As a direct response to market demands, Oceanco is now moving forward with implementing their plans for constructing a new yacht-building facility to accommodate yachts up to 140-metres in length. Often it is the case that builders convert an existing commercial space or shed. However, in keeping with Oceanco’s vision for the future, their new high tech facility — capable of being expanded in the future — is expressly designed and purpose-built for the exclusive function of building 100+-metre yachts.
After extensive preparation and groundwork on the 62,000 square metres of land, including a full investigation with respect to World War II explosives due to the proximity of the site to the bridge over the Noord River which was heavily bombed during the war, construction work for the dry dock started 11th March 2013 and will be completed by the end of 2014.
The new state-of-the-art building and dry dock, handsomely architected of concrete, heavily insulated with integrated thermal and cooling systems, has undergone rigorous research and development and will be extremely safe and secure. The shed and dry dock have been designed to be virtually impervious to outside weather and ground water temperatures. Access, logistics, and work in progress are monitored via Radio Frequency identification (RFID). The dry dock offers flexible uses as it can be divided in several compartments by using segmented doors. A 100-ton capacity crane configured 2x 2 x 25 tons with tandem beams will assist. Additional cranes outside the assembly hall needed to lift major components and sections from a barge will be extendable to 20 meters. The supplementary sectional doors will enable the barge to float inside the building. To augment access and speed up and improve logistics, there will be horizontal traveling cranes fixed to the walls flanking either side of the yacht. Since the facility will be 33m high — six levels including ground floor—there will be three large elevators capable of handling loaded drive-in and drive-out forklifts. Additionally, the facility will have fixed locations for scales to maintain and monitor weight control.
The building will accommodate over 1,000 persons from subcontractors to the owners’ representatives and crew at any given time and will be divided into accessrestricted zones to ensure safety, security and confidentiality. Transport in and out of the building will be through a controlled air lock or directly to areas that are inaccessible from the main assembly hall. The climate control inside the hall will be similar to that of a museum. It can be operated in three different ways: there can be a uniform temperature throughout the hall or there can be the option to isolate certain areas such as inside the yacht, so as to keep the humidity and temperature at an appropriate level for the yacht’s interior. Additionally the spray tent will have a consistent temperature commensurate with special paint requirements as the airflow velocity and air-volume refreshment rate, in addition to temperature and proper humidity, is crucial for a first rate gloss finish. All climate systems, temperature, humidity and airflow, can be operated individually. As the new shed will be reserved for the finish work of a yacht with all pre fabrication completed beforehand, all finish work will be completed in an extremely clean environment. To further enhance the area for paint and other tasks, there will be a centralized vacuum system to keep the area dust free with water / gas / oxygen compressed air systems and an isolated paint fumes extraction system. All of the systems in the shed have been designed to be extremely efficient and environmentally conscious utilizing deep soil thermal heat/cooling exchange.
Oceanco
+377 9310 0281
[email protected]
www.oceancoyacht.com