Machinery Work News

General Dynamics NASSCO, a wholly owned subsidiary of General Dynamics (NYSE: GD), won a $37m contract by the U.S. Navy for the fitting-out availability of the San Antonio-class amphibious assault dock ship USS San Diego (LPD 22). Work under this contract will be performed at NASSCO beginning in May 2012 and is expected to be completed by December 2014. Specific efforts for the USS San Diego under this contract include program management, planning, engineering, design, liaison, scheduling, labor and procurement of incidental material. On board repair efforts will include piping, structural and machinery work. The contract award also includes options which, if exercised, would bring the total value of this contract to approximately $134m.

Todd Pacific Shipyards Corporation has been notified that it has been awarded a contract with the United States Coast Guard ("Coast Guard") to provide long-term maintenance of Polar Class icebreakers. The contract consists of multiple contract options for planned maintenance availabilities (PMA's) and docking planned maintenance availabilities (DPMA's) for the POLAR STAR (WAGB-10) and POLAR SEA (WAGB-11). The availabilities, and their companion planning options, extend through the last DPMA ending August 5, 2008, and the last PMA ending on September 2, 2008. The work to be performed includes availability planning and generalized ship maintenance and repairs as needed, with emphasis on propulsion and deck machinery work.

The uprising shipping market stimulated the ship repair business for yards all over the world in this two years, especially for the Chinese shipyards. The increase of shipping rate for cape size and panamax bulk carriers, particularly the raw material market, consequently caused the rise of ship repair material cost and labor cost. Even so, all the ship repair yards are fully booked by the rolling-in ship owners and managers. The records for the first half of 2004 by Huarun Dadong Dockyard (HRDD) illuminates this tendency too.

Atlantic Marine-Mobile was granted myriad of cruise ship refurbishment contracts throughout 2001, beginning with Holland America’s Maasdam, which spent approximately 14 days last January at the Alabama yard’s drydock. During this period, the vessel underwent steel prefabrication and installation of a new 2,400 sq. ft. teen room, which was put in place via the yard’s 275-ton bridge crane Goliath. The yard also completed a major cruise ship conversion to a Zenon system on Holland America’s Zaandam in order to achieve the highest level of environmental compliance. The vessel, which is the second Holland America ship to undergo voluntary installation of a Zenon system…