FERRIES are currently a hot topic in Scotland. The subject is rarely out of the news. Having recently completed the annual overhaul of our fleet, we believe this is a good opportunity to highlight the intensive and sustained work undertaken by CalMac’s skilled engineers.

Although we do not own the vessels we operate as part of the Clyde and Hebrides Ferries contract, this work ensures that the vessels are safe and technically resilient for another year of sailing in Scotland’s challenging west-coast waters.

Safety in the maritime industry is always our top priority. The purpose of the annual overhaul period is to complete maintenance required to legally certificate the vessels for passenger operations, replace and maintain parts to specifications set by manufacturers and to maximise reliability.

A significant and extensive period of planning is required, commencing well in advance of the overhaul period, allowing everyone to be aware of the planned engineering work.

The average age of the CalMac fleet is 24 years, with 32% of the vessels exceeding 30 years. Their increasing age results in a growing requirement for completion of additional surveys, repairs and maintenance, as well as pro-active renewal of out-dated equipment to improve resilience. The sheer demand of our summer timetable, during which we run around 540 sailings every day, means that the overhaul programme must be squeezed into the winter season.

As each of our 34 vessels requires between two and three weeks in dry-dock, an immense amount of work must go into planning cover for vessels taken out of service. This is a particularly complicated logistical exercise, as not all vessels are suitable to provide service to all ports on the network due to the wide variety of different sizes and configurations of all these ports.

We keep our lifeline services running through this period with a series of carefully planned vessel re-deployments across different routes and timetable amendments, which means that communities may see different vessels providing relief cover.

In 2021 we entered into innovative long-term contracts with a number of ship repair yards to deliver more cost effective and timely maintenance and upgrades. These contracts improve collaboration through joint planning and sharing of risk ensures that all parties are focused on achieving best outcomes over an extended period – a model which is being reviewed by other ferry companies.

One key priority is to identify trends occurring amongst the technical faults to ensure that pre-emptive maintenance is put in place to prevent the same faults from happening on other vessels.

Whilst every effort is made to prevent the type of defects which cause vessels to be withdrawn from service, it is not possible to predict every failure, but we fully investigate all defects so that lessons can be applied across the fleet and minimise the risk of future defects occurring.

The recently completed annual overhaul programme included 605 planned days of engineering activity. However, in some cases, inspections undertaken during a vessel’s overhaul period discovered additional work that required to be completed.

This unplanned work, plus weather delays and the impact of Covid-19 on both crew and yard staff, resulted in the overhaul team having to manage a total of 164 additional repair days, across all vessels.

One example of emergent work occurred during the overhaul of the MV Clansman. Inspections revealed 50 square metres of corroded deck steel in the engine room, which required replacement in order to achieve legislative certification.

This increased scope of work resulted in an extended two-week period at the repair yard, which in turn affected the planned vessel cover.

Despite this, through continuous and intense re-planning of the vessel deployment plans, 24-hour yard working in some cases and managing a knock-on impact to the rest of the programme, we were able to return all vessels to operation in time for the Easter peak.

Examples of significant maintenance carried out during the most recent dry dock schedule, included the overhaul of nine main engines at a cost of £1.3m, the servicing of seven propellers at a cost of £1.1m, and the replacement of a significant amount of steel on four large vessels at a cost of £1.9m.

Our investment in vessel maintenance has increased by over 67% over five years from £20.5m in 2018 to an estimated £34.2m in 2022, with preventative spend prioritised through our reliability programmes and condition monitoring of critical vessel systems.

We fully recognise the impacts of overhaul over-runs and technical defects on the communities and customers we serve, and we do all we can to prevent or minimise these impacts.

We are taking practical steps to embrace continual improvement in everything we do, including our engineering planning and procedures. A good example of this is our recent investment in dedicated shore-based maintenance and warehouse facilities, driving enhanced technical efficiency.

We will continue to do all we can to reduce the time that a vessel is out of service for maintenance due to technical faults. However, with all our vessels operating all the time, there is little scope for removing a vessel for general care and maintenance while they are required to operate services.

The addition of MV Loch Frisa to the fleet later this year will help, but Glen Sannox and 802, which are both being built at the Ferguson Marine shipyard in Port Glasgow, are needed to improve capacity and resilience on the network through wider redeployment. Unfortunately, their delay means we have on occasion not been able to deliver the services that island communities require.

With more than 70% of the CalMac workforce living within the communities we serve, many of us are also customers and we all care deeply about the service we provide. The ferry service is a lifeline and everyone at CalMac, including those behind the scenes, do their utmost to deliver the service needed by our communities.

* Robbie Drummond is Managing Director of CalMac Ferries

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