“We are working to support the brands on prototypes and new innovations, as well as strategic corporate projects,” said Peter Fetten, senior vice president corporate ship refit for Carnival Corporation.

New refurbishment jobs are spearheaded by Fetten and his team, known as “prototyping.” These items are generally completed on one ship as a prototype project. This ranges from including significant technical updates to adding balconies or making changes on the interior; the plans are then turned over to the brand refurbishment teams for subsequent drydockings on similar ships.

“We get the bugs out and the brands then take over,” Fetten told Cruise Industry News.

In addition are the huge corporate projects Fetten oversees, such as Carnival’s fleetwide scrubber installation program.

“We manage that; it’s a complex project with a lot of systems involved. There are stability requirements, environmental criteria and compliance impact, and it’s still a developing technology,” he said. “Instead of having every brand trying to experiment, we are doing it centrally.”

Starting in 2014, Fetten said he had completed over 160 installations of scrubbers, totaling $500 million, with another $300 to $400 million in installations planned through 2020.

Fetten sees his group’s role as a consultancy. Working with a team of 20 out of Miami, he supports the brands on individual needs.

“If they need a project manager, we give them one; if they need a naval architect, we give them one,” he said.

“I’m proud to say we are working ourselves out of a job on retrofits. The brands are getting good at doing it themselves. And it would be too much for our small group here in Miami. Every drydock today is a mini retrofit.”

With a fleet of just over 100 ships, Fetten said Carnival vessels drydock every three and a half years on average.

Fleetwide, there are over 500 drydock days annually, and the average spend is $3 million per day.

Carnival is also working hard to prototype and evaluate fuel-saving upgrades on a constant basis, Fetten said.

“If they turn out to be efficient, then we roll them out,” he noted.

Air bubble systems are one area of interest. While they are working well on AIDA’s recent newbuilds, another prototype project on a different brand ship was under review.

On his desk are also projects including LNG, fuel cells and batteries. While LNG-powered ships are still a year away, the company will need to know how to respond to the technology in a repair or refurbishment scenario,

“We are working on prototyping LNG in all forms and shapes, working on procedures with ports and shipyards, especially the latter,” Fetten said. “We need to define the processes to repair a LNG ship.”

Big data projects have the company installing the relevant monitoring software and connectivity.

Carnival’s key shipyard partners for drydockings are in Freeport, Marseille and Singapore.

In Freeport and Marseille, Carnival has ownership stakes, and discussions are ongoing to expand the facility in Grand Bahama.

“We do not believe in changing drydocks too often,” Fetten said.

With the sheer amount of work happening in a 12- to 14-day window, “the management of the drydock needs to understand what we are faced with,” Fetten explained. “Most of the success is based on the logistics of the yard and whether they are working or not.”

He said the perfect planning window for a drydock is around 18 months out.

And with ships getting bigger and refurbishment jobs getting more complex, in-service work has become the norm.

Balancing prototyping, advanced research and development and planning for repair jobs, Fetten said the strength lays with the brands’ own drydocking and maintenance teams.

“They have developed their own groups in this area and are doing it very well. We are a consultancy supporting them. When it comes to new developments or fleetwide updates, we handle that.”

Excerpt from Cruise Industry News Quarterly Magazine: Winter 2017/2018