C-Job Naval Architects has published new research which shows time-to-market of superyachts can be reduced by up to 4.5 months. A new tool disconnects the engineering of the lower and upper part of the vessel leaving room for customisation while also saving time.

The global independent ship design and engineering company calls the tool the Dynamic Platform. With it, owners can still fully customise their vessel, while also reducing engineering time. The man behind the research is Stefan van der Harst, Junior Naval Architect at C-Job (see picture below).

He looked at the trending superyacht size: between fifty and eighty metres. The upper part of the vessel is unique to each owner whereas the lower part, non-owner spaces, show great commonality. That is why he proposes disconnecting the engineering of the lower and upper part of the vessel.

Stefan van der HarstSpace claim clashes and grid mismatches

‘The lower part of the vessel houses more of the technical and crew areas,’ explains Van der Harst. ‘Space claiming is exerted by all three disciplines to get the right space reservation in the final design. However, a great portion of early design phases is consumed by iterating the design, this to solve all clashes and grid mismatches.

The dynamic platform is a tool that is based on scale-to-order philosophy. The platform translates the owner’s wishes into a finished basic design global model of the lower part of the ship. It does this through three stages, each stage more detailed than the previous. In the first stage a default model is chosen, the second stage introduces modularity to cope with variations in arrangement and the third stage scales the model to the desired dimensions.

Van der Harst continues: ‘By eliminating the “space claim clashes” and “grid mismatches” via the Dynamic platform in an early stage of design, a significant design time reduction can be found of up to 4.5 months. This is half of the average time it currently takes to engineer the concept and basic design phase.’

‘More research is needed to make the Dynamic Platform a reality, however, the first insights are promising. Not just for concept and basic design phases, detail engineering could benefit yachts outside of the fifty-to-eighty-metre range as well.’

Van der Harst conducted his research at C-Job Naval Architects as part of his MSc in Marine Technology at Delft University of Technology. His thesis “Scale-To-Order. An engineering lead time reduction strategy for yachts” is the result of elevent months of in-depth research. The full report can be found here.