, these developments are rather worrisome. The CSC is at 60 billion, and how much will the CCG build actually cost and not one peep from anyone?
The Navy and Coast Guard are living a charmed life right now and I fear the party will come to a crashing end after the election.

 

[MarkOttawa]

As for cost, see this based on Defense Industry Daily for cost announced in 2013 for the very notional ten new CCG vessels for Seaspan announced by the Conservatives (whose neglect of the Coast Guard was a bad as the Liberals):

Just Announced New Canadian Coast Guard Vessels Overpriced by Factor of Five
https://mark3ds.wordpress.com/2013/10/09/mark-collin-just-announced-new-canadian-coast-guard-vessels-overpriced-by-factor-of-five/

Mark
Ottawa