Page 31: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (February 2003)

Cruise Industry Annual

Cruise Ship Design Trends Mirror Marine Marketplace

By Julie Parmentier, Senior Interior Designer; and

George Selfridge, CEO Maritime Services Corp.

One of the recent major changes in marine interior design is that manufacturers have become aware of the needs of the marine market place. To support these requirements manufacturers have become much more aggressive in trying to get their product specified and tested to IMO standards. First tier manufacturers have realized that there is a large market for products in cruise ship design and manufacturing and that marine design is, by necessity, it's own separate market.

Manufacturers realize marine interior designers are very limited in the product range that can be incorpo- rated into marine design. The single biggest challenge for the marine interior designer is fulfilling client needs without sacrificing human safety or the design ambi- ence the client wants to project to passengers.

Manufacturers are now, more than ever, responding to this need with improved product range and response times.

As we all know, since Sept. 11, cruise ship companies have reduced capital budgets for new build and refur- bishment projects. While this trend is slowly reversing it self, a large number of projects were — and are — on hold. There is evidence that this situation is starting to improve. The MSC estimating and interior design departments are now extremely busy quoting and designing projects that have a sure chance of being implemented in the near future. This resurgence of business has not only created the need for more manu- facturers' products, but also deferred and reduced maintenance costs and refurbishment budgets over the last year mean that clients now want previously post- poned projects completed at an increasingly faster pace. This is driving the second recent change in trends in interior design; teaming between manufacturers, designers, contractors and owners. The result is that design/build contracts are being used more often. Their use is being driven by the need to reduce costs while increasing the speed at which contracts, from inception to completion, can be executed.

A third trend that is linked to the need for faster proj- ect execution is the use of "on-call" interior design agreements. On-call agreements are set up between client and designer in anticipation of requirements for

February 2003 future design work. The terms and conditions of design services, there are no delays created by admin- engagement are determined in advance of the require- istrative requirements and the project can move ahead ment for interior design. When a need emerges for immediately.

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