Page 23: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (November 2024)

LAURIE BALAN, COO, GENOA DESIGN INTERNATIONAL

While we typically ramp up our teams grams, north and south of the border,

There’s a lot of geopoliti- later in the functional design phases, two different designs, materials, ship- cal con? ict right now. Obvi- our designers have to be intimately fa- yards, organizational structure, techni- ously, there’s a lot of invest- miliar with ice class rules and detail the cal stacks, tools, you name it, the list ment in defense globally. design in a way that meets those rule goes on. That really speaks to Genoa’s

Can you put in perspective sets, as well as the build strategy and adaptability and agility that we show this bump?

I don’t know how big I expect it processes. Working on those two pro- our clients. to get, but certainly the problem is massive now. There’s not enough in- frastructure, shipyards, design com- panies, people and innovation in one country to develop it and do it all in- house. We’ve been fortunate along the way to have worked successfully with US companies. We have all the security requirements and defense re- quirements to be able to partner. That demand is obvious. There’s so much work to be done, there’s so many new ships to be designed and to be built that we need expertise from more than just inside the US and more than just inside of Canada.

Even under the national shipbuild- ing strategy, while the intent of that program was to build up the Canadian industry, that too is beyond ourselves and our expertise and we’ve reached out to other companies with expertise from the likes of Finland to be able to accomplish it all. I think there’s a lot of opportunity for multiple companies, whether they’re Canadian based, US based or elsewhere, to answer the call and stand up to the challenge and be innovative.

Looking at recent projects, is there one or two that stand out in terms of show- casing the value that Genoa

Design delivers?

Right now there are two major con- current projects that we’re working on: the icebreakers for Canada and the icebreakers for the US. Both countries are replenishing their heavy icebreaker ? eet, as the current vessels in operation went into service before I was born. An opportunity to contribute to the designs of those complex vessels highlights

Genoa’s expertise in icebreaker design. www.marinelink.com 23

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