A few years ago I was asked to do the final commissioning and trials on the last of a series of three vessels built at a Dutch shipyard.
The commissioning engineer for the engines and gear boxes fiddled with his laptop for a couple of days and then announced that they were ready to be run up. They were duly run for an hour or so and he departed saying he would be back in a couple of days for what would be a very boring trial.
We were a couple hours out from the shipyard at the start of the trial when I noticed the starboard gearbox was about 30 degrees hotter than the port.
When I mentioned it to the commissioning engineer, he said it was the same on the previous two vessels but the temperature was just on the maximum allowed when they were at full power so that was ok. I knew that it couldn’t be right and it only took a few seconds to discover the reason; the port gearbox cooler was receiving water at about 30 degrees whilst the starboard was nearer 70 degrees. It only took a few more seconds to discover that the port gearbox cooler was connected engine LT cooling system correctly but the starboard was connected to the HT system.
When I challenged the yard manager he asked how I knew all this and he seemed a bit perplexed that I had looked under the plated and traced the pipework. After a conflab with his staff he explained that it was a bit difficult to connect the starboard gearbox to the designated flange on the manifold as there was a pillar in the way but there was an unused flange next to it.
Well, that was as maybe but somehow no one had picked up that one half of the manifold was for the LT and the other for the HT system despite the fact that it was crystal clear in the installation manual. I was shocked at this incident as it displayed a lack of competence at three levels; the shipyard, the commissioning engineer and the previous owner’s overseer. But perhaps I shouldn’t have been because when I first went to the vessel the shipyard had connected the port alternator to the starboard switchboard breaker and starboard alternator to the port. The yard's explanation was that was because that was the way the manufacturer had labelled it
