Greetings,
Just a quick entry this week. I wanted to pass along that our team in Houma avoided the worst that Harvey had to offer, fortunately. However, Gulf Island and Gibbs and Cox’s corporate headquarters are in Houston and so it’s been tough for them this week. Our best wishes to all those who are suffering throughout the region.
I’ve had a couple of questions about what we would do if a hurricane actually did hit the shipyard. Well, through our regular risk planning sessions, we did identify this as a risk that would manifest itself as a project delay in the most likely scenario. In the worst case, the shipyard would be destroyed or the vessel(s) itself (themselves) could receive intense damage. We have contingencies as well as specific contract language for Force Majeure scenarios such as this, but suffice it to say, we’d all be in a spot of bother sorting it all out.
This reminds me of a presentation I saw several years back by our Chilean colleagues. It was late February, 2010, literally hours before their brand new and much loved new Research Vessel Cabo de Hornos was to be launched when tragedy struck. A deadly 8.8 magnitude earthquake devastated the country. Among the damage, Cabo de Hornos was knocked from her blocks setting back the program tremendously. Fortunately, they’ve since recovered well but it’s certainly a cautionary tale of what could happen.
I’m also pleased to report that the Gulf Island has finalized the first of its Single Source Vendor (SSV) contracts: they’ve signed Siemens to integrate the RCRVs propulsion systems. We’re excited to be one of the early adopters of their very efficient BlueDrive PlusC system, which we will dive into in a future post.
Next week, I’ll be joined by our Datapresence Systems Engineer, Chris Romsos, for quick trip to NSF’s new Headquarters in Alexandria VA for a Cyber-Infrastructure workshop. One of the most exciting features of the RCRVs is the cyber-infrastrure we’re developing that will be able to expand the participation of a cruise globally– not just through video, but operationally as well. I think I’ll see if Chris might serve as our first Guest Writer next week and provide more detail…
Ok. That’s it. Enjoy the long weekend and last bit of summer.
