The renovations at Seaspan's shipyards are moving full steam ahead with the newest addition of a large gantry crane.
The crane, weighing 300 tonnes and separated into three pieces because of its substantial size, left China about a month ago and arrived on B.C. shores Feb. 20. It was shipped to the Fraser Surrey Docks where it was offloaded onto barges to be moved to Seaspan's shipyard.
"It's a big milestone for us because we've been modernizing our shipyards since we signed the umbrella agreement for NSPS (National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy)," said Brian Carter, Seaspan president. "But this will be the first real landmark that will be visible from quite a distance that people can really see what we're up to here."
Carter said the crane is a key part to Seaspan's facility.
"Ships are built in blocks and the blocks are built in our various fabrication facilities and then when they're entirely complete, the crane will lift them into place on the vessels. It's a very efficient way of doing it," said Carter. "It will also support other operations in the shipyard but its main purpose will be to put blocks in place that ultimately form the ship."
Carter said the assembly of the crane, which also includes thousands of other parts, is a project unto itself.
"We have a crane coming in to lift our crane into place, so there's a 1,600 tonne crawler crane that comes in 80 truck loads of equipment, it takes about 10 days to assemble," he said.
Seaspan is estimating the assembly, hook-up, testing and commissioning of the new gantry crane will take several months and are targeting this summer for completion.
The modernization project came with a $200-million price tag that includes six new buildings as well as the gantry crane and is scheduled for completion this fall.
Carter said they started designing the shipyard in early 2012 and broke ground in October of the same year.
"We've been progressing steadily since and really changing the landscape of our shipyard here in North Vancouver," he said.
Seaspan was awarded an $8-billion contract by the federal government in 2011 to build a polar icebreaker, three offshore fisheries science vessels, an offshore oceanographic ship and two support ships, as well as up to 10 Canadian Coast Guard non-combat ships worth around $3-billion, including five 65-metre medium endurance multi-tasked vessels and up to five 75-metre offshore patrol vessels. Carter said the construction of the vessels would begin in October.
"After we build the first four science vessels we'll start on the joint support ship and that work takes place beginning in late 2016 and that will be the largest ship ever built in Western Canada," he said.
Seaspan plans to bring in more trades people once the construction has started.
"We have about 200 people in our production work force today and about another 150 in our management staff and technical staff," Carter said.
"So we'll go from that level to 1,000 people in the production work force in the 2016-2017 time frame so the growth is quite significant over the next three to four years."
