Shipyards commercial

Shipyard development – bring your maritime projects to life

Safety, efficiency, and a fit-for-purpose environment are shipyard essentials – but so too is profitability. This means constantly optimising how you operate, minimising costs, maximising revenues, and exploring new opportunities to innovate and expand.

At Royal HaskoningDHV, we have more than 70 years’ experience planning, engineering, and procuring successful shipyards across the globe. And our unique and comprehensive client services have made us a world leader in the maritime sector as demonstrated by our experts authoring of the British Standard for shipyard design, BS6349 Part 3.

Established in 1991, our shipyard technology group First Marine International (FMI) is also a leading provider of maritime consultancy services and expertise in naval architecture-based shipyard production.

Likewise, our economic consultancy group Ocean Shipping Consultants (OSC) offers expert understanding in specialist areas of shipping economics and port development, such as providing comprehensive global shipping trade forecasts.

Together, we can deliver the support, consultancy, and expertise you need to bring your maritime projects to life.

The shipyard development process

At Royal HaskoningDHV, our multi-disciplinary teams develop innovative approaches to monitoring and analysing the shipbuilding and ship repair markets, continually surveying factors that impact shipyard development.

This strategic research gives us the insight needed to build a bespoke business plan based on your target location, revenue, markets, and other operational requirements. We can also perform feasibility studies to find your ideal shipyard location based on financial viability, sustainability, layout and more.

Once your business plan is finalised, our expert teams are always at hand to advise and support development throughout the shipyard’s life cycle.

We also develop smart shipyards to help you minimise your carbon footprint and seize new digital opportunities.

Our shipyard capabilities

In addition to developing new dock and shipyard facilities, we also modernise existing facilities, giving them a new lease of life.

Past projects include increasing dry dock capacity through widening, lengthening, and enhancing operations by retrofitting infrastructure. This includes ship hauling-in and winching systems, dock arms, fendering, crane beams, rails, and dock services.

Royal HaskoningDHV’s expert teams can find you the ideal solutions to all aspects of shipyard planning, design and development, including:

Shipyard technology

• Market research and strategic planning
• Operational review and strategic planning
• Pre-production organisation and technology
• Production process technology
• Industry and competitiveness studies
• Facilities and development
• Benchmarking and performance improvement

Shipyard infrastructure:

• Dry docks
• Dock and lock gates
• Shiplifts
• Slipways
• Floating docks
• Harbour creation
• Mechanical and electrical systems
• Workshops and people buildings