Boatyard Operations: Success through managing requirements and maintenance processes.

• Author: Barbour, Tracy
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION Resource Development

Boatyards and shipyards deal with a plethora of requirements to sustain their operations, which are critical to the communities they serve. Their operational processes and costs include maintaining equipment, supplies, labor, customer service, and workers compensation and other insurance.

Facilities including the Ketchikan Shipyard, Wrangell Boatshop, and Seaview Boatyard cater to a variety of customers ranging from the government to commercial fishermen and pleasure craft owners.

Filling a Vital Role in the Community

The Ketchikan Shipyard is the largest shipyard maintenance and manufacturing facility in Alaska. It's also a critical economic development project in an area rocked by the disappearance of the timber industry. Through a unique partnership, the Ketchikan Shipyard is operated by a private company--Vigor--and owned by AIDEA (Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority). The full-service shipyard is a mid-sized, depot-level maintenance facility with wide-ranging capabilities.

The Ketchikan Shipyard is an advanced facility that provides an ideal year-round location for new builds, repair, and refit to support almost any vessel working Alaska's waters. It features a new 70,000-square-foot assembly hall with an adjacent indoor fabrication shop that shields workers from Ketchikan's rainy weather. "Our yard is one of the newest, more modern shipyards in the nation," says Director of Shipyard Development Doug Ward. "It's also the only shipyard in the nation that has a totem pole out front."

Vigor also operates a second facility in Alaska: Seward Ship's Drydock. The 11-acre shipyard is strategically located to provide services to Alaska customers in the fishing, marine transportation, and oil and gas industries.

Initially conceived as a ferry maintenance facility, the Ketchikan Shipyard began building ships in 2001, starting with the municipal ferry connecting Ketchikan to its airport on Gravina Island. In 2012, the shipyard built the Arctic Prowler for Prowler Fisheries. The 136-foot freezer longliner was the first large commercial fishing vessel ever built in Alaska. Currently, the Ketchikan shipyard is building two ferries for the Alaska Marine Highway System: the Tazlina and Tustumena. The vessels--the first ferries to be built in Alaska--are each 280 feet long.

Unlike some yards that specialize in either shipbuilding or ship repair, the Ketchikan Shipyard does both. It can build ships up to 300 feet long and repair ships up to 450 feet. The shipyard is also a conversion yard, and it's currently working to secure funding to build a $45 million conversion hall to further enhance its operations. The Ketchikan Shipyard is also planning to explore non-ship manufacturing opportunities around the state to diversify its markets.

At Wrangell Boatshop, the focus is strictly on providing maintenance and repair. The shop services about one hundred vessels annually, 60 percent of which are commercial fishing boats. This time of year, Wrangell Boatshop is conducting a lot of "triage," often helping commercial fishermen address urgent repairs. "Most of them are fishing multiple fisheries, and they don't have a lot of time," says Owner Patrick Ellis. "We have to know how to do a lot of different things."

Services at the shop range from fixing fiberglass, replacing rotting wood, and repairing steel to wiring, yacht-quality paint jobs, and basic spring maintenance. "We cover just about everything, except for engine repair or refrigeration," Ellis says.

Wrangell Boatshop is a unique type of "boatyard." It doesn't maintain any acreage on which to park boats--but it can take boats out of the water. The shop is what Ellis categorizes as an intertidal...