Page 53: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (October 2019)

HISTORY DESIGN EVOLUTION designers. As the redesign cycle wound down the Canadian Arctic heated up. Ice class vessels were in demand and unique designs appeared on the drawing boards of many Vancouver companies. Concurrently, Robert

Allan Ltd began working for Singapore shipyards and owners designing unique vessels for the offshore industry in Asia.

Then computers arrived and the drawing boards put in storage. New design processes had to be developed to make the best use of the new tools. This was easier for the young designer than for some of the old hands, but the change was made. When the skeptics ? nally accepted the new tools, the boards were taken from storage and sent to the dump.

Then came the global expansion of the Vancouver naval architects into the world market. Prior to the 1990s Robert Allan Ltd. stayed close to home. At ? rst some design products were sold for American service and then almost overnight the global marketplace became to only market- place to focus on.

The advent of the azimuth drive in tugs arrived just as the size of deep- sea ships took off, making the docking and ship assist business the major user of towing vessels.

Today the focus is on the challenge of generating high performance while enhancing safety in an environmentally safe and minimalist foot- print. The use of LNG fuel and hybrid drives gets just as much attention as the stability and inherent safety of our designs

Robert Allan Ltd. employs almost 90 people, in a healthy mix of Cana- dian born and trained architects and engineers alongside people of simi- lar skills from all corners of the world. We are larger now than we have ever been. The great majority of our work is for non-Canadian customers and our vessels are sought after by customers from all corners of the globe.

We have always recognized the importance of quality and innovation as well as speed and responsiveness and will continue to use every tool available to us to maintain our company while improving our designs and our reputation in the years to come.

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