Design and Engineering of Vessels in Russia – Brief Overview

Photo by «Alex Naval Keonig»

Regarding the current situation in the industry of vessel design, the experts speak with a single voice that Russia is behind not only USA and European countries, but even Korea and China. In a large measure the reason of such gap is that the period of economic disintegration in the former Soviet states, including Russia, coincides with the rapid development of the shipbuilding in the end of 90’s of the last century and the first decade of the third millennium.

Background

In the field of the military shipbuilding the USSR established itself as a leader and designed conceptually new vessels while the civil shipbuilding always lacked the attention of the government. There were too few enterprises specialized in design and construction of civil ships. The atomism of the civil shipbuilding among Ministries – Ministry of shipping industry, Ministry of fisheries, etc – was another difficulty. The closedness even of the civil shipbuilding industry entailed lack of contacts with foreign specialists and international organizations (e.g. ISSC, OMAE, IMAM or ISOPE), and, as a consequence, unwillingness to accept the new. Despite all these limitations, more than half the civil ships of the country were built at domestic shipyards and many of the other half were built from soviet designs at foreign shipyards. In total, the soviet fleet was in the top-ten of the most developed fleets.

Design of ships is uneasy business, and its complexity refers not only dimensions or safety requirements, but even the fact that every vessel class and type has unique features. So design offices are often special-purpose – one designs fishing vessels, another – bulk carriers, etc. The Russian market of design services features in design offices which in the days of the USSR created war ships and with disintegration of the country were forced to start designing civil vessels.

Current Situation

Photo by «Alex Naval Keonig»

Today, in Russia there are hundreds of engineering companies specializing in the shipbuilding. But according to the majority of experts, only few of them are able to ensure real design with traditional designer’s inspection, i.e. provide all engineering services starting from technical assignment and ending with production startup.

It should be noted, though that most such companies can offer a “diploma” or “term paper” level project that is without any new developments or deviations from known parameters. Those few companies which indeed can carry out complex engineering feature in personnel of ripe age, experienced and competent. So the problem involves absence of worthy young staff regardless of the fact that considerable number of discipline engineers graduates from higher educational institutions every year. Unfortunately, since these institutions lack standard machinery and students undergoing practical training are treated indifferently at the place of production, the level of practical training of these graduates leaves much to be desired. The teaching staff is not young too. According to some employees, graduating students who would like to stay in the institute at teaching positions cannot afford it since their salary would be depressingly low. So, there is another problem related to financing of the education.

The Russian design system differs in much more amount of technical and nomenclatorial documentation then in what country so ever and in rather a difficult system of various endorsements which entails duration of implementation of a project, its work content and cost. Opinions on what documents should be prepared by an engineering company and what – at a shipyard differ. There are specialists who reckon that the fullest package must be prepared and the designer’s project administration performed. The difficulty of this approach is in the lack of new industry standards and recommendations while the old ones are inapplicable. So, a lot of time is spent on agreeing contents and forms of documents. Other designers consider that it is enough to send a qualification or technical project to an enterprise and perform designer’s inspection of the construction while the shipyard will independently elaborate work design documents. In this case, the difficulty is in lack of adequate engineering offices at an enterprise; those were liquidated during the perestroika or today’s crisis. And now practically not a single shipbuilding enterprise can construct a vessel basing only the engineering design as interpreted by the Marine Registry, while the shipyards of Europe, Asia and America work exactly this way, i.e. completing documents by themselves. And heavy use of 3D technologies is not the last factor.

Photo by «Alex Naval Keonig»

Regarding design software, it is necessary note that CAD has been in use in our country since 70’s of the last century. But today, according to company’s employees, only a few of hundreds of design offices use modern 3D and visualization software. 3D design of individual elements is the maximum. On the other hand, some companies quite successfully use modern IT – various ship design systems ensuring interactive processing of virtual models. Non user-friendly interface of such systems and difficulty of data transmission from one program to another complicate their usage, but the most important is lack of designers’ experience.

The problem of design and manufacture of modern ship facilities, including engines, is very critical. For many decades, ships were equipped with facilities of foreign manufacture. And regarding course of events in this field, experts cannot come to a single conclusion. Some of them reckon that public funds for design of engines, radio equipment and other facilities would go down the drain. Other disagree and are sure that Russia is able and must produce all necessary for its fleet by itself.

Today, there is a strong accent on design of new vessels for operation in ice conditions what is related to shelf development of resources, namely hydrocarbons. But there is no recovery in the design of fishery fleet and civil vessels.

It is necessary to note that the Strategy of Development of the Shipbuilding Industry for the Period until 2020 and Further adopted by order of the Ministry of Industry and Energy of the Russian Federation #354 dated September 6, 2007, turned the situation for the better. This document states necessity of governmental support for the industry in the development of scientific-technological and productive potential, complex modernization and technical re-equipment; law and regulatory support for development of the shipbuilding; structural transformation and optimization of the potential of the industry, and on positive progress in the industry as a whole. The economic crisis suspended forward motion of the industry. There are fears that as things stand now, many engineering companies will not survive. Undoubtedly, those companies which have already got on their feet will bridge over difficulties.