New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy

[jollyjacktar]

Yup.  Things like screwing around with Spec pay for the Stokers is going to come back and bite the penny pinching SOB's who are behind it very, very, hard.  All trades are angry at the moment if I am correct in what I hear amongst the fleet members.  Other initiatives of late, (cough, cough, Whitehorse..) won't add to the happiness factor.

 

[NavyShooter]

The trades are hurting right now...and this is with multiple ships in the refit cycle, so we're not even looking for a fleet of full crews.

Things are going to be 'interesting' over the next few years methinks.

Once we get all the ships out of ISI, there's going to be a lot of robbing peter to pay paul in terms of personnel management.  I've just brought a ship through the process and we're about to  start WUPs, so I know that of which I speak.  The burn-out factor based on the re-activation pace is pretty high. 

NS

 

[Stoker]

The trades are hurting right now...and this is with multiple ships in the refit cycle, so we're not even looking for a fleet of full crews.

Things are going to be 'interesting' over the next few years methinks.

Once we get all the ships out of ISI, there's going to be a lot of robbing peter to pay paul in terms of personnel management.  I've just brought a ship through the process and we're about to  start WUPs, so I know that of which I speak.  The burn-out factor based on the re-activation pace is pretty high. 

NS

Yes the MESO's were just offered a really attractive CT over to MAR ENG, only a few took it.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

Not directly related, but I thought it was very telling that Davie could not get this contract

http://www.wellandtribune.ca/2015/01/14/study-shows-billion-being-spent-by-seaway-partners

It also amounts to the biggest renewal of system fleets in three decades, with $4.1 billion being spent.

Among the big players is St. Catharines-based Algoma Central Corp., which is pouring about $500 million into 10 new ships for its fleet in an investment that will last up to 40 years.

Its findings were officially released on Wednesday.

"At Algoma we're confident about the future of Great Lakes shipping," said company CEO and president Greg Wight. "It's encouraging to see the infrastructure renewal that's going on in the Welland Canal.

"It's a big part of what our trade is, moving goods from the inland to the St. Lawrence," he said.

A key reason for the new private investment is the Canadian government’s removal of a 25% foreign vessel import duty in 2010.

"It allowed us to sign orders for vessels outside of Canada (in China), because there was no place to build them in Canada," he said. "So there was a lot of pent-up demand and need for new vessels."

Since 2009, Algoma has had 10 vessels on order — six have been delivered with four more to come.

Six of those are state-of-the-art, highly fuel efficient ships of the Equinox variety. The other four are two new product tankers and two coastal vessels.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

Not directly related, but I thought it was very telling that Davie could not get this contract

I know people like Davie bashing, but here, you have no point. First of all you provide no evidence (and the article does not contain any such reference) to the effect that Davie even bid on the contracts.

Davie didn't get the contract, and neither did ANY other Canadian or American shipyard: They are being built in China, which is probably the only country that can built for such a cheap price ($50 million each) what are essentially overgrown barges with a small diesel engine at the back.

Davie's new European owners have clearly stated (and are backing up their word with deeds) that they would use the shipyard to build specialty vessels (each one of a kind) that are complex because the ships are an industrial tool in themselves (such as deep dive support vessels, high end shipboard processing plants, self contained dredges and bottom clearing ships, etc.) which they use to build in their own European yards, but are cheaper and faster to build at Davie in view of the European union-driven high salaries and time off requirements.

 

[jollyjacktar]

I know people like Davie bashing, but here, you have no point. First of all you provide no evidence (and the article does not contain any such reference) to the effect that Davie even bid on the contracts.

I save my bashing for Irving.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I know people like Davie bashing, but here, you have no point. First of all you provide no evidence (and the article does not contain any such reference) to the effect that Davie even bid on the contracts.

Davie didn't get the contract, and neither did ANY other Canadian or American shipyard: They are being built in China, which is probably the only country that can built for such a cheap price ($50 million each) what are essentially overgrown barges with a small diesel engine at the back.

Davie's new European owners have clearly stated (and are backing up their word with deeds) that they would use the shipyard to build specialty vessels (each one of a kind) that are complex because the ships are an industrial tool in themselves (such as deep dive support vessels, high end shipboard processing plants, self contained dredges and bottom clearing ships, etc.) which they use to build in their own European yards, but are cheaper and faster to build at Davie in view of the European union-driven high salaries and time off requirements.

Was not Davies complaining they had not been properly considered for the national ship building program? If they could not have offered a bid on these or at least aggressively tried to compete, plus they could have argued publicly that lifting the foreign Vessel tax hindered their chance of competing for such a bid. The article stated: " because there was no place to build them in Canada," he said. "So there was a lot of pent-up demand and need for new vessels." 
Considering this is almost Davies backyard and they aren't even considered shows they would be incapable of meeting the National project, but that did not stop them from publicly saying they were not fairly considered. To be fair we are using the wording in the article which could be totally wrong. Davies might have approached them and been shown the door, because the company knew they could get a better price in China and played up to the CPC to relent on the foreign vessel duty.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

First of all, Colin, what you say can apply equally to every Canadian shipyard, and is pure speculation on your part on what might have, could have been. You could substitute the name of any one of the Canadian shipyard in your statements and they would mean just as much, or as little. Why not mention the actual yards on the great lakes? They use to build these lakers and ought to have bid, ought they not?

Also, look at the timeline, Algoma let the contract out to get its first ship in 2009. That is well before the National Strategy was announced, in 2011. You may recall that Davie was still in receivership until the European purchase and that purchase was a last minute thing only a few months before the Strategy was announced. Thus they were not even on the market in 2009.

I'll say it again, there are no yards, in North America or in Europe, that can build these hyper simple cargo ships that are nothing but a big box with a small diesel at the back for anywhere near as cheap as the Asian yards - who don't pay their employees and could not care less about their safety.

 

[YZT580]

There is a dry dock right in Algoma's home town of St. Catharines that originally was slated for construction of a number of hulls that eventually went to China.  They just couldn't compete and that was with tax breaks and union cooperation.  That yard went belly-up.  Algoma is using it now to do winter maintenance on one of their hulls but there are no long term guarantees and certainly no contracts pending that have been announced.  It isn't possible to compete with labour cost differences so great.

 

[Navy_Pete]

First of all, Colin, what you say can apply equally to every Canadian shipyard, and is pure speculation on your part on what might have, could have been. You could substitute the name of any one of the Canadian shipyard in your statements and they would mean just as much, or as little. Why not mention the actual yards on the great lakes? They use to build these lakers and ought to have bid, ought they not?

Also, look at the timeline, Algoma let the contract out to get its first ship in 2009. That is well before the National Strategy was announced, in 2011. You may recall that Davie was still in receivership until the European purchase and that purchase was a last minute thing only a few months before the Strategy was announced. Thus they were not even on the market in 2009.

I'll say it again, there are no yards, in North America or in Europe, that can build these hyper simple cargo ships that are nothing but a big box with a small diesel at the back for anywhere near as cheap as the Asian yards - who don't pay their employees and could not care less about their safety.

Actually, the South Koreans pay their workers pretty well; their workers are highly skilled so they value them.  The differences in pay is only a small part of it; they design the ships specifically around their factory production lines so they never have anything sitting idle.  The quality is as good as North American, and it's far cheaper, and it's delivered on time.  The investments the two yards are making should do wonders to bring their production methods closer in line to what the Asian builders do, with the smaller modules being assembled into larger ones, then super modules and finally big honking ships.

None of those yard would build warships though, without a huge premium.  It throws off their production, and has a lot of new peculiarities commercial ships aren't concerned about that complicates things a lot.  So you end up paying for the retooling, additional oversight/management/QA, and lost production on normal work.

Good spot to get a lightly modified COTS design though for stuff like supply or transport ships; those they can pump out as per normal and add a few extras as required.

No experience with the west coast, but have seen enough Irving shenanigans I'm deeply suspicious of what the first few AOPs will be like.  Have been off the coast for a few years though, and have heard the new management team is slowly making positive changes, so will try and stay positive.  I think a lot of the AOPS design challenges have as much to do with the crazy contracting process, crap SOR and the silly number of sub contractors along with the silly IP and other contracting clauses as Irving being Irving.  Pretty funny to see some of the system design choices that 'meet the statement of requirement'

 

[Kirkhill]

Pete

Are the AOPS still hewing to commercial standards, as was originally laid down under the STX regime or has the entire vessel been "navalized"?

 

[Navy_Pete]

Pete

Are the AOPS still hewing to commercial standards, as was originally laid down under the STX regime or has the entire vessel been "navalized"?

From what I've seen it's a mixed bag.  Seems to be a mix of commercial marine, some various NATO/ Canadian standards, and some north american standards  Some of the Lloyds standards are good, some are extremely broad and if you meet the bare minimum you can get a really bad design.  In a few cases, the TAs are enforcing our own standards for that reason.  Some just make sense though, like using NATO standard shore power cable connectors.

Not sure about the specific on the STX designs, as we've only seen the initial designs out of the AOPs group, but they seem to be customizing/redesigning a lot.  A small part was probably due to changing regulations (IMO, MARPOL, etc), but hard to say.  I've only been working on the power and propulsion side though, so maybe a lot of the rest is stock, but skeptical.  Doesn't necessarily mean it was right the first time; they picked up some of the same issues in the initial design that were the same problems that came with the MCDVs 20 years ago.

I think it will all come together, just think the first few will take a while to get up and running properly.  Also further complicated by the ISSC for the platform, which won't be in place in time to help look at all the supportability issues, QA on the tech data package, and other critical deliverables from the builder that we don't have the manpower to go through properly with the other MCPs and the actual fleet to support.

Cautiously optimistic; the east coast ships coming out of ISS post FELEX seem to be in better shape then previous.  Although the first few were bad, and PRE was criminal, so the bar is low. :2c:

 

[Kirkhill]

The decisions that are being made: Are they suitable for porting to the CSC project as standard solutions?

 

[Navy_Pete]

Some will be; we've spent a lot of time starting about three years ago going through our old standards, reviewing them for CTAT, and updating the tech standards with CSC in mind.  We are also currently doing a mock design based on the CSC SOR to flush out weaknesses and look at cost/performance tradeoffs.

There are some pretty fundamental shifts going on in the background on how the RCN manages the safety of the ships.  Other NATO countries are doing the same thing, and there is a 'Naval Ship Code' (http://www.navalshipcode.org/) that is being developed to help improve designs of warships, and also management of safety when in service with 'safety area certificates'.  There are currently eight safety areas, for things like propulsion, fire safety, evac & rescue, etc, which all tie back to certification and performance requirements for specific systems.

All that to say is we're looking at high level comparison to the current fleet, comparing NSC to the current AOPs/JSS designs, then planning on applying it to CSC.  Some of it will get reviewed periodically (similar to what we do now for the hull certification every five years following a docking), others will be done upfront, and just validated/monitored thru life via the normal test and trials program, and then reassessed whenever there is major changes.  But you have to get it right at design, otherwise it's kind of pointless.

It's kind of interesting, and if we do the work required up front it'll result in a pretty solid design for all the safety related items and a good platform for the grey box weenies to fit their whiz bangs onto, and will be better able to recover from battle damage much quicker then our current ships.

We are also looking at all our damage control tactics at the same time, and looking at how we can improve the ship design to reduce the risk for fighting fires at the design level.  Things like entry route for attack teams into machinery spaces, layers of fitted systems, new systems etc are all being evaluated.  That part is great for the real engineering work that goes into it and because it has a cost to make any design changes, there is actually real science behind it, vice someone's good idea.

I'm kind of an unrepentant nerd about things like that though, so I like working on things like how AFFF works, thermal stratification during fires, etc.

We're also getting a lot of really good data from the upgraded EHM installed on our new platform system during the FELEX program, so that's giving us a lot of great data to go back and validate a lot of the assumptions in how we actually operate our ships (speed, power consumption, etc).

Basically there is a lot of work on the go now to make CSC as good a ship as possible.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Well, on the DC front, it is not like we don't have a wealth of recent world experience (OTT, CHI, PRO) to draw upon...

 

[Navy_Pete]

That's part of it, but our DC tactics are based around the fitted systems available, and how the ship is laid out.

We are trying to improve the ship layout/systems so that it's easier/safer/more effective to fight fires when they do happen.

One of the interesting things out of PRO is the navy is looking at bringing back a diesel trainer at the DC schools for realism; they burn hotter and are more like the real thing.  So you would do all your training on the normal natural gas trainers, then do a final confirmation with a real fire.  Other navies that have similar trainers as us have found that is one thing that comes up with a real fire; people aren't used to the heat.

 

[donaldk]

That's part of it, but our DC tactics are based around the fitted systems available, and how the ship is laid out.

We are trying to improve the ship layout/systems so that it's easier/safer/more effective to fight fires when they do happen.

One of the interesting things out of PRO is the navy is looking at bringing back a diesel trainer at the DC schools for realism; they burn hotter and are more like the real thing.  So you would do all your training on the normal natural gas trainers, then do a final confirmation with a real fire.  Other navies that have similar trainers as us have found that is one thing that comes up with a real fire; people aren't used to the heat.

I miss the old diesel pit and the engine room mock up at DC Div.  You couldn't mess around in there with being on air as the smoke was real, and the off switch for the engine fire was AFFF hoses.  Improper door procedure? Back draft blowing up in your face fixed that problem for the next run

 

[SeaKingTacco]

My first run at DC school was in The old diesel fired trainer. The down hatch drill into the engine room was just plain terrifying. You were in real, actual danger of getting hurt if messed up.

In the propane trainer, I have never felt that I was anyplace other than Disneyland- no fear at all.

I heard from a lot of the PRO guy that the ATL course needs to be toughened, substantially.

 

[donaldk]

My first run at DC school was in The old diesel fired trainer. The down hatch drill into the engine room was just plain terrifying. You were in real, actual danger of getting hurt if messed up.

In the propane trainer, I have never felt that I was anyplace other than Disneyland- no fear at all.

I heard from a lot of the PRO guy that the ATL course needs to be toughened, substantially.

Not sure how CFSSE DC does the ATL course out west, but I do know CFNES DC has failed pers for not meeting the standard.  Something to bring up to the CFNES DC Div DCTO at the next mess function...

 

[Navy_Pete]

Not sure how CFSSE DC does the ATL course out west, but I do know CFNES DC has failed pers for not meeting the standard.  Something to bring up to the CFNES DC Div DCTO at the next mess function...

Standards don't really have much to do with it; the propane trainers don't behave like a real ship fire.  They don't get hot enough, they don't have the same smoke/thermal layering, and they don't go out if you do things properly.

Part of it is familiarity of what with how hot diesel fires actually get; people get understandably scared when they encounter that kind of heat for the first time on a real ship board fire.  Also the temperature differences can be several hundred degrees between the smoke layer and below it, so it teaches you pretty quick that you need to get low.

I think the propane trainers are great, but once everyone has the basics down, we need something closer to a real fire.  You can build a safe trainer that uses diesel pools and some other typical scenarios to train with, that would be great for the final confirmation.  Hopefully that's one of the positive things that will come out of PRO.

A few other navies that also went to full propane/nat gas trainers have found the same thing, so it's not just us.  There are some environmental and PR issues with getting diesel fire trainers going, but I think people get that it's not just for giggles.