SHIPYARD QC - NAVAL OVERSEER - CLASS SURVEYOR An Aide to Reliability or a Hurdle to Productivity

This article intends to do literature review of what contemporary writings and research says about the three players namely; the QC inspector of a quintessential shipyard, the harried Naval Overseer of WOT and ever confident Surveyor from Classification Society.

‘Is QC a classic case of over regulation with under-enforcement or, is it a simple case of tweaking the shipbuilding image for mis-perception versus actual misconception of executing quality control in shipyards’

A ships acceptance / classification is an on-going service from the parties relying on the results of this service have complex relationships with one or several players in the marine and associated industry. In author’s perception: strides / course correction are required; so as to learn from other nation’s folly in outsourcing of inspections, the US and NATO nations have a delivery model that has matured over a decade, as can be seen from various insert web-pages of open forums within Europe and America for discussing quality assurance on naval ships.

A Win-Win situation has to be attained wherein, shipyard’s QC, naval overseer and class surveyor effort is synergized for a better quality cost effective ship not only at time of delivery alone, but a vessel with reduced cost of total life cycle support. The home page of US navy equivalent of WOT called SUPSHIP is worthy of note for duties beyond carrying out only testing, trials and delivery the domain of financial and project management is next level of growth for an overseer. This can only happen when the supporting arms of the naval overseer i.e.: the shipyard QC and class surveyor come true to the customer, in tasking of higher calling.

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References:

1. The IACS Quality Management System Certification Scheme (QSCS) – In Progress by Hisayasu Jin at The International Audit Scheme London, 27 May 2003

2. Maritime Acquisition Publication no 01-020 Warship Engineering Management Guide Issue 01- December 2007 by MoD UK

3. Fit for purpose- keeping the crew in mind by Mr D quire of The Nautical Institute UK. Proceedings of International Conference on human factors in ship design safety and operation 21 to 22 march 07 by RINA.

4. Naval Ship Assurance – A New Approach by MrJames Buckley, BMT Defense Services Ltd, UK

5. Classifications- New view from naval perspective by, Warship Technology Journal -Jan 2007

6. Diverse new builds to benefit from classification by Warship Technology Journal Jan 2010

7. Naval Ship Code vide NATO ANEP -77 of Dec 2009

8. Hard to get; US Navy faces up to procurement issues by Janes’s Navy International April 2009 edition

WORKSHOP ON CHALLENGES IN WARSHIP-CONSTRUCTION

Over the past 45 years, there has been a unparalleled change in the technology and equipment insertion which has occurred in warship construction at WOTs. This is compounded with adoption of offloading in a large way by shipyards, causing sea change to process of ship delivery beyond BR 1921. There is a need to revisit QC/QA methodology at shipyards by WOT further to BR 3129. The subject also needs to be addressed from point of view of the ‘Sailor at Sea’ calling for introspection into the mechanism in place for post delivery support by shipyards of a New ship as mandated in the contract. The aim of this workshop is to assess the efficacy of the present processes and provide a platform and bring out requirement for course corrections, in realm of QA/QC,, Third party inspection and Guarantee support for, Warship construction Project of Indian Navy in 21 st century.