Project management of early stage warship design

Warship Feasibility Studies are highly complex projects. The paper aims to highlight some of the factors inherent within industry and academia. The initial data were gathered at the VT shipyard by interviewing key personnel. The collected data are then analysed using the MS Visio flowchart package to create input/output diagrams for all existing domains. Identifying explicit and implicit links allows the existing domains to be linked and inherent domains to be identified. The resulting connection diagrams are then analysed and compared with existing literature. The analysis results in the creation of several loops depicting the data flow during feasibility studies. The 2-D loops are combined in a 3-D flowchart to further investigate the data flow across the domain interfaces and to incorporate a time scale. Carrying out in-depth domain and case studies at VT Shipbuilding has led to a continuous refinement of the 3-D loops.