The site consists of two large assembly halls and a wide range of workshops and other buildings which have been refurbished, notably the 10,000 m2 steel production hall where many of the processes will be automated.

The new assembly buildings, the Unit Construction Hall and the Ship Assembly Hall, are 130m long with the latter 42m high and fitted with 400 tonnes overhead crane capacity while the former is 10m lower with 120 tonnes overhead crane capacity.

Panels, bulkheads and decks will be assembled into units in the Unit Construction Hall then moved next door to the Ship Assembly Hall for final assembly.

The Ship Assembly Hall will also undertake whole ship assembly of smaller vessels.

Two of the biggest elements of a project which began in February 2002 have been the extension of the existing quay wall by 7m and the filling in of Dry Dock 13 where the Ship Assembly Hall now stands. Some 100,000 tonnes of dredged material were pumped into the dock to provide the base for the massive new structure.

An adjacent former office block has also been totally refurbished to house the administrative, design and support functions of VT Shipbuilding.

The site has at least one dry dock that will be used specifically for ship outfitting. Throughout the site, workshops are linked by fibre optic cable to VT's Computer Aided Design areas, enabling data to be sent electronically.

The former Fleet Support Limited Combined Workshop has been transformed into the Steel Production Hall, where 13m by 3m steel plates are cut and 13m long bars are profiled by computer controlled cutting machines. The bars and sections are cut and profiled using an ISU Robotic profile cutting line which transports the profiles on rollers from the store area through an edge shot blasting booth and Robotic Plasma cutting booth onto out-feed rollers, from where the sections are loaded by magnetic cranes into cassettes. This is a major step forward from the labour intensive process used at Woolston.

Although much of the machinery in the subsequent process is also new, a major logistics operation has been undertaken to move equipment from Woolston, including a steel plate rolling machine which is over 100 years old. Other refurbished shops are used for specialist tasks such as pipework, joinery. painting and steelworking.

Phase Two of the development will focus on extending the Ship Assembly Hall by a further 70m and a Phase Three, dependent on winning CVF work, could see the construction of a third shipbuilding bay up to 190m long built on the site of Dry Dock 12, which would be filled in.

MJ Information No: 18749