New building supervision

New Building Supervision - Plan Approval & Site Supervision

Imagine a project with dozens of primary and secondary stakeholders, and hundreds of documents to review and approve: what would be the most effective way to manage this?This is the challenge that Shipowners face when setting up their new building supervision team.

Building a new vessel is a complicated process that involves a large and diverse array of parties: from design and engineering companies with innovative solutions to shipyards and their infrastructures to class & flag and their regulations, equipment manufacturers, sub-contractors, and many others.

The coordination and supervision of all these stakeholders is a real challenge, as there is no uniquely defined guideline that is applicable. Building a fleet of 12 sister bulk carriers is significantly different from building a single, luxurious, expedition cruise ship.

While some (but not many) large Shipowners have made significant investments with the aim of developing in-house processes and support tools, the large majority still rely on basic solutions such as Excel files shared via email or stored on the cloud.

 This leads to fragmented project data, local storage of databases, wrong information coding and indexing - and ultimately results in the project database and supervision team becoming less effective and wasting considerable amounts of time on inefficient processes.

Based on years of experience in the sector and a good understanding of the competitive landscape, Bluestone detected an opportunity to fill this inefficiency gap and invest in the development of an innovative solution. Namely, shipowners would be given a useful tool to make shipbuilding supervision more efficient and productive - a web application covering all aspects of NB supervision. Accessible, fast, reliable, and consistent.

Starting with plan approval, the program allows Owners and stakeholders to view and review drawings and add comments and attachments. These are then automatically sent to everyone working at the shipyard for further action. Replies from the shipyard are collected and updated on the program together with new drawing revisions, giving the users a single access point for the entire plan approval process. The software also keeps track of the drawing history for future reference.

When construction begins, the program prepares, stores and organizes all of the information related to field inspections. It tracks and organizes the remarks and their attachments for all inspection types, including final trials for warranty purposes. Class and functional remarks may be starred for future reference and a special feature is also included for the vessel’s hand-over to the crew. The site management team is provided with an advanced remark management system and can easily filter and export key information in Excel format. The advanced user management settings give users the ability to assign specific permissions to other users. This means that the program may be adapted to many different hierarchies within the site management team as well as to the shipyard’s workflow.

The program also includes various reporting sections. On the homepage, users can check on the construction progress, the milestone achievements, news, and updates provided by the site team, and a gallery with pictures from the construction site. In addition, the Plan Approval and Inspection modules include their own dedicated dashboards with live graphs and key progress indicators.

Last but not least, the program offers a dedicated reporting section, where users can generate and share progress reports. This includes the distinctive block diagram coloring system, ensuring the highest degree of flexibility.

With this unique and innovative program, Bluestone will be ready to assist all Shipowners in building their new vessels while meeting the highest standards. Bluestone experts are available to reply to any questions related to New Building Supervision. 

To book a free trial, please contact matteo.dimaio@bluestone-group.com and watch the video to discover more  https://www.bluestone-group.com/service/technical-services/ .