Factors Affecting Ship Design and Construction Lead Time and Cost

This paper reviews a ship design and construction case study in the context of the published literature on the design process and its impact on construction. The objective was to explore the factors that impact design and construction lead time and cost. Design and construction managers constantly experience pressure to accelerate the construction start time in an environment characteristic of frequent design changes and rework. Often the construction of the first ships of a series will aggressively overlap the design phase. This investigation assessed a case study that illustrated that as the degree of overlap between design and construction increases, design changes increased ship construction costs and duration. This negates the advantage of trying to reduce lead time by overlapping phases. Before strategies of overlapping are utilized, shipbuilders need to better understand the details of the design process and its integration with other functions to improve design quality and reduce the impact of design changes on manufacturing and construction. It is recommended that when overlapping strategies are considered, design changes and their impact on construction be factored into the decision. A better strategy would be to eliminate design quality issues and design and construction rework.