Ferguson shipyard, which had hoped to take part in the build of new frigates but was unable to due to issues during the build of two ferries, has announced a further delay to the ferries.

It is understood that anywhere between 400 and 900 cables are to be stripped out on ‘Hull 801’ and ‘Hull 802’, some more than 100 metres long.

MV Glen Sannox (referred to as Hull 801) and the unnamed Hull 802 were supposed to be in service 2018 and 2019 respectively but are both are now hoped to enter service around 2023.

In update from Ferguson Marine on hulls 801 and 802, Tim Hair said:

“I regret to advise you that a problem has recently emerged with the build of 801 which I thought I should immediately bring to your attention.

Each of the ferries under construction at Ferguson relies on a complex network of cables, requiring the installation of over 9800 individual cables with a total length of 243km. Approximately 15% of these (Legacy Cables) were installed on 801 under the control of Ferguson Marine Engineering Limited (FMEL) prior to its Administration in August 2019. None of the Legacy Cables were installed after the Scottish Government took control of the yard.

It has recently emerged that a large proportion of the Legacy Cables have not been installed in line with the engineering information held by FMEL, leaving the free ends too short connect them to the equipment.”

Hull 802

Hair added:

“The legacy cables are predominantly in the machinery spaces and either supply equipment required to commission the vessel, or they run in cable trays which will also support new cables. Commissioning and further cable installation cannot take place until the legacy cables are corrected, delaying the overall project to deliver 801. There will inevitably be knock-on effects that will delay the schedule for 802. At present it is not possible to determine the impact on schedule and cost.”

Frigates?

Then Defence Secretary Michael Fallon visited the Ferguson Marine shipyard at Port Glasgow in 2017 where he remarked upon the opportunity for the Clyde yard to build the new frigates. Babcock, Thales, BMT, Harland & Wolff and Ferguson Marine had teamed up to form ‘Team 31’ a consortium to bid for the Type 31 Frigate.

Babcock CEO Archie Bethel said:

“Team 31 will allow Babcock and Thales to take forward the key lessons from the Aircraft Carrier Alliance and apply them in a new and highly capable team with Harland & Wolff, BMT and Ferguson Marine.”

While Babcock eventually won the bid, Ferguson Marine was no longer able to recieve any work due to issues at the yard.

After Harland & Wolff and Ferguson Marine both collapsed into administration, Bethel told the Financial Times that both yards would still “get a chance to bid” but the company “would not risk the programme” subcontracting work out to them.

Mr Bethel later pointed out that Babcock had the capacity to do the work itself at Rosyth, meaning it didn’t have to rely on other yards and said that Babcock had won the bid on the basis of the work being done “100 per cent at Rosyth”, adding that with the exception of France’s Thales, “none of our members were risk-sharing”. He also said that the yards would be welcome to bid again should the issues be sorted and they “pass the same hurdles that any suppliers have to pass in terms of financial security and security of supply. Assuming that [any] new owners can do that, they will be included in the process.”

In short, issues at the Ferguson Marine yard with the ferries meant they could no longer take part in the Type 31 frigate programme alongside Babcock with the frigate now being built entirely at Rosyth. The delay to the ferries has cost the Port Glasgow shipyard work on new frigates.

George Allison
George Allison
George has a degree in Cyber Security from Glasgow Caledonian University and has a keen interest in naval and cyber security matters and has appeared on national radio and television to discuss current events. George is on Twitter at @geoallison
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63 COMMENTS

  1. Yup.

    So Babcock and MOD dodged a bullet but keeping it all in one shed complex.

    At least that makes sense.

    T31 never made sense as a block built proposition with bits coming from all over.

    If you can build the blocks close it cuts out on transport costs and time.

    • Hasn’t this yard been nationalized by the SNP led government? Then the same SNP government ordered ships for Scotland from overseas yards? They should be held account in part for this fiasco; it’s not as if they don’t make a lot of noise (a false claim) about not having the full promised amount of RN vessels built in Scotland.

        • The evidence is not there! The SNP do not build ships. Shipyards do that and the incompetence is the failure to quality control work on the part of Ferguson Marine. Think about your statement.

          • I never said they did. But they control policy and not supporting their own damn shipyards is partly responsible for this mess.

          • So why mention SNP then? Ferguson was a private company. They and they alone are responsible for the mess. What actual evidence is behind behind your statement other than a partisan unfounded opinionwhich is what I responded to. There is significant difference between policy and actually doing things on the ground by somebody unconnected with that policy. Criticism where it is due is not unfair but has to be based on reality and fact.

          • Also lets not forget that if the Holyrood Government hadn’t steppd in the yard would have closed completely.

      • That’s the role of any government or council. To complain to the higher power and make sure they get the maximum benefit for there subjects. We would not expect any less from any representative

      • I’m no lover of the SMP being a firm unionist, but in this case the fail lies with the organisation that owned the ship yard before the SNP nationalised it.

  2. A ferry is far simpler than a frigate, with far fewer electronic systems. Just as well they are not involved in building frigates.

    • Especially after seeing the ugliest and worst constructed bulbous bow ever known to construction which had to be replaced. Embarrassing.

  3. I bloody hate cables and I just have to deal with 1 house.
    The day everything goes wireless is going to be amazing.
    I can’t imagine trying to cable manage the mess that must exist on something like a type 45 or the carriers.

    • Years ago I was involved with the construction of modules for oil rigs. Senior management wanted to cut costs so employed an electrical subcontractor who was very experienced with buildings but had never worked on an offshore structure. Disaster – the complexity of the cabling in a production module was a degree of magnitude more complex than in an office block…..

      • These days I build buildings for a living.

        We used to use and electrical contractor for some work. We got rid of them because they didn’t follow the wiring diagrams and specs we used.

        Guess who was working on CrossRail as a subcontractor?

        All the engineering senior managers I talk to about CrossRail, and one is a neighbour, tell me that the problems are almost all down to totally incompetent wiring efforts that are having to be redone.

        • Interesting. I heard differently.

          They had the chance for interoperability but went clever by choosing different trains to the signalling/control provider. Interface problems emerged rapidly.

          • The issue is/was that rather than creating a simple Hard wire -> Fibre interface for each of the many types of signalling system they were trying to interface with they used a single interface and tried to get idiots to do some very complex logic wiring of the types nobody really does any more.

            If they had made the interfaced and orange wire goes to orange colour coded terminal things would never have got to this.

            The issue being the huge number of obsolete signal systems involved.

            @ DM should the one for this – he is the man in the signal box.

        • I can get behind this electrical contractors in Drydock are the worst on a ship because half of the time they don’t document where they put most of their alterations which means the electricians have to find all them again. Worse though is the alteration they don’t tell us about which happens at times,

        • Morning SB. We are also in the Building Industry on the refurb and coatings side. We sub-contract Electrical work to an old school gent in his 70’s-one of the few left in the industry who knows what he is doing! The decline of skills though is across the board-gone are the days when the Journeyman would klap(hit) an appie if he got out of line on his 3 or even 4 year passage to getting his papers.
          We are lucky as we have men in house who have been with us for years but we are surrounded by people who don’t understand page one- plumb, square,protect and clean! Scary stuff-the world has gone backwards in many respects

      • Don’t most ships have multiple power back-ups?
        Wireless would be both cheaper to design for and maintain. I’m surprised the military isn’t way ahead of the mainstream in this as it would also make ships quicker to build.

        • Ships are made of steel/aluminium which act as Farady cages preventing radio signals from travelling between compartments. WiFi would work within each compartment of course. WiFi is also insecure in the sense of a radio emitter so can compromise electronic security. Cables are still required between each access point and a central hub network. Wireless would be more expensive to maintain due to the networking implications and the each router which would replace a simple telephone/intercom is much more complex and cannot be ‘bodged’ in an emergency. It wouldn’t make them any quicker to build as each compartment still requires an ethernet cable for any router. A single ethernet cable can carry 3 basic telephone channels (6 wires). Nothing wrong with the idea but when you look at what is required it is not as easy as people think. A simple telephone does not actually need power beyond a small battery with a hand rotated ringer.

          • Actually an ethernet 5/6 cable is 4 pairs/8 wires. depending on adapters required and the wires needed for voice they can run 4. something like an intercom or ship phone probably also carries its own power pair.

  4. “It has recently emerged that a large proportion of the Legacy Cables have not been installed in line with the engineering information held by FMEL, leaving the free ends too short connect them to the equipment.”

    Wow… you couldn’t make it up. It’s getting to the point where you have to wonder if FMEL are deliberately sabotaging these builds? To what ends I don’t know but this has been one calamity that shouldn’t have happened after another, after another, after another!

  7. Am I missing something here? Why can’t the cables be extended to fit equipment. After all what is a cable – just a bit of copper. Buy some big terminal blocks – City Electrical Factors down the road might have some.

  8. Ok…a quick multi core cable 101. I am not sure if this is the issue but It happened in the past on a UK T42 back in the day being updated with a jammer. Cables went in and where then ripped out because they where installed incorrectly.

    There are 2 ends to a cable.
    Looking at each end the multi cores go clockwise and anti clockwise in the correct order for connecting to a plug or a socket.

    Only if you install the cable correctly with the wires going clockwise will the pins in the connector be in the correct position for a plug connector . Socket connectors go on the anticlockwise end.
    If you install the cable with the multi cores at the wrong end the wires will be up to180 degrees out for connecting to the correct connector. There wont be enough free end on the individual wires to get them to connect inside the plug.

    For an easy example…wire a 3 pin plug onto a cable and the Brown, Blue and Earth line up correctly with the pins without crossing each other . However if you wire the other end of the cable then the wires cross in the plug…

    Try doing that on a 64 pin connector and you will never be able to wire it up correctly.

    Fiendish stuff this electrickery

  9. These ferries have been a disaster from the start, poor decision making, quality control etc.. Not sure exactly how relevant the story is for an “impartial” defence journal though, unless it is just yet another attempt at SNP bashing on this site.

    • It’s not going to have any real issues with the Type 31s (might even end up better), but it is to do with defence.

      So try reading the article next time.

      • Read it all the way through thanks. Strapping on a reference to type 31 at the end, is a really poor attempt to try pull it back into being anything close to being a defence story.

  13. Its not just the cables .
    All the cables in the cable trays will need to be unclipped so that the duff cables can be removed and the new ones laid up. Thats lots of staging needed to reach them.
    If cables go through watertight and A60 Fire resistant bulkhead then all of the cable penetrations will need to be ripped out , cables re-run and the penetrations reinstalled. Once installed they will need checking and signing off.

    • They could do with you and your teams expertise to go in and assess the situation. Provide a report. I would of thought this would of been done already. 4 years late and still not in service. I’m sure the next lot of ferries got ordered from Poland.
      I think this yard will be up for sale as soon as the ferries are finished and closed if no buyer is found.

  14. The story is interestingly vague about whether the design length of these cables was incorrect (unlikely) or whether the cut length was wrong. The design usually has a significant margin on length at the end destination so even if an end equipment were relocated within the compartment, the design length would normally suffice.
    If the cut length were incorrect, it would be much more suggestive of sabotage unless you were only talking about one or two cables and that clearly isn’t the case.

  15. Hi folks hope all is well.
    What a shambles this has become! Can anyone remind me of how long this farce has been going on for?
    If I recall, the SNP nationalised the yard, what with a list of services they (SNP) have their hands on it goes wrong: health, education, local government and policing.
    I hope the Scottish public can see what a lumpant dictator they have.
    The irony is that all UK tax payers are contributing to the shambles.
    Cheers
    George

      • Hi Peter
        More joints means less reliability, more resistance and if plans were not followed the 2 ends to be joined could be some distance apart
        It’s all down to poor quality control and management
        Thanks Ian

    • The government had a tough call to make with the yard. Ferries half built and monies paid. Yard is going into administration. Choices would of been to sell the yard. No one wanted to buy it.
      Scrap ferries and start over. Or take over the yard
      Nationalise it, keep workforce on and finish the ferries.
      Unfortunately the plan of get the ferries finished has turned into a complete shambles with delays again and again. I don’t think you can blame the government. The issue lies with the ship builder. The no doubt told the government everything was progressing fine

  16. Damn, that’s the Wee Scots Navy gone then. Putin will have to find the recources himself in his fight against the old enemy.

  17. There is such an opportunity for ferry builders. Scottish ferries need purchased on a regular basis. It’s a provided service. Great opportunity for a U.K. yard or 2 if they could make them to cost and industry standard

    • only if you were employed by companies eg Bodge it and Scarper,says something for your skill level to work for such people.

    • It’s not the actual SNP that are building the ships. Nicola is not the shipyard manager. Education minister doesn’t double as a welder. They simply stopped the shipyard from closing and work on the Ferries stopping unfinished. The Scottish government made what I would say the correct call at the time with the information available. All the staff were kept on to finish the job. The blame lies with the shipyard.
      Now if the shipyard stays nationalised and more ferries were ordered and it became a disaster then that would be the time to lay some blame at the government in charge.
      I would need to check but I don’t think the Scottish government has the powers to have given the yard a loan as would normally be done the uk government.
      One last point no one is flawless and i am more disgusted by the Westminster government actions than any regional government in recent times.

  21. cant even measure the length of a cable run,you counld, not can not believe how incompetent these Scottish shipbuilders are,good job that the naval vessels under construction in Scotland have English overseerers.

  22. Hair’s explanation is very wide of the mark. Had he supervised the standard project controls well known in naval shipbuilding this cabling challenge which has arisen out of design changes imposed by the Scottish Government could have been avoided

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