Page 10: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (September 2010)

10 Maritime Reporter & Engineering News

What do you count as your company’s competitive advantage?

JC: Superior customer service, a straight- talking approach and attention to time- line. Getting ships out early or on-time is the focus.

What investments is your company making today that are intended for the long-term health of the company?

JC: Human resources, from internal train- ing to the focus on growing the health and safety culture.

What do you consider the most impor- tant trends in your business to be?

JC: The growth in the local market, par- ticularly the offshore market coming from West Africa. It is a big and growing area, and we are talking more and more about projects regarding offshore rigs, subsea vessels and supply vessels.

What do you consider to be the biggest challenges to your company’s continued success in terms of Techni- cal matters?

JC: Technology is driving ships to be more and more complicated, which is a big challenge for ship repairers. Some of the repairs require product specific knowledge on specific systems. As things get more complicated and technical ex- pertise gets scarcer, there is a heavier re- liance on the OEM’s to supply technical talent. We also provide a number of sig- nificantly challenging services, and we must keep up our base of talented and qualified welders and steelworkers, for example. Today, as you are finding in many industries, we have an aging work- force, and fewer people who are willing and able to work in this environment.

To ensure that we have the people we need, we have a 4-year apprenticeship program, which today has 30 members.

It is a fantastic program to achieve NVQ certifications, and it feeds our talent pool.

In addition, we go to other areas in the

EU where there are skilled laborers and tradesmen, and we bring them in when they are needed.

We have workers coming in regularly from Romania, Bulgaria and Poland, to name a few.

PROFILE FIVE MINUTES WITH JOE CORVELLI, CEO, GIBDOCK

After nearly two years of engineering, procurement, and project preparations, Dock- wise recently completed the first of two float-overs for the Vyborg Project in Korea.

The Vyborg Project is big in scope and size: It involves moving two 15,000 metric ton semi-submersible hulls and two topsides that weigh approximately 19,000 metric tons each. These pieces were constructed in locations more than 27,000 km apart and the Dockwise vessel the Black Marlin was used to successfully load the first of two topsides for transport to the float-over location in Korea, to be joined with a hull that was transported from Vyborg, Russia by the Talisman. Dockwise’s scope also included designing and installing the pre-laid anchor spread, hooking the hull to the spread and ballasting the hull to its mating draft. This part involved the use of five tugs, two an- chor handlers, one workboat, two anchor barges, one test barge, a crane barge, three launch boats and guard boats. An especially innovative feature is the “floating float- over” aspect of this project: This float-over was completed without a fixed structure.

Instead, a floating structure was anchored and ballasted down to keep it in place while

Dockwise performed the float-over operation. After the Black Marlin docked into the hull, which was ballasted down to 27 meters draft, ballast operations were initiated, in order to lock the Leg Mating Units and align the hull columns and the topside. Next steps included welding the columns to the topside under a partial load transfer, after which they released the load from the Leg Mating Units and began ballast operations to transfer the full load of the topside onto the hull columns. Finally, on July 10, the

Black Marlin was retracted from the completed rig and the de-ballasting operations were completed.The second topside and hull float-over will be completed using the same process later this fall.

For more information visit www.dockwise.com

The Big Impact of Vyborg