Professions related to shipbuilding
The highly technical and complex process of shipbuilding combines the labor of many skilled trades and professionals. The construction of ships is done in assembly units or modules that have single power systems. This is faster, less expensive and more quality controlled. Automation and robotics are used in the industry to save money and reduce chemical and physical hazards.
Two significant things unite all industry professionals involved directly in production processes. Many jobs involve harmful or hazardous working conditions and are often performed on a rotational basis.
The main method of erecting ships is to assemble them from pre-assembled large blocks. This is the way large-capacity vessels are built, e.g. transport tankers, dry-cargo ships or gas carriers. Precise articulation of elements is required. That requires machinery to move enormous masses of metal from one place to another. Giant U-shaped cranes with two supports so that a large ship hull can fit under its bridge, or rail-mounted gantry and portal cranes with lifting capacity up to 500 tons come to the rescue. These automated machines are operated by machinists. It is perhaps the rare job in a shipyard that can be held by a man or a woman.
However, the ship's path from paper to metal is through the plazas. This is a special room in the hull-processing shop, on the floor of which life-size hulls are laid out, templates, frameworks and models are made. Marking and bending of hull parts, assembly of nodes, blocks and the hull as a whole is performed according to the drawing in full size or in an enlarged scale. The process of drawing out a theoretical drawing of a plasma hull is called plasma hull breakdown.
Project manager or chief builder, engineer, CAD technician, programmer, plasma partitioning bureau employee - this is the list of industry workers for servicing this stage of work for which separate egcs training are held.