Everything you need to know about becoming a Naval Architect

[Music] we can't afford any errors because when it's scaled up to full scale those areas become a lot larger so for me the best part i enjoy is actually being out in the shipyard every day and so there's not a huge amount of office time so having those interests things that you're passionate about it does make you stand out from the crowd when it comes to graduate interviews um the world really is your oyster when it comes to this career you can you can do as much as you want [Music] welcome everybody today we are going to be taking a close look at the world of being a naval architect if you're interested in boats design and generally how things work then you are absolutely in the right place we'll be looking at what being a naval architect actually involves routes to becoming one and getting tips and advice from three professionals working within the industry as naval architects so let's meet them can i please ask you to introduce yourselves tell us tell us a bit about your background and what you do so can we start with caitlyn please hi my name's caitlin i i'm an australian living in the uk uh and i'm a naval architect with kinetic and i i came to that through uh one of the many routes i i did maths and science chemistry and physics at high school and then i i went on to university where i studied a bachelor of engineering in naval architecture and then i started my career and i'm currently studying a masters of engineering management superb i think we'll go to james dally more now please james can you introduce yourself hi yes i'm uh james dallywood uh 30 years old currently working as a marine surveyor at the lloyds register involved in construction of ships so essentially this is permanently in the shipyard overseeing the whole construction process of a ship superb and what about your educational journey to where you are so yeah after gcses i didn't really know what i wanted to do so i decided to do the international baccalaureate which is a more broad system it's like six subjects in compared to four or three um but in less depth so but that did include physics and maths so which has led me to the engineering journey so then after after completing the international baccalaureate science at samson university smashing balker can you introduce yourself please yeah i'm dr james bowker um i took a similar route james very morbid did a levels math physics and art principally i was quite interested in the design of of yachts and sailing craft and um so i signed up to do a degree course at the university of southampton um whilst i was there my interests changed i ended up graduating with a masters in naval engineering but started to specialize in research i ended up completing a um phd in in way propelled vessels um so quite a broad range of different aspects at university superb i think we'll just start broadly can you just tell us what exactly a um naval architect does and james balker can you take the lead on that please well a naval architecture encompasses um a vast amount of things um but essentially anything that goes to sea um a naval architect deals with um this is whether it's yachts or offshore oil platforms or energy devices such as tidal systems we're right down to subsea autonomous vessels um and also you obviously your your big container ships your tankers and your cruise ships the naval architect really handles the entire design of of the ship or whatever system you're dealing with so they can be responsible for one particular identity but needs to be considerable of the entire design so this will include the um hydrostatics and stability of your vessel so obviously whilst we're at sea everything has to remain upright and floating and then there's other aspects we need to consider in terms of the hydrodynamics and that's the fluid resistance the propulsion so how we put ourselves around the water and also the uh the maneuvering so we use rudders on board to steer ourselves through the water um and also how the vessel responds in in seas we're not just ships i suppose we also have offshore rigs which will also be affected by waves so we need to be understandable of how how things move in the oceans as well so waves um another key aspect is related to waves is how how the ship structure responds um so so we do a lot of structural design that's just to name a few of the various aspects but principally it's um uh engineering applied to the naval industry but you can get involved in other aspects it's not just uh designer ships for example james has already mentioned surveying so that's at the stage where um a ship is built and we want to ensure that it complies with regulations but also throughout the life cycle of the ship you can also get involved in software um research which i did through through university but also tests and evaluation which is part of what we do at kinetic at the hazard maritime technology park we we take um small model vessels and we evaluate them in our ocean basin and scale it up to see how they might respond in the real environment so let's name a few things but it's quite broad and you get involved in really what you're interested in really good and i think you know you hinted at it there i i we're interested in what your day-to-day life um looks like and we'll explore that but for now i'm interested in how you decided to become a to become a naval architect you know when was it that it became clear that was the path for you um and we'll go to caitlin do you want to talk us through that one to start please uh yeah that's it's uh always an interesting uh story i guess for anyone to get to how they how they came to do what they do now and um i guess naval architecture is like a lot of engineering people tend to come to it because you like problem solving you like uh seeing how things work together like finding a solution that that's going to be impacted by a lot of different scenarios and obviously naval architecture you take all of those things and then you have the added complexity of it being in the ocean and the environment that your system that you're designing or that you're thinking about is is a lot more dynamic than it might usually be for a building or something that is on lounge um and for me i came to it because uh i was interested in uh in deep sea research so i was interested in the the kind of vessels that go uh to the bottom of the mariana trench or under the uh under the ice pack in antarctica those kind of unique environments that you can only really get to through complex engineering it's not an easy journey for anyone if anyone's ever watched the james cameron documentaries uh where it goes to the bottom of the entire of the uh mariana trench that's that's the kind of engineering that was uh how i got into this in the first place absolutely and some superb films he's produced as well um but we'll we'll go on to balker belka can you talk us through you know what inspired you to want to be a naval architect please yeah i was really into uh dinghy racing setting um when i was younger and travel around the country competing and sailing and really got um interested right away about how how you make the dinghy sailing thing go faster and the the answer is quite complicated and and i think i was intrigued and wanted to go find out more about how we design these um sailing vessels go faster and faster so that was my intention and i just started getting interested in whole various other topics whilst i was at university um but from the outset it was really looking at the design of racing yachts fine and dally more can you uh anything else to add on there anything different for your journey or similar story no similar story it's uh as you've touched on before just generally how things work and making things work it's really interesting and then also just same as balco james uh just growing up around boats and dinghies sailing working on yachts in the summer and just with the interest of engineering it sort of natural came together marine engineering brilliant yeah so what does an average day look like you know in your world so dallymore can you can you start us off please so for me as i'm based in the shipyard usually get there about 7 30 in the morning uh check the emails check through any plans and check the inspection schedule so the shipyard send the inspection schedule the day before and then for the next day obviously and uh about 8 30 is the first inspection so you go there this could be anything from system testing to structural inspection and then they walk you through sort of like proving what they've built that it's up to standards to us and then if we're happy we sign it off but if not we say can you improve this or change this and things like that are these new are these all new new boats or or are they retrofitted or how does it work no for me for my job it's all new new builds so the moment we're building some uh tankers for the australian navy and so there'll be yeah generally an inspection in the morning inspection in the afternoon and then you finish at about 3 30 ish so it's uh early start but early finish superb and then you're there when they crack the champagne on the boats i presume when they launch them exactly but here in spain they actually use rioja is that right interesting event yeah and it was really exciting the whole the whole town comes out to watch the launch it's quite a big event brilliant cool caitlyn can you talk us to your typical day please uh so my day could be quite varied for the organization i work with we do a lot of different things and i tend to be on two or three tasks at any one time so i might be doing so structural engineering i might be doing a lot of calculations for ship design to the calculations that go into improving the design before we get to someone like james uh in the shipyard uh i might also be doing model testing like james balco mentioned before we do testing of model scale versions of real ships in our facilities to see how they are going to react to the ocean and move in the ocean before they get out and are built and then exist in the real world so we might be going through doing model testing actually running the model in waves or all of the work that goes into getting to you there so doing the design and making sure that the model has been built correctly and all of those kind of things that go into checking that everything's going okay um what what's what's your what's this wave tank is it like a giant swimming pool that you do these things in what does it look like it is a very large swimming pool yes and then who actually builds do you do you send your design for the model elsewhere and someone else builds it or do you build it yourselves in-house um so we can do both there there are companies that we we get to do the model build we can also do it in-house as well really interesting um balker talk us to your typical day please uh my day it ranges between yeah three different aspects i suppose um we're involved with a um international research group where we do a whole amount of research whether it's um [Music] new software or whether it's new designs or evaluation new techniques and methods the other aspect is software development so we look at how we can improve our software for designing uh things such like propeller but also analyzing data so i'm quite heavily involved in developing software and then the other aspect is um as caitlyn touched on the experimentation we we design the experiments we do quite complicated experiments um at kinetic and and actually it's need to make sure that all the preparations done because we can't afford any errors because when it's scaled up to full scale those errors become a lot larger so we need to make sure that the work we do at the model scale is as accurate as possible and that takes quite a lot of work and do you presumably you're talking about physical models presumably computational modeling is used by in your work as well i i take it yeah you cued yourself brilliantly there because one of the aspects that we do is computational fluid dynamics and we have um a supercomputer on site and it's the biggest one it has and they essentially um can now run simulations which we used to run in the tanks so we can now use computer modeling um to to really good effect and get good answers um quite an initial design stage so instead of iterating through lots of model tests we can um do it on the computer really good um okay so what so what is the purpose of all this testing then in the tanks and in the simulate the compute the computational simulation well the the approach that um we take naval architecture is we have a design spiral and quite often you you'll go around the loop several times you you don't design the ship um one shot and end up with it straight away you end up through because of all the various interlinks of um the way it's propelled the way it moves in the sea um the stability aspect you have to make sure they're all balanced together and that means you have to infer one with information from the other so we go around this design spiral and the test and evaluation that we do at model scale can help inform that an early design stage to improve and make sure that your uh design is um is what the customer asks for got you so 14 to 18 year olds what are the routes to becoming a naval architect balker can you can you take this one please uh yeah so it's a standard engineering route really um you you have several options so uh maths and physics is is important um but not necessarily essential you you can do uh foundation um degrees in maths to to help you with the university um but i guess in in in the uk the the normal route is to to have maths and physics rate level um but i but i do know colleagues who have gone down different routes and you can um study uh for example small boat design at other universities and and then do a degree later on um in naval architecture and that's another route becoming naval architect but the i suppose the the most common thread is to apply to one of the universities that offer naval architecture as a standalone degree which is the university of southampton newcastle university strathclyde and the ucl university college london they they all offer the standard naval architectural routes which you'll need maths and physics air level for so what skills do you need to succeed in naval architecture uh caitlyn can you can you tell us about that please uh well like uh james mentioned like people are going to be aware of with any engineering degrees math science and and an interest in an aptitude for those uh are going to be really valuable to you but essentially it's about problem solving so your your ability to to look at a problem and see all the elements that contribute to it not just the main ones and and to think about a solution that's balanced as opposed to optimized for one specific issue that you might face uh and there are hard and soft skills that are are going to be important in that so your technical skills that you'll learn through university in mathematics and the science behind the the engineering um and as well as the your soft skills your ability to talk to your customer and understand their problem and to communicate well what how you understand their problem and how you're planning to work through the solution i was just saying that's good yeah problem solving is a big important aspect for me on the job you have to constantly think about the problem root cause and then communicate that problem with the shipyard or the client and often shipyards around the world there's different languages different cultures so it's very important to be adaptable i think i'm interested we're going to go on to things that you like most about your your career as a naval architect and is there any particular peak experience that stands out um james dallymore can you take the lead on that please yeah for me the best part i enjoy is actually being out in the shipyard every day and so there's not a huge amount of office time which i i generally prefer it's a bit more hands-on and you can actually see the project coming to life from nothing literally to delivering it to the customer which i really like and uh there's a lot of variety because you think from the very beginning of a ship being built it's just steel work and then launching all the systems have to be tested so it's very different every day which i really like um any experiences so any peak experiences peak experiences probably in uh i lived in south korea for two years which was great and the first time after seeing the ship come together over about 12 months you take it for sea trials and that was a real really quite spectacular experience because you've seen the ship come from nothing and then suddenly taking it out into the sea and testing it so for me that was great that sounds really good and caitlin how about yourself i i really love how how international uh it can be you you can be like james has mentioned he lived in in south korea he's currently in spain i'm an australian living in the uk at the moment it's it's one big global industry the the maritime industry and it's you can go anywhere and do anything it's very interesting i've got friends from university who have just got back from uh six months in antarctica running an autonomous vehicle under the under the ice pack uh i've got friends that uh that are living all over the world doing really interesting things so it's it's uh yeah it's definitely uh open for opportunity or whatever you want to do you can really do really like it balco what about you yeah echo what both of them say i um work with an international uh research group and it's great to work with um fields from canada australia all across europe and around the world so uh um that's a great perk um and i suppose the standout moments has been um just accomplishing something that's quite challenging um it's uh it's uh as caitlyn said earlier you're you're balancing quite a lot of aspects and i think as a naval architect once it all comes together it's satisfying so is there anything that you wish you knew before joining the industry and becoming a naval architect and we'll go to caitlin for that please uh for me i just wish i'd known about naval architecture when i was at school it wasn't uh it wasn't a career path that was really uh talked about like a lot it wasn't a one of the main things that that came up in career counseling so i didn't actually find out about it until after i i finished school i went off i did maths and economics at university the first when i was 17 and and i worked for a bit in the uh in the finance industry and i just it wasn't it wasn't for me so i went uh it wasn't chat the kind of challenging problem solving that i was interested in and i loved the ocean and i loved that kind of engineering that was involved in going to the some of the most difficult places on the planet so that uh for me i just when i was at school i wish i'd known about it really good um balco how about you uh mine's probably quite niche but um i think i wish i'd known more about programming skills i think there's more of a presence of that at school now but um when i was at school it wasn't really a thing um and i guess i got when i went to university we did a little bit now i do quite a lot um and the reason is that um you know computers are so so powerful now no traditional naval architecture is done through a computer um and if you're on the cutting edge of the research quality you're doing the development of these tools um and it would have been useful to know a bit about some programming skills but also i think um not just for research and development but um just skills in terms of um the vba and excel and that sort of thing that's the eba balance it's all very useful uh caitlin i'll cue you there virtually visual basics yeah visually seriously so language excel excellent programming um yeah yeah so so effectively um a lot of these tools are quite useful um and you can pick them up on the fly and i use matlab quite a lot um but uh no one ever said that about that at school that that wasn't a thing but uh i think it is it's becoming more prominent now that um these skills are useful sure okay in anything absolutely um um how much do you earn in this career um you know we'll start with starting salaries and what you can then go on to earn um later down the line um falca can you tell us about that please yeah obviously there's a um a variation um depending where you work in the world but if we just went to the uk for example and also sorry it depends what sector you work in whether you're offshore or naval or in the yacht design business but principally i think for a graduate you expect to earn between 20 and 30k um when you're starting out from university uh and then once you become a naval architect and quite often that involves some affiliation and accreditation from rena which is a role in shooting naval architects where you become chartered but not always and that's where you call yourself naval architect and you expect to be paid between 30 and 40k and then you can move on to a senior naval architect where you'll probably be supervising a team of naval architects um and you expect to be paid between 40 and 50k and then a principal naval architect um is someone who's probably um signing off on actual designs um and uh really quite senior um and they they're okay between 50 and 70k i imagine and and then you have uh chief naval architects who are really almost acting as um not as consultants but they're very um their final review will be done on whatever designs um being produced by the team and that will be the chief naval architect who looks that and they can earn anywhere between 7900k and of course those numbers approximate to our industry and uh um and it might vary around uh the uk and around the world sure but it does give it you know a good rough guide in any rate so thank you for sharing that what's the best approach of getting work experience uh in this dally moore just speak to any contacts you may have i actually fired up loads of emails to different companies and then got one back and spent the summer at naval architects office and uh the work experience was amazing because it gave you a real insight into the industry what you might like the areas you might dislike for example we would go to a lot of shipyards to see the conversions and repair work that they were doing and that really sparked me into possibly working in a shipyard but then we did do a lot of the computer side which wasn't my favorite so it's a work experience just gives you a really good idea of what you might like and dislike or whether you even want to go into that career a lot of companies have uh internships uh programs for people as they're going through university uh for them to do work experience that's that's how i i started my first work experience was through uh through a scholarship program that i had in australia where i did three months in in a shipyard in australia i did three months in a naval architecture office and those experiences really help you when it comes to getting towards the end of your degree and deciding what what direction you want to go what kind of uh part of the industry you want to aim yourself at because there is so much that you could do so trying to get as broader experience across the different different parts of the industries so i i started in the naval sector in the maritime industry uh the the ship building such obviously delamore just uh spoke about that one uh i know balco did work in the renewables sector so that that there's a lot of different uh different parts of the industry that you could you could try and work in and getting a good experience across all of those really helps you make that decision really good i want you to comment on how you think technology will impact your careers and your in particular your jobs will your job job exist in 50 years time yeah i mean our oceans are our transport networks um and and not only that it could be our energy source as well for the future um and and really a naval architect has consulted on all matters associated with engineering in the ocean and that can include tidal turbines wind turbines floating wind turbines we also have wave energy devices uh and you're seeing more and more of these along the coastline now um the the wind turbines are a bit easier because they the actual mechanisms of um creating energy is is not in the water um and the seawater environment is um uh quite damaging on uh corrosive so so it is an extra level of complexity designing um tidal and wager and wave energy systems but um it's certainly an energy source that we'll start to see more of in the future as governments looking to more sustainable plans for um uh delivering energy to the uh um systems so just just to just sorry just to interject here balco i think it's really interesting because i know you mentioned this at the start but the term naval architect you assume you're dealing specifically with boats but you're not you can you can from what you're saying there you can be working on any sort of construction which is based in the sea for example turbines am i right in thinking that yeah absolutely yeah so uh um so as we we've spoken is hugely broad you can be doing a whole manner of things and um and the the reason um i was particularly interested in tide and wave energies it's still quite cutting edge and there's lots of ideas going around how we can implement this and get the energy back to shore um principally it's about investment um there's if if the government um invests in this these areas then then we'll see them on our coastlines no doubt um and if you're talking about a 50-year program then absolutely we'll be naval artists will be involved there but all the other manners of defense um commercial uh shipping cruise liners they'll all still be around and there's lots there's even more ideas for future which will involve for example maybe even living on the sea um and uh also uh aquaponics so um i believe that's the right term but uh you know growing um uh out at sea as well and there's quite a lot of crazy ideas about um how we can really transform the way we live in the future by um working on around the sea so what can an a level student a sixth form student be doing now to help maximize their chances of getting onto a you know naval architecture ship science course and then ultimately succeeding in being a naval architect uh james ba uh james more please so obviously you have to just focus on getting those grades required for the degree level and then once you're on the course get through the degree course and then i found especially in my last year when i first started applying for jobs my cv was a bit of a train wreck and just generally everything was a bit of a mess so i would just recommend speak to as many people you can whether that's career advisors or people who can dust up your cv and then send that out to companies because or graduate schemes or anything really um because i found the first few cvs i sent out were just when i look back it was just terrible because i just tried to do it on my own and so i just say yeah speak to as many people as you can in your university or a level uh i think if there's something that they're particularly interested in something that they're uh that they're passionate about particularly if it's in the maritime field i think look into it and do do your research if you're passionate about something follow it because it you really don't know where that that's going to lead you so having those interests things that you're passionate about it does make you stand out from the crowd when it comes to graduate interviews and and applications if if you have an aspect of that industry that you're particularly passionate about and that you you know a lot about that's outside of the the technical background that you'll get through your through your degree i think finding something that you're passionate about and being able to to talk to people about that that is it it really helps you when you you're starting off in your career so there's um attend open university days um go and speak to the professors and they'll give you a good idea of what the course involves and whether it's something that you want to do and also read about the stuff you're interested in there's various publications online and the role institute naval architect um issue out some uh material what what's been going on lately in the industry and so just just reading things that you're interested in the industry um would help as well final pieces of advice for students you know a level student sixth form students final piece of advice uh james balker uh go for it it's um it's a brilliant career being a naval architect and um and as i said you can go into all sorts of facets and within the industry so uh um the world really is your oyster when it comes to this career you can you can do as much as you want really good james daly more final final thoughts final piece of advice get it off your chest yeah somewhat similar to balco there just uh engineering is a great career to be in and if you're if you're interested in doing it i'll try and align your a levels and everything earlier rather than later because it will be much easier in the future and yeah just go for it there's such a variety of work out there and different aspects you can work in travel the world everything and caitlyn final thoughts from yourself please uh yeah so for for people going through this this you know 14 to 18 year olds to look into what they want to do um don't just focus on the academic side as well like the delmar said it's very important but uh make sure you you keep a balance and focus on things outside of that that that help kind of balance you and make you a well-rounded person when you come out into the workforce really good well listen i can't think of better guests to have on on on for this so i'd just like to say thank you very much again to caitlin james and james again and uh thank you so much guys i really appreciate it yes

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Length: 34min 41sec (2081 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 09 2020