In-depth | Cost analysis
The shipyard’s aid to risk aversion
Cost planning requires estimations which are combined with uncertainties.
These uncertainties can be handled efficiently by special methods and
systems. Report by Dr. Jan O. Fischer, of costfact*, and Professor Dr. Ing.
Gerd Holbach, of TU Berlin**.
C
ost planning in shipbuilding
always requires estimations.
Especially in the early project
phases those estimations are combined
with uncertainties. The software system
‘costfact’, which supports the planning,
analysis and control of the product’s
costs throughout all of the building
phases, offers special functions to handle
those risk estimations. costfact gives an
overview of the distribution of different
risk classes and calculates how much the
expected cost will probably differ from
the planned cost.
Cost management
in shipbuilding
Cost pressure in shipbuilding has intensified
over the past few years substantially. Many Figure 1. The greatest part of the costs is fixed after the initial design.
shipyards have already gone bankrupt
through worldwide competition and the
inability to keep to their original budget information. Hence, it can be said that
that the offer was based on. In the naval there is a big gap between existing cost
sector it is not unusual to double the optimisation systems and of controlling the
originally estimated costs when building allowable costs.
the vessel. Against this background a software
As up to 90% of the total costs are fixed solution (‘costfact’) was designed by the
at the start of production (Figure 1) it company of the same name, of Cologne,
is obvious that approaches to optimise and the department of design and service
costs have to be considered in design and of maritime systems of the University of
engineering. However, this is complicated Berlin (EBMS). costfact is based on an Figure 2. Cost calculation according to the
by the fact that there is only insufficient existing tool that has already been applied ship’s building structure.
cost information in these early phases. in plant engineering. The modification of
Therefore, estimating and planning costfact for the maritime industry is based
the ship’s costs is a protracted process. on experience, which the head of EBMS the cost of complex projects with a high
Simultaneously the pressure of time limits gained by more then 10 years experience degree of transparency. To achieve these
leads to difficulties with determining exact at Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft targets the programme offers the following
and robust cost information. Last but not shipyard in leading positions and with functions:
least, the existing data base, generated responsibility for cost estimation and Display of the costs according to the
in past projects, is far from complete, budgetary control. ship’s building structure defined by the user:
caused by the lack of an integrated system With costfact the planning of costs, both
for managing and providing the cost Cost planning in top down and bottom up, is done within
shipbuilding with costfact the vessel’s parts list, differentiated by cost
Footnote: * costfact; www.costfact.de The main value of costfact is its ability to types (e.g. material costs or manufacturing
** Department ‘Design and Operation of enable the user to determine and describe costs) and objects (e.g. stock material
Maritime System’ Technische Universität Berlin; the cost of projects and new ships easily and or additional costs). costfact contains
www.naoe.tu-berlin.de precisely. In addition costfact can analyse complete building structures of ships like
20 The Naval Architect February 2010
NA Feb10 - p20+p22+p24+p26.indd 20 02/02/2010 16:34:31
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