The US Maritime Administration’s training-ship programme is being presented as a model for wider use of commercial construction practices in American shipbuilding, gCaptain reported. Speakers at the Shipbuilding in America conference in the Bronx praised vessel construction management, or VCM, under which an outside company oversees a newbuild on the owner’s behalf.
MARAD adopted the approach to acquire replacement training vessels for five of the six state maritime academies. Its contractor, TOTE Services, has delivered four of the five ships so far, according to gCaptain. Empire State VII, the first vessel in the series, arrived at the State University of New York Maritime College in September 2023 on schedule and within budget. The college hosted the conference earlier this week.
Under VCM, the appointed manager coordinates the construction programme from design through handover, including materials procurement and testing before delivery. Charlie Papavizas, a Washington, DC-based attorney with Winston Taylor, told the conference that the aim was to meet delivery and budget targets by limiting direct government involvement with the shipyard and applying a more commercial approach than conventional government procurement.
Chris Clark, TOTE Services’ vice president of new construction, identified extending VCM into commercial shipbuilding as the next challenge. The company is already applying the method to two further government programmes: missile range instrumentation vessels and a new class of medium landing ships for the Navy. Several ship operators and ship management businesses also provide VCM services, with their offerings varying according to their particular expertise.
The approach draws on commercial shipbuilding practices and commercially available, off-the-shelf equipment instead of military-specification components, gCaptain reported. Those choices can lower construction costs and shorten delivery times. VCM also seeks to limit unnecessary design revisions and associated change orders, which the report identified as a frequent cause of expensive contract disputes.