Auckland-based company, Diverse Projects, has been chosen to act as owner’s representative during the refit of 51m Damen Sea Axe shadow support yacht Umbra. Expected to take three months, the refit of superyacht support vessel Umbra is currently underway at Whangarei’s Oceania Marine.
The refit will include fitting a removable helicopter deck and the structure to support it, while adding two meters to the stern, undertaking a full exterior repaint in the owner’s colours as well as a full vessel survey.
Luxury yacht support vessel Umbra, a Damen Sea Axe design, is a highly-engineered vessel created to cut through water at speed while maintaining excellent seakeeping abilities. The Diverse team will focus on ensuring Umbra’s seaworthiness and speed remain, after the extensive adjustments to her structure.
To do this, Diverse is employing its virtual shipyard approach. The approach uses a process-based software developed in-house to deliver a project which can be mapped by the owner, or their team, in very fine detail as the refit progresses. By breaking down each task within the refit to its individual components, the Diverse team have created a system which flags any potential road blocks, or budget overruns, long before they arrive, delivering a quick, efficient refit process.
It’s the only system in the world to take an overarching view of the refit process, while simultaneously breaking each component of the refit into its micro-components, and it gives the refit and management team unprecedented ability to visualise the end result and through that visualisation, avoid any potential stumbling blocks in the refit’s progress before they arise.
“By being able to monitor and track each task live in every aspect, including costing and invoicing, we can easily spot where a potential problem might arise, plus it’s all captured within that task forever. This information can also be invaluable for when the yacht does its next refit down the line,” says Lars Bjorklund, Diverse Projects project manager.
“The fact alone that we can process all the purchase orders, invoices and even more importantly, the change orders online live, saves us an enormous amount of time – on all sides,” says John Vitali, Diverse Projects project manager.
The Diverse Projects team are looking forward to completing support yacht Umbra within the three month time frame set aside for her refit, and returning the yacht to her busy cruising schedule in the Pacific.