About Estaleiro Atlântico Sul (EAS)
Estaleiro Atlântico Sul (EAS) is Brazil’s largest shipyard, and played a crucial part in the revival of the country’s domestic shipbuilding industry. The shipyard leveraged their available resources to deliver technically advanced vessels on-time.
Sample Projects
- Suezmax cargo ships
- VLCCs
- Aframax cargo ships
- Panamax cargo ships
- Drilling ships
- Semi-submersible offshore platforms
- FPSO
- TLP
- SPAR
The Challenge: Shortage of Labour
Within Brazil, there was a shortage of workers with a shipbuilding background. In the 1970s, Brazil was the second largest shipbuilding nation in the world, but in the following decades the industry was almost wiped out. Recent offshore oil discoveries led the Brazilian government to adopt an economic development plan to revive the domestic shipbuilding industry. EAS needed to rapidly hire and train thousands of workers to build the orders they received as a result of the government’s procurement plan. One of the most difficult departments to staff was the Engineering Department (engineers, designers, draftsmen). Most employees had little or no experience in the shipbuilding industry, and needed CAD/CAM software that could be quickly learned and used by an inexperienced workforce.
The Solution: Ease of Use and Flexibility
By adopting an engineering solution that was easy to quickly become proficient in, EAS was able to find workers who possessed an existing knowledge of AutoCAD and was able to train them to the required level of proficiency. The shipbuilding specific nature of ShipConstructor meant that the complex, cutting-edge requirements of EAS vessels could be realistically achieved. That shipbuilding optimization also allowed optimal production techniques to be captured within the 3D model, without requiring a high degree of production knowledge.
Enabling the tight integration of engineering and production through the semi-automatic creation of detailed production drawings, 3D visualization and code for NC-cutting, further helped to improve the transfer of information throughout the yard.
Result: Vessels Launched On-time
On May 7, 2010, EAS launched the João Cândido Suezmax tanker, the first vessel in the massive Promef shipbuilding expansion program for Brazil’s state sponsored oil company, Petrobras and one of the largest vessels ever built in Brazil. Speaking at the launching ceremony, Brazil’s President Lula called the event a “self-affirmation” of an industry that had long been forgotten.
Following its success with SSI software on the first vessel, EAS is now using ShipConstructor to design and detail three separate Promef-related projects simultaneously: the 5 Aframax Tankers, 10 Suezmax tankers, plus a P-55 offshore semi-submersible hull.