As maritime digests a number of historical changes, Norway’s Fjellstrand shipyard wants to put aside the rule book and look at the whole process in a new way, reducing engineering costs up to 70% and production costs up to 20%.
The process of designing and building a ship, even in today’s highly standardized mass manufacturing environment, remains largely a one-off, one-of-a-kind design and build. Ships are most often built to a shipowner’s or operator’s specific requirements, which are often based on fixed parameters such as speed, fuel consumption, route and cargo or passenger capacity.
Blueprints are created, detailed plans are approved by a classification society, financing is secured and building is started, block by unique block.
Fjellstrand is part of the EU-funded Transport: Advanced and Modular (TrAM) Project, which is coordinated by Rogaland County Council through its transport company Kolumbus. The $13.2m project initiated by industry cluster NCE Maritime CleanTech aims to build what would become the fastest battery-powered, zero emission, high-speed aluminum ferry, building on a growing level of zero-emission competence in Europe while at the same time reevaluating the actual design and build process.
Source: www.marinelink.com