Vuyk Engineering Rotterdam (VER) is a design, consultancy and engineering services provider for the marine and offshore industries, specialising in ship design, equipment design and operational engineering for the dredging, subsea, offshore, renewables and heavy lift market sectors.
With a highly-qualified and technically-skilled design team including 60 degree-qualified engineers, as well as experience gained from long-term working relationships with several high profile shipping partners, VER can advise in all stages of projects, from concept generation to construction, on new buildings, modifications and conversions.
VER also provides high-end solutions for special vessel equipment, and analyses vessel motions and dynamic loads to design practical and creative custom technology, specifically to clients’ requirements. Past in-house developed designs include an 8,000m³ split barge, a modular offshore construction vessel, a floating wind turbine installation vessel, a cable lay vessel, a semi-submersible accommodation vessel, a blade handling tool and a jacking system.
New build vessels and equipment for dredging and offshore applications
VER’s team of experienced naval architects and mechanical engineers takes the client’s requirements and designs a vessel based on these, performing strength, stability, sea keeping, manoeuvring and resistance calculations when needed.
As a result, VER has designed a range of vessels from small, durable dredgers to large offshore construction vessels. In addition to this, VER designs dredging and offshore equipment such as platforms, lifting frames, spud handling systems, outriggers, cutterladders, and complete objects including for example floating sheerlegs, rock dumping, pipelay and crane vessels, as well as spud pontoons.
VER has great experience in complete basic designs of vessels, cranes and systems, such as the DP2 crane ship, RAMBIZ 4000 currently under construction for Scaldis Salvage & Marine Contractors, and the stone dumping fallpipe vessel SIMON STEVIN, delivered to the Jan de Nul Group in 2010. With each new design VER further enriches its experience and capabilities in ship design, heavy equipment design and marine operations engineering.
Technically challenging marine operations engineering
Vuyk carries out operational engineering for construction to be carried out offshore, subsea or on land / water borders. This work represents 30% of the company’s turnover and allows enrichment of expertise, development of practical knowledge and use of highly complex engineering using hydrodynamic calculations to improve the engineering and design capabilities.
Marine operation engineering work includes wind turbine installation work, installation of oil and gas equipment (subsea installation or platforms) and salvage assistance.
VER recently assisted on a project involved with transporting and installing a riser access tower (RAT) for ALE Heavylift, from the shipyard in Gorinchem to the offshore platform. VER used AQWA, a 3D diffraction software, to determine the dynamic loads and motions of this sophisticated operation, through single and multi-body analyses in both frequency and time-domain, including non-linear Morison load effects.
Apart from that also the software package Orcaflex is extensively used for complex mooring analyses and to assess riser dynamics and VIV.
Modifying and upgrading existing offshore structures
VER is able to upgrade existing equipment to meet up-to-date technical standards, to meet new client requirements and for a general retrofit. An example hereof is the upgrade of the capacity of several sheerlegs. But also the rebuilding of vessels to increase the deadweight capacity as there was for example the rebuilding of the Queen of the Netherlands of Dutch dredging company Boskalis.
Consultancy and design services
VER provides services for all stages of the equipment’s life; from consultancy to ship and equipment design, from engineering to operation.
This excellence in ship design has led to contracts with some of the biggest names in the dredging, offshore and heavy-lift sectors; including Jan de Nul Group, Boskalis, DEME, Van Oord, Seatrucks, Heerema and Allsea.
Redesigning of vessels for special applications
In addition to improving and upgrading vessels and equipment, VER is able to redesign vessels to fulfil completely different requirements than their original purpose intended. This includes items such as lifting frames, one-off cranes, rock dumping equipment and fallpipe equipment. Past examples of this include the conversion of:
- a module carrier into a stone dumper
- a general cargo vessel into a gas carrier
- a general cargo vessel into a sand/shell dredger
- a reefer into a livestock carrier
- a barge into a self-propelled semi submersible heavy lift vessel
The Vuyk philosophy
VER has been travelling a set long-term course for many years now: to be a well recognised design company that major players come to with their first ideas or for high level consultancy and engineering. VER’s strategy for the future is constant improvement of their knowledge and tools in order to keep up with the increasingly complex questions asked by clients, to stay ahead of the game.
