Damen Naval completes Vlissingen-based part of complex Midlife Update

Damen Naval has officially handed over the Landing Platform Dock HNLMS Johan de Witt to the Dutch Materiel and IT Command (COMMIT, previously DMO). The amphibious transport ship has undergone a comprehensive Midlife Update (MLU) over the past 13 months in conjunction with the third period of Appointed Maintenance (BO3). Despite the short time period and various challenges, the ship was handed over to COMMIT on Friday 31 March on schedule. The ship has since been towed to Den Helder, where the Dutch Ministry of Defence, together with Damen Naval, will carry out some remaining and additional work.

“We are extremely proud to have been able to complete this complex project together with the Ministry of Defence as planned. We have worked extremely hard over the past year and the result exceeds our expectations,” said Damen Naval’s Project Director Fer Tummers. “We met all the important milestones that were on the schedule: the docking, undocking and handover have all taken place on time. COMMIT is very satisfied that they can pick up their own operations entirely on schedule. We certainly achieved the project’s objectives of completing the project on time and strengthening the relationship with our customer. The project is a great example of our partnership with Defence.”

The new office facilities at Quay E are cited by the client as one of the major success factors of the project. “All stakeholders could sit together in the new office: Damen Naval, COMMIT, DMI, CZSK, our subcontractors RH Marine, Den Breejen, CKT, and Heinen & Hopman. This made it very easy to discuss and coordinate things with each other,” Fer says. The short lines of communication between the various parties helped ensure that everything was carried out after proper consultation. Fer: “During the project, we always kept a very sharp eye on what our scope and obligations were in order to manage the project as tightly as possible. That doesn’t happen automatically. We had tough discussions but managed to build enough trust between all parties so that we were able to work well together.”

The coronavirus testing policy whereby all employees on the project were compulsorily tested twice a week was also praised. “COMMIT project manager also cited our corona policy as a success factor of the project,” Fer adds. “We set up our own testing facilities and performed very tightly managed preventive testing from the outset. As a result, we were able to prevent extensive contamination and downtime.”

The MLU/BO3 was a joint project between Damen Naval and Damen Shiprepair Vlissingen (DSV). The companies share a shipyard in Vlissingen-Oost, where the Johan de Witt arrived on 3 March 2022. At the quayside, preparatory work was done such as emptying the ship, removing the bridge, ceilings, seawater pumps and separators. Walkways were also shielded and the equipment that remained on board during the work was covered and protected.

In July 2022, the ship was moved to DSV’s dry dock for painting work on items such as the underwater hull, superstructure, and all tanks. In November 2022, the Johan de Witt left dry dock ahead of schedule and work continued while moored along the quayside.

There were 69 MLU items planned, including refurbishing or replacing equipment such as armament and communication systems, freshwater makers (RO units), seawater pumps for firefighting and cooling and more. The bridge, joint operations room, command and engineering centre were completely refurbished and the masts were also rebuilt. Over 60km of new cables were also pulled and new decking installed. Medical facilities on board, such as the operating room, ICU beds and wards, have been completely modernised.

From the start, Fer has said that carrying out an MLU and major maintenance on a ship is in many ways more complex than a new-build project, and that proved to be the case here too. “It’s a bigger challenge than a building a completely new ship and everyone still underestimates that. On projects like this, you continuously find unexpected things; you remove something and behind it you see three new things that also need to be addressed.”

This has contributed in part to the amount of additional work commissioned by COMMIT. “Besides the scope of work we agreed in the contract at the time, more than 20% additional work was added at the client’s request. Most of this was carried out in Vlissingen-Oost; we will continue with the rest in Den Helder,” Fer explains.

The remaining work now being carried out in Den Helder can be divided into three categories:
1. Completing and delivering the accommodation.
2. Remaining points, small jobs such as touching up paintwork etc.
3. Additional work at the client’s request: replacing the dry sprinkler system and the water mist system.

“We had a setback with faulty flanges,” Fer explains. “As a result, we spent longer on the wet sprinkler system, which prevented us from putting back all the ceiling tiles in the accommodation areas in time and from subsequently refurbishing and cleaning the rooms. That is now being done in Den Helder, but this is carried out at the same time as the other work on board, allowing us to respect the schedule that DMI and COMMIT have for the other work planned in Den Helder.”

A team from Damen Naval and a number of subcontractors has travelled from Vlissingen to Den Helder and will stay there until the summer. But there is help from another source too. “In addition to our own team including Project Manager Production Arend van Veelen, a number of foremen and people from work preparation, we can also count on our colleagues from Damen Shipyards Den Helder who will provide the extra hands needed for much of the work,” says Fer. “A team from Den Helder even joined us in Vlissingen-Oost to help with the demolition work of the old dry sprinkler system and water mist system. It’s a great example of how ‘One Damen’ is put into practice.”

Damen Naval is likely to continue working in Den Helder until the end of July. The first sea trials are scheduled for October 2023, and it is expected that HNLMS Johan de Witt can be returned to service in early 2024.