Page 67 - ΝΑΥΤΙΚΑ ΧΡΟΝΙΚΑ - ΣΕΠΤΕΜΒΡΙΟΣ 2022

the proper environmental procedures are not used to manage unforeseen factors
followed, such as using a water curtain, that may cause delays in repair times or
covering exposed areas after blasting, increase costs
cleaning up and disposing of the used grid
before the vessel’s undocking. How does increasing inflation affect a shipyard’s
Looking at just a fraction of the new envi- negotiations with shipowners and suppliers?
ronmental regulations, it becomes obvi- Historically, shipyards have always faced
ous that as they are enacted, repair costs challenges during heavily inflated mar-
and the time spent on projects increase, kets. On the one hand, shipyards have
resulting in unfair competition between to manage continuously increasing costs.
the shipyards that implement them and On the other, they have to manage the
those that do not. expectation of shipping companies for
stable prices with contracts agreed upon
What are the most significant challenges regard- much ahead of their vessel’s arrival at the
ing a shipyard’s infrastructure? Does the increas- yard.
ing size of vessels make you consider develop- That being the case, shipyards decide
ing new infrastructure to accommodate larger to raise their prices and thus maintain a
vessels? safe profit margin assuming that costs will
During the designing phase, shipyards increase. Alternatively, they try to attract
always take into consideration new trends shipping companies with lower prices and
and rising markets when deciding on the manage the losses by undertaking addi-
type of infrastructure and the size of tional regional projects. Large shipyard
drydocks. In general, even larger-sized groups usually follow the first practice as
vessels have a wide range of options for they can support higher prices. In contrast,
being repaired worldwide. Obviously, the the second practice is often seen in small
larger the vessel, the fewer worldwide second-tier yards that seize the opportu-
options it has to be repaired, even though nity to attract opportunistic projects.
this is not considered a big challenge. In
the rare cases where a relatively large,
specialised vessel radically changes its
trading pattern, shipping companies have
to slightly increase the vessel’s deviation
from its trading area to have repairs car-
ried out. At the same time, shipyards must
adapt to and gain experience in the spe-
cialised work scope. Fortunately, this is a
fairly quick process.
We rarely see shipyards improving or
expanding their existing docking infra-
structure, which is a costly and time-con-
suming process, only seen in regions
where the overall demand for ship repairs
has increased substantially. It has recently
happened in Turkey and the Med region,
but it was due to general market needs
rather than individual business initiatives.

What risk assessment techniques do you apply to
ensure the smooth execution of ship repair work?
It is interesting to see to what extent risk 24/7 Worldwide technical support
assessments and the related mitigation on board Balancing
plans are used in the shipyard environ-
ment. To my understanding, they are
mainly implemented for safety reasons
only since most works carried out in a
yard have passed a risk assessment anal-
ysis to ensure their safe execution and are

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