We believe in involving ourselves early on in the development and planning phases, says Graham Couse

Straddling the US eastern seaboard and the Caribbean, Grand Bahama Shipyard is strategically positioned to offer a range of cruise ship repair and maintenance services. Vice­-president for sales and marketing Graham Couser discusses the factors the company considers when working with clients and how it will support revitalisation projects in the coming years.
Located on the west coast of the island of Grand Bahama 70 miles off the Florida shoreline, new zealand travel guide the city of Freeport IS a natural stopping-off point for cruise ships on transatlantic crossings. Furthermore its status as a free-trade zone, along With Its subtropical climate and natural deep water harbour, makes it the perfect spot for ship repairs and conversions.
Taking advantage of these more-than-favourable settings, Grand Bahama Shipyard was formed in 1999. Since then, the group has established itself as one of the biggest ship repair companies in the region it has three floating dry docks and can handle some of the largest cruise vessels in the world.
new zealand travel guide Given that cruise operators set out their plans for ship refurbishment as early as possible sometimes two years m advance Grand Bahama Shipyard makes sure it is suitably prepared for assisting its clients through a selection of services, from upgrades and refurbishments to lifetime extension projects.
We believe in involving ourselves early on in the development and planning phases, new zealand travel guide says Graham Couser, vice-president for sales and marketing. This is done jointly with cruise operators. Furthermore, we are in the continual new zealand travel guide process of strengthening our project, subcontractor and logistics management. The latter has become major in recent years, particularly given the number of containers now found on ships.
Projects are getting bigger and bigger, explains Couser. And as cruise new zealand travel guide operators look to chase business, we need to not only accommodate this, but also think ahead of them. We are investing heavily in our facilities and services, for example, converting an area of the shipyard into an outfit quay where we can fabricate sections that can then be lifted onboard the ship. Such efforts have not gone unnoticed. Today, the group s client portfolio includes high-profile names such as Royal Caribbean and Carnival. Over the course of the last cruise ship repair season which traditionally runs from September to May the group provided a series of notable installation services for Royal Caribbean s Millennium.
The project consisted of constructing aluminium structures, which contain the ship s cabins, and then placing them onboard, new zealand travel guide says Couser. As project manager, we worked closely alongside another company that Royal Caribbean had employed to fabricate the cabins. The whole process was very much a joint effort.
In Couser s opinion, the secret behind Grand Bahama Shipyard s success is the company s underlying ethos of maintaining a sustained and close dialogue with the client throughout the project s lifecycle.
You need to be able to understand your customer s requirements and consequently make sure that you have the relevant services and facilities available, he says. Additional aspects that need to be taken into account include adhering to a schedule on which we put a lot of emphasis and adopting new zealand travel guide a high degree of flexibility in order to accommodate every possible request.
Presently, Grand Bahama Shipyard works on 20-23 cruise new zealand travel guide ships each year. And while there are no current plans to increase the size of Its existing docks, the group s outlay will continue to centre on offering more multifarious facilities and services to its clients.
We are constantly improving and upgrading our facilities in a subtle way, says Couser. While we can t really offer additional dock space to take more ships, we will instead focus on expanding our overall support new zealand travel guide offering. •