BC Ferries issued a request for proposals to five pre-qualified shipyards in order to build three ferries, but only one candidate is a Canadian builder.
The plan is to build two ferries with the capacity to carry 145 vehicles and up to 600 passengers to replace the soon to retire, Queen of Burnaby and the Queen of Nanaimo, and a third ferry to handle the peak times and shoulder seasons.
Initially nine pre-qualified shipyards responded to the RFP from BC Ferries but only five were short-listed. The companies participating in the process to build the vessels are:
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• Fiskerstrand Blrt As – Norway
• Flensburger Schiffbau-Gesellschaft mbH & Co.KG – Germany
• Remontowa Shipbuilding S.A. – Poland
• Seaspan Vancouver Shipyards Co. Ltd. – Canada
• Sefine Shipyard – Turkey
This project is the stepping stone to eventually bring the fleet into potentially five classes of vessels,” said BC Ferries VP of Engineering Mark Wilson in a statement. “Standardization of vessel classes will achieve cost savings by building ships with standardized equipment and systems, which will save maintenance and training costs, realize service flexibility across various route options, and inter-operability between vessels.”
As outlined in the RFP, the ships will be designed to operate on either liquefied natural gas or marine diesel oil. Wilson said, he expects these new intermediate-class ferries will reduce fuel costs and help reduce the upward trend on fares.
The RFP closes at the end of February 2014 and after the proposals are reviewed, BC Ferries expects to award the contract in the spring of 2014.
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