Another UK Yard to bite the dust
 

Ferguson's Clyde shipyard is apparently set to go into administration according to the BBC a few minutes ago, despite earlier reports of Nationalisation by the Scottish Govt.
How many more?
Article here for those wishing to be depressed.

The small local shipyard at Appledore closed here a few months ago as well.

Fergusons Shipyard is apparently now set for Nationalisation by the SNP, according to the BBC article "The GMB union said nationalisation would secure the immediate future of the yard".

The Scottish Govt will now operate the yard under a management agreement with the administrators, meaning the Scottish government own the yard if no private buyer is found within four weeks.

A sensible lifeline to deliver the ferries in my opinion, I wonder at what cost though, particularly if no work can be found after they have delivered the troubled CALMAC ferries?

You have outlined the problem with any business or manufacturer, Tom. If your product isn't in demand, or competitive in price or quality, no amount of State Aid will make customers buy it.

Good point Roy, supply and demand, to be honest, it sounds like Ferguson Marine are stuck between a rock and a hard place under the current contract for the ferries and are reporting that they stand to lose £39M on the build alone, mainly due to slippages cause by the Government / CALMAC fiddling with the design and requirements during the ships construction, sounds all too familiar to me, this was partly the reason that Nimrod MRA4 was scrapped, it doesn't sound to me like they have a rosy future!

A sorry tale, but all too familiar as you say, Tom. Too many cooks making a Horlicks of a recipe that was originally acceptable it seems.

I would be surprised if blood was not extracted by the yard for every change demanded by the 'owner'. Both in monetary terms and in terms of deadlines. If the 'owner' contracts to a sloppy spec. it is not usual for the yard to suffer. If a detail is important to the owner then it should be at the outline stage when the contract is still out for bidding.

My thoughts exactly David, no changes should be implemented after passing CDR / Design Freeze.......unless there are additional funding/resources agreed. I think one of the issues here is that CALMAC is owned by the Scottish Government - who also provided huge bridging loans to Fergusons to stop them going bust, gives the supplier something of a weak hand when negotiating and was likely pressured into design changes.

Shaft the taxpayer.

Would Stena or P&O Ferries get into such a pickle? I rather think not.

Many, many years ago I attended a course in RINA, "Contract Management for Ship Construction, Repair and Design", by Ken Fisher. This course guided my actions and decisions and over the years saved my employers much money, lots of money, buckets of money and saved me many sleepless nights.
As a ship manager I would not let any of my superintendents near a contract unless he attended this course and was fully aware of all the risks associated with the building and repair of ships.

The above bodes ill for the recent nationalisation of the IoM steam packet. One of the loud noises that those in the industry made was that should this happen the management would remain independent (not necessarily without re-tendering). The government gave that assurance but I wonder how easy they will find it to keep to it.

Even in successful managements I would follow E-S - certainly targeting the team leaders as well as the troops. On successive new builds any attempt I made to included detail at the outline stage was removed by my manager - 'Only comment in outline to an outline spec.'. When it came to the contract spec., of course, nothing could be detailed differently from the yard without an extra being demanded (I did manage to get the domestic voltage of two bulk carriers increased to 220 from 115 at zero difference, must have saved the yard enough in copper and protection for them to forgive it).

Some of that is a management Vs owning organisation feature. All the review will be, at best, discounted. For a new client as we would be looking to attract the owner as an ongoing management client, to an existing client we would be doing our best to cement the relationship.

Detailed commentary increases the costs to managers while reaping reward only to the owner and any extras subsequently incurred were the owner's alone.

Here was me thinking that 'design creep' was a MOD affliction! It seems from comments here that it's quite common across the marine engineering spectrum!
In my time at BAE systems (aero) I witnessed many examples of the MOD requirements managers tinkering with the system requirements and the 'Spec' post CDR, despite dire warnings from the engineering teams, these seemingly small changes only served to destabablise a system design that had sometimes taken years to design, agree and fund. Much of the issue being that complex designs of a 'system of systems' have so many interdependencies upon each other, that even small tweaks here and there have the potential to undermine other systems functionality.

It needs a strong will and fine negotions skills for the supplier to manage this, sadly it looks like Fergusons were dealt a dud hand and were forced into late design changes against both thier advice and will.

I recall a major design change on Nimrod which essentially undermined the whole aircraft design, it occurred after the design freeze just after the critical design review and involved the MOD specifying new engines, to give more thrust, better fuel efficiency and quieter operation. All for the right reasons but sadly implemented at the wrong time, which proved disasterous for the aerodynamic performance of the airframe.
The problem being in Nimrod was the that engines were located in the wing nacelles at the wing root (perfect for a MPA) and as these new BR710 engines were much longer than the originals, the wing area needed to be increased, which had the impact of radically altering the aerodynamic performance of the aircraft when in level flight, BAE's engineering solution to fix this was either break the fuselage aft of the wing and lengthen the distance between the wing and tail, or increase the size of the tail area, the latter solution would require significant aft fuselage strengthening, understandably - both suggested solutions involved unfunded expense and would be time consuming - coming so late in the engineering life cycle. More importantly, they were both unfunded in the contract price, so despite dire warnings from BAE and DERA aerodynamicist at both Farnborough and Warton, MOD went ahead with the engine change without the recommended attending fuselage/tail changes, the resultant aircraft performance in level flight during the flight testing stage was 'as expected' and the MOD subsequently stated that the Aerodynamic performance of the aircraft would be unacceptable in operational use (despite BAE designing a software solution called SAS/SID (stability augmentation system/stall identification device), this was essentially a software programme sat in between the stick and the control surfaces, to smooth level flight and help warn the pilot of an impending stall.
This condition was one of the main reasons stated by HMG of why the platform was cancelled in the notorious SDSR of 2010, the blame, as ever was put on BAE and all remaining MRA4 airframes were childishly destroyed on the apron of the factory where they were built, and the manufacturer was then paid to keep quiet - very simlar to the TSR debacle, which was a far more famous casualty of major design creep.
The cancellation of both programmes were a collosal waste of taxpayers money, because despite the spiralling costs - both aircraft would have delivered huge capability in defence to the UK. The solution to the government created capabilities gap was a trans Atlantic shopping spree to buy far inferior aircraft from the US. Criminal!

Although TSR2 was the classic debacle of government agencies interfering with the development and design of an aircraft intended for a multi role service, all wasn't lost at its cancellation as a lot of the radar technology invented for it was eventually replicated in the Tornado, which fulfilled most of what TSR2 could have delivered, i.e. low level supersonic reconnaissance and weapon delivery.

Indeed Roy, much of TSR 2 developed wing technology also appeared in Typhoon.

Typical Grey Funnel to have thought you invented the problem, Tom!

I did mean to include above that I thought there would be value in developing a simple list of the detail to politely add to the outline at the point the managers building team get hold of it (which would probably be after the brokers had sounded out the market with an outline, outline).

A job done once. The boss, the late great T D underwood, claimed the only thing he would sack for was 're-work' the poison of commerce. I am not sure he ever did but that initial stage of specification review was very much an offender.

Sadly this has little to do with providing GB yards with a market merely outlines how the industry might improve its servicing of it if it had one. Although most of the things on my recommendations list would result in less ship rather than more (not necessarily so for those of the Steel man or engineers) were they to get their just credit I am sure it would not bring the product price much close to the Far East's.

David, please let me apologise - as I didn't intend my comment reference design creep as derogatory to our MN counterparts, simply that I assumed that commercial building would suffer much less from the constant meddling from the multiple government agencies involved in military procurement projects, many of which are time served experts in providing the integrator with 1000's of conflicting 'Shall' requirements.

There have been some spectacular "cock ups" in the merchant sector. We (H&W) had a cost overrun of almost £200 million !!!! on the Global marine contract. It ended as most of our latter contracts did in a court action over who agreed what, when and with who but of course the paperwork was sadly absent. After much finger pointing as to who allowed the overspend to reach such a level both sides agreed it was a complete bollocks of how to oversee and complete a contract and agreed a draw with each side licking its wounds and vowing never again, but of course we did on the next contract.

Wow! That's not exactly a small amount!!
Can I be cheeky and ask your opinion on why it happened e.g. was it design creep or mismanagement of the project (customer or supplier?), or perhaps both?

Tom! I was only teasing (and, no, I will not apologise for joking about Wednesday departures!). Tmac's report is rather eyewatering I agree but I guess 'high tech' was involved. A splendid way to increase costs or end up with something no one wants is to have a third party, time charterer, diving company etc. with their fingers contracted to the pie. For such, an 'integrator' sounds like rather a necessity. We were contracted marine consultants (already managers) or a well known diving outfit. They had signed up to a long term charter of a smallish ROV Support vessel building in Rinkoping. The owner, something of a character, had been quite willing to accept any planned modifications to facilitate the charterers needs and wants. These they announced a month or so before sea trials and were not minor. Needless to say there was a conflict and I found myself clearly on the wrong moral bank.

(Ringkoping it was usual to depart for trials aided by the town's fishing fleet as tugs aided by the fire brigade hauling from the opposite side of the dock - outfitting alongside having added the weight to put the new build on the mud).

You are never cheeky Tom, pain in the ars* but NEVER cheeky :jester: Only kidding my friend :thumb:

Most of the overspend was down to simple bad management in costing and approving changes to the specification during the build phase. Our finance department took their eye off the ball as regards obtaining contract variation cost approval and put simplistically didn't monitor the costs piling up against the contract. As for the shipyard side it could be put down to acquessing with requests for changes or additional work without first obtaining approval from the owner in accepting the cost implications and additional time required. The situation rapidly deteriorated into one where the contract simply ran out of control and it was only when the final reckoning was established was the full horror revealed. Obviously the first reaction of the ship owner was to denly any and all liability for the situation and simply demand proof of agreement to the contract changes which were not available because they were never documented to any official extent. All in all an object lesson in how NOT to manage a contract :cloud:

Glomar C R Luigs and Glomar Jack Ryan were Yard No's 1739 and 1740. If you couldn't get your sums right on the previous 1738 contracts the Accounts Department must have been full of 11+ failures.
Was enough attention given to the decimal point?
As one wag said, if they had as many Fuller Slide Rules in the Accounts as they had in Design they wouldn't be in a mess now.

David, Ringkoping sounds like it was an expensive Scandinavian job, I did some work with Saabs yard (Kockums) in Carlskrona on the Visby and Gavle class ships a few years back, I recall that the costs involved were eye watering! Health and safety costs alone seemed stupendous as most Scandinavians take it very seriously.

That's certainly a novel method of bringing a ship out of the basin too, using the Fishing fleet for towing - pricey?

Tmac, thanks for the reply mate, what a dreadful state of affairs, sounds like H&W were in turmoil - do you think the causes were due to inexperience by the finance and design teams, or just ineptitude by those in control?

A similar situation happened at Swan Hunters after they were bought out by the late Jap Kroese, they had won 'lead ship' building contract of 2 bay class ASLS ships for the RFA, the contract competition was won while Swans still had a fully manned yard with significant warship building experience and an award winning in house design team, however when the yard was bought, most of that experience voted with thier feet and moved over to Barrow, leaving Swans full of inexperienced contractors, who then made a total hash of the build, eventually - millions over budget and months late, the ship was ignominiously towed away incomplete as I recall, and the yard never recovered, with its once fine reputation shot to sh1t, it was the last shipbuilder on the Tyne and is now an offshore technology park. My grandfather and old man (both engineers in the yard) would be turning in thier graves!

Tom,

For us (not a million miles different from our involvement in Longbow - although considerably faster!) and our client, not specially over the top. The ship was a bit strange but not wildly sophisticated (diesel electric with synchronous motors, pony motor starts not electronic) and variable pitch. Kongsberg simplex DP marked the high point of her basic sophistication. The clever stuff was mobilised by the charterer. It was the considerable list of little things that mounted up against the owner. She was nothing like the displacement or more genuine sophistication of the Seaspread class Multirole Support vessels which would be more the idea of high grade Scandinavian technology.

The shipyards seemed to be a mixture of a family and communal village concern so the use of its fleet and the fire brigade I suspect was not on the balance sheet (the water between the town Hvide Sande could be raised as a last resort but she spent most of the first night out of the yards aground which distorted the main prop blades as well was discovering underpowering problems in the pony motor outfit).

How much of this could have been forestalled by the yard (the basic design had some considerable flaws, too). The Vikings have their problems too. Nordsovaerflet closed in 97.

Tom, put simply the remaining workforce in Harland and Wolff were so demoralised by the influx of foreign management (read fuc*wits) who didn't know the first idea about shipbuilding, they just didn't give a sh1t anymore. Most just wanted to get their day in and if the opportunity arose to get the hell out of there with a full saddlebag of redundancy money. After an average of 25 years service they were not going to throw that away and resign even if there were other jobs to go to, which there weren't.

For example we had a new head of the HVAC department appointed who admitted he had no marine experience, had never worked offshore or on a ship of any kind and came from an ice cream company. We "oul hands" gave up in despair at what was happening but given the state of H&W today perhaps the "plan" has worked out perfectly.

I find it incredibly sad that that whole area (both the Shorts factory and H&W) are no longer producing anything tangible - I can remember that I used to look at the place in awe whenever entering or leaving Belfast while serving on Northern Ireland Patrol (Ton boats) in the 70's and early 80's, I suppose the decline had already set in by then.

It is no wonder that the lads were demoralised - how on earth can you have a HoD with no relevant industry experience - Did H&W have an HR department, or were they as hacked off as the guys on the shop floor?

Interesting stuff David, How did you find Kongsberg as an outfit? I did some interesting work with them for the Norwegian Defence Procurement Division in 2010-13 while they were integrating some 'Kongsberg kit' into their ground air defence systems infrastructure, I worked with some serious boffins with a very different view on the world!

At the risk of boring those who have seen the tales on other threads (I cannot remember them all, no true bore can) I can use them to illustrate some of my prejudices. Best of all was during LNG seatrials off DSME. I suppose we could think of her as some form of hybrid between auxiliaries fully integrated or replaced('duplicated') by IAS and those simply remotely controlling the maker's kit from the IAS. A steamer, the burner management and combustion control done by Kongsberg but the turbines/manoeuvring controls very much the makers (Kawasaki).

As an example of how contactors should not be joined in the building process I offer under. One good process model is the one described "V" shaped. Well presented in a presentation on the (mis)application of IAS by LRS's Bernard Twomey, always a good man to hear.

(Before E-S jumps in that is not a plump round shaped map but one where the planning and drawings, here I would include software, are completed during the first downward stroke of the "V" with the casting into ship starting with the keel laying at the bottom ending in delivery at the top of the upward stroke).


The Kongsberg team of about five with a consultant from HO were plugged into the network with laptops, at a table arranged in the MCR. They were not simply adjusting parameters but they were 'coding' on the fly. Perhaps not unusual when sliding down the leading edge of V but we were underway on sea trials.

I have a bug bear about the lifetime of high populations of silicon WRT single failure prone essential equipment. Without claiming that it will fail in ten years I do claim that one must be budget ready to replace it if it does. Many experiences of being forced to repair kit in which the remaining semiconductor population is on another rising stroke, that of the bathtube curve, has taught me that to do so results in a higher cost and greater down time. My boss is amused to know that my doorbell defies my crystal ball. It is based on a PLC that I bought to demonstrate to colleagues what one was, in the late 80s. One swallow doth not a Summer make. I am still, as always, right.

The replacement electronics itself will be cheap. In ten years, though, it will be different and if the interface between the original and the 'ship' is not well documented then the replacement will involve engineering a new one. That will be expensive. That documentation is simply not being done (perhaps LRS have managed some improvements there I have not spoken to Bernard for some time).

The consultant on the trials kindly gave me an introduction to the kit and listened to me unravelling my spiel to a new audience. His honest agreement I now quote at the drop of a hat.

"In ten years time this system will not only be expensive to maintain, it will be fabulously expensive to maintain".

Were the fatigue life of commercial tonnage to be restricted to 10 years I would be relaxed but that isn't the standard and I forecast that we will be scrapping because of the 'fatigue' life of her silicon.

A model that I would have liked to see adopted (it was available and not too dissimilar to the Decca Isis I 'did' at Saudi Shields in the 70s) was to have a discrete alarm system like the Autronica KM series or Malling with whatever computer enhancements you could dream up claggted on the back of it.

On hearing mention of Autronica and KM the consultant told me that Kongsberg had bough Autronica and still produced a KM variant. "For out clients operating in areas where it is difficult for us to offer support". Where I wonder is more difficult than mid-pacific?

(How old was Longbow? She went to scrap with her original Autronica KM2 (?) operating fine(ish - complete drawings would have been helpful there too!).

At the specification stage of a combined LNG/Gas production vessel I included a line or two to counter this behaviour. My oppo. in the client's office was from the oil and gas production industry and I learned that there, with the same kit, they would expect it to have arrived at the 'project' having been fully tested back to back with a simulator with the expectation of a few parameter setpoint adjustments only to be made to an otherwise fully operational control and monitoring system.

I don't know about the RN but certainly merchant shipbuilding is not well served by these contractors (I am sure Kongsberg is not the only one but my experience with others is slight).

They serve public transport, nuclear and other areas under more public scrutiny, they know well how to deliver but we obviously don't present a sufficiently lucrative market.

(I would have revelled in it to have had such kit as my preserve at sea, great toys to play with and to enjoy the kudos and status of being the shaman in charge. The picture is very different from behind the office desk).

One of the most interesting little problems in our long and well watered run down to redundancy was a systems fault that occurred on a Kongsberg Datachief. It occurred after twelve years in service but was then permanent - another story I have told elsewhere but I will wait for your eyes to unglaze before I launch into that again.

(I also dislike Kongsberg's approach to redundant power supplies. The only time a UPS saves one from whatever is when one's computer can avoid the whatever without a propulsion/power plant to respond to it. Otherwise their failure risks killing the computer while the main supply is healthy and, of course, is also more likely to reveal a hidden failure to UPS when it is required to switch over).

I really do need to let you recover.

Thanks David, sounds familiar to me - oh for the engineers tales of woe during trials! I am however quite surprised to hear that Kongsbergs approach to Config Control on that project was so lax during the crucial V&V stages (sea trials), I noted when working with them on Norwegian GBAD and the 'Army Gateway' projects that Config control was one of their strong-points - almost to the point od obsession, this however may have been due to the customer being the Norwegian Defence Procurement Department (NDPD) - who had crafted many system requirements covering Configuration Control of the system throughout at different stages of its life-cycle into the 'Spec', most of them falling on the supplier.
I have some equally hair raising tales of other 'Euro' suppliers total and blissful ignorance of the vital importance of good config control when trying to verify the systems performance under 'locked down' test conditions.

I think we are both pointing at the reason. Ensure one's government gets the best attentions We'll deal with the also runs in guarantee (and if not we will be very well paid to provide ongoing support).

Having at least one other player of the same grade might improve the QC amongst those on commercial contracts.

As I said I am sure it is not only them. I was reading aloud from the logic diagram of an ethylene carrier's controls (by Flemming's - I did not grow up reading logic diagrams so the lips were moving). "Both glycol pumps must be running before the compressor can start". Overheard by a colleague who had commanded the ship concerned "David, I don't care what that diagram says the compressor can be started with only one running!". The documentation was simply without any version control (the diagrams themselves, of course, generated from the software). There may even have been no correct version as the gas plant technicians/engineers had access to change it locally.

I also have a hobby horse to do with having ETOs (or whatever we want to call them - E/O was fine with me although I was a grander ECO earlkier when there were gas turbines to play with) with certificated competence. What I do not expect of them is divination or other necromancy - how can they tend a plant if the bloody drawings are wrong?