Feadship launches Concurrent Design @ Feadship (CD@F)

After several years of development and innovation we have opened three state-of-the-art Feadship Concurrent Design facilities which allow the different teams involved in a build to simultaneously communicate with owners teams in an interactive way. Developed with the European Space Agency, this revolutionary new methodology facilitates immediate responses to design and engineering decisions, speeding up the process and adding even more innovation flair to each Feadship. 

As every Feadship revolves around a pure custom build, each is full of unique ideas devised by the owners and their team in partnership with our designers, naval architects and engineers. By its very nature this process has traditionally been a lengthy one as concepts go backwards and forwards in an iterative process between the teams involved. 

Feadship owners are demanding increasingly complex custom yachts which place pressure on engineering capacity. The amount of engineering work is also increasing due to our ‘design for production’ strategy, short innovation cycles and an ongoing desire to reduce construction schedules even further. 

These factors may potentially result in an increase in both the amount of early design capacity required and the throughput time involved in engineering activity. To tackle these challenges we partnered with the European Space Agency to find ways to translate its successful concurrent engineering approach into the superyacht world.

The result is a simultaneous methodology where all stakeholders and specialists work together at an early stage on creating the owner’s ideal design.

“Our new Concurrent Design facilities, which include a completely integrated meeting room and all the tools required online, mean we can take parallel actions and make joint decisions on the particulars of design features,” comments Feadship director Henk de Vries, one of the driving forces behind this major new breakthrough. “Based on a centrally coordinated systematic approach, this direct interaction and decision making is a huge improvement over the classic sequential engineering process.”

A key factor in the success of Concurrent Design are the multi-disciplinary, trans-company teams that are involved and the way people behave within them. “There is a strong emphasis on achieving the right results together via a proactive and problem-solving approach,” concludes De Vries. “The positive way in which team members behave is combined with a clear methodology and high-tech facilities to ensure that the best options are explored, resulting in the finest Feadships possible. And the rooms look very cool indeed,” he smiles.