An engineering firm with a passion for ships

This week I’d like to take a moment to profile a marine engineering firm that is bringing a passion for ships directly into their business model.  CB Marine Design, lead by CEO Joseph Wrinn, is taking a unique approach towards marine engineering design by bringing  a love for ships into their work.  After all, they titled their website weloveyourship.com and promise to “love your ship!”

CB Marine Design specializes in providing design and drawing support for diverse types of shipyard projects.  They have recently been working on providing design services for the sub tender, USS Emory S. Land, which has been in drydock in Portland, OR at the Vigor Marine facility.  USS Emory S. Land is one of only two sub tenders in the U.S. Fleet.  She has recently been undergoing a major dyrdock/repair availability to complete a transition to being operated by the Military Sealift Command with a joint CIVMAR/USN crew.

One of the specialties of CB Marine Design is redline drawings.

Here is a short excerpt from CB Marine’s most recent newsletter describing the importance of redline drawings:

Redline Diagrams are among the more important documents found on a vessel, yet many times they are overlooked and underutilized.
A ship is a floating city full of systems, tangles of cables, and pipe mazes. How do you keep track of all of the systems? Through the use of drawings. Though the drawing names may have different labels, and may appear in different places throughout the industry, everyone recognizes the need for these drawings.

Some might call them schematics, one lines, system diagrams, or even “Selected Record Drawings”. What do they all have in common? All of the drawings listed above show various systems not in beautiful 3-D, but rather in single line format. The drawings listed above show only a small amount of detail, but the beauty is hidden in these tiny details.

All ships have a library full of well worn system diagrams, especially for the piping and electrical systems. These drawings show the major system equipment and the connecting materials, be it pipe or cabling. The ship’s crew use these drawings to track down the remote valves and far flung electrical panels, mostly in an effort to solve a particular problem. In many cases, these well worn copies were originally created at the time of the ship’s construction and have not been updated to reflect the present condition of the ship. For the most part this is not a problem, but if the ship has gone through a major overhaul, or has had major equipment modifications, this drawing becomes less useful.

To learn more about redline drawings and the services that CB Marine Design offers, visit weloveyourship.com