H&W Technical Services Gets NASSCO Contract

Harland and Wolff Technical Services Limited, the stand alone design and engineering consultancy of Harland and Wolff Group PLC, has secured a number of international contracts. Following extensive sales and marketing activity to introduce the company's capability to the market, contracts have been obtained from the NASSCO shipyard in San Diego and Van Der Giessen De Noord of the Netherlands.

Led by Managing Director James MacGregor, the majority of the 60 staff are broadly equally distributed among four key disciplines, embracing project management, basic design, steel production engineering and outfit production engineering. Explaining the company's philosophy and its early success, James said: "The resources available within Technical Services have significant design experience of challenging and innovative vessels embracing the merchant, naval and offshore sectors. Contracts such as BP Schiehallion and the Global Marine ultra deepwater drillships have demonstrated our credentials for world class innovative design, with high quality outputs.

"The General Dynamics owned NASSCO yard has subcontracted detailed design work for a pair of large trailer ships to be operated by Totem Ocean Trailer Express Inc on routes between Washington State and Alaska. These ships are 256 m long overall with a beam of 36m and a service speed of 24 knots. They are provided with a powerful twin-screw diesel electric installation with total capacity of 52.2 MW. For these vessels we have obtained two separate contracts; one involving steel design in the cargo aft and stern zones, and another involving outfitting design in the machinery space zone. These contracts are schedule to run until August 2001. The work is to be carried out using the Tribon 3-D CAD system.

"We have also secured work from the very successful van der Giessen de Noord shipyard. The work is in two phases and is schedule to run until August 2001. The first phase of the contract involves preparing the basic structural design and obtaining the classification approval for a lengthened version of an offshore support vessel originally built by Van Der Giessen for British owners Toisa Ltd, Bermuda. The second phase of the work will involve generating the detailed steel design model for the entire hull. The new vessel will feature modified aft and fore ends to accommodate enhanced performance criteria and increased propulsion thruster power." Formed from a merger of the former Harland and Wolff Technical Services and the resources which previously resided in the technical department of Harland and Wolff Shipbuilding and Heavy Industries, the new organization is structured to offer an innovative and quality driven design service to the shipbuilding and offshore industries. The initial contracts which have been won in international competition provide a platform on which to build.