IT innovations at a rapidly growing Damen Naval

Partly thanks to valuable input from its own employees, Damen Naval is in the process of renewing its application of information technology. This comprehensive project is under the direction of Egbert Stuit. Egbert has been IT Manager at Damen Naval since April. He leads a team of dozens of IT specialists. Egbert faces the challenge of finding suitable ICT solutions for a company that is not only growing rapidly, but, as a defence company, also needs to have secure computer systems.

“The work is difficult and fun at the same time. We are all working very hard to make sure that Damen Naval makes a giant leap forward in IT. We are working on magnificent projects, such as the German frigates and the CSS, but as a military company, we have to deal with extra security measures. When designing your ICT landscape, you have to take that into account, of course.” Damen Naval is growing. Because of the large projects they are currently working on or are preparing – such as the possible replacement of the M-frigates – they need many new people in Vlissingen and other locations too.

“This growth has an impact on all our departments, but is especially visible in IT,” says Egbert (55). “Every new member of the team, whether it’s in Vlissingen or at our branch offices in Schiedam, Hamburg or Galati, has to be quickly connected to our system in order to get to work. Galati is home to MEGA, a Damen company that already does a lot of engineering work with us and may also work on the German frigate project.” That Damen Naval is so busy is “only good news”, notes Egbert. “In terms of organisation, we are well able to deal with this.”

“Of course we have to take into account that we are working on military projects. The new people that we hire have to have extra screening in order to be able to work on defence projects. The entire ICT landscape in such projects is of course geared to that. For example, you work in a secure environment, a protected building with no access to the cloud. In that respect, our company is very different from other companies.”

“Creating such a restricted environment involves a lot more work for an IT department than when working on ‘normal’ IT solutions. This is difficult, but also very fun, exciting and challenging.” Egbert’s department is currently working on several large projects. Damen Shipyards Group has purchased and commissioned a state-of-the-art engineering and construction platform from the French company Dassault Systèmes, known from the aircraft construction industry. The very extensive project led by Damen Naval for the construction of the four – and possibly even six – German F126-class frigates is the first project within the Group where the engineering is carried out on this 3DX platform.

“This 3DX platform is a big leap forward for us technologically,” Egbert says. “It is an integrated platform on which we can work from our various locations, but on which external parties – the client, partners, and suppliers – can also work within the safety restrictions. By working together in this way, as a company we can deliver higher quality faster, but can also optimise our business processes more easily. This improvement process is now in full swing and, moreover, is absolutely necessary to remain internationally competitive.”

“Ideally, everyone should be able to work with the same basic information within one system – the ‘single version of the truth’ is the jargon we use.” Egbert and his team are currently also busy replacing the computer systems for the Finance and HR departments with new and ultramodern ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) software from SAP. “Furthermore, we are seriously looking at the possibilities to outsource ICT management to external parties. These outsourcing solutions would, of course, have to operate within the security measures that we have comply with as a defence company. If your company is growing fast, it is logical that at some point you will start to look at whether certain activities can be outsourced. This enables you to deal with the ‘growth spurts’ better.”

Before he came to Damen Naval, Egbert worked at Shell for 25 years, most recently as Global IT Manager. After that, he was IT Manager at Worley in Saudi Arabia. “But I started at Damen in Gorinchem as an eighteen-year-old,” he smiles. “We delivered tug boats to the customers who had ordered them.”  The new IT Manager manages a group of IT enthusiasts, who are mainly involved in building and maintaining networks, servers and applications. “I can recommend anyone with an IT background who is looking for a challenging job to apply for a job with us. We are working on some wonderful projects and it is great to be able to contribute to them.”