Shipyards are known as a land-based facility that ships
steer to for docking and repair. This study represents a basic conceptual study
for a new principal of developing a floating shipyard - changing the phenomena
of a fixed site shipyard into a self-propelled mobile platform.
This floating shipyard is capable of traveling and
conducting drydock activities at the client's location, or even can lift the
client's vessel and travel to its next designated location, taking advantage of
completing the dry dock and repair during the voyage.
The challenges to this floating shipyard, such as lay-offs,
restructuring, and environmental legislation, requires a balanced solution.
This solution relies on the adaptation of talent management and competitive
production tools. The floating shipyard, here named "F-Yard,” changes the
mindset of dry-dock. This is because F-Yard travels to the client's location or
can carry the client's ship towards the cargo destination, where it can
complete the required drydock or repair. It targets customers that lack a
qualified shipyard in their working area/route, or customers who find that
their shipyard is not matching their needs for quality, safety, time frame.
The cutthroat advantage of the F-Yard comes from having its
own propulsion, where the other approaches depend on others for mobilizing and
anchoring. F-Yard could also serve other industries with its fully equipped
workshops, such as oil and gas and renewable energy.
The modular workshops on the F-Yard would be based on ISO
containers, each with a fully equipped shop for the different trades. This
principal gives F-Yard the ability to have different arrangements/layouts based
on upcoming drydock requirements and optimizing the limited space of the yard.
The general design outcome is about 240 meters in length by
40 meters in breadth to be able to accommodate an offshore unit (alongside) and
to dock a drillship. Also, it will be capable of serving a ship inside the dock
of up to 60,000 DWT, plus other two units (ships/offshore vessels) alongside at
the same time.