Q1. Could you start by giving us a brief overview of your professional background, particularly focusing on your expertise in the industry?

I have been in marine engineering for about twelve years now. I started at DSME, now Hanwha Ocean, back in 2012 as a structural engineer on offshore projects, including the Ichthys FPSO and the ZADCO topsides and fixed-jacket platforms in Abu Dhabi. After that, I shifted toward owner-side work and consultancy, with Lentera Segara and later Amreta Group, where I supervised more than 40 newbuilds — tugs, barges, RIBs, police boats, small passenger vessels — alongside oil and gas projects for clients like Fugro and Saipem. From there, I joined Marine Propulsion Solution in Batam, leading their permanent-magnet electric and underwater propulsion deliveries, including Saipem thrusters and Swimmer Delivery Vehicles for the Indian Navy. Today I am with OSM Thome as Mechanical and Commissioning Supervisor on passenger-vessel newbuilds in Chinese shipyards, and I am also finishing my Master's in Naval System Engineering at ITS Surabaya.

Q2. What structural shifts are you observing in the shipbuilding industry as demand patterns evolve across cruise, offshore, and commercial segments?

Honestly, the most visible shift is in passenger and cruise. Demand came back strongly after the pandemic, but a lot of the mid-size, expedition, and ferry tonnage that European yards used to take is now going to China. I see it firsthand on the OSM Thome programs there. On the offshore side, the pure FPSO pipeline I worked on at DSME has narrowed; capacity is being redirected into FPSO conversions, subsea work, and offshore-wind support vessels. In commercial shipping, owners are no longer ordering on capex alone. They specify methanol-ready or ammonia-ready vessels at the design stage, mostly to protect residual value under EEXI and CII. And underneath all of this is yard congestion. Berths in China and Korea are full into 2028 and 2029, which is driving up prices, creating schedule risk, and bottlenecking engines, thrusters, and switchboards.

Q3. How is the increasing focus on energy efficiency and decarbonization reshaping vessel design and onboard mechanical systems?

Decarbonization is by some distance the biggest design driver right now, and it touches every mechanical system on board, not just the prime movers. We are commissioning more dual-fuel installations, and methanol or ammonia readiness is now often written into the spec from day one. That changes fuel-system materials, calls for double-walled piping, and adds a lot of gas-detection and ventilation work. Electrification is moving in parallel. Permanent-magnet propulsion motors, shaft generators, battery hybrids — these are no longer niche, especially on passenger ferries and offshore-support vessels. Heat recovery, VFDs on pumps and fans, demand-controlled HVAC: standard now, not optional. For us, in commissioning, the workload has gone up. More interlocks, more software logic, longer gas trials. But the efficiency gains are real, often 15 to 25 percent against comparable conventional designs from five years ago.

Q4. In what ways are passenger expectations around wellness, space utilization, and onboard experience influencing accommodation system design?

Passenger expectations have changed materially since 2020, and accommodation design has had to catch up. HVAC sits at the center of my commissioning scope, so I see this most directly. Owners now ask for higher fresh-air change rates, tighter zoning, and HEPA-grade filtration across cabins and public spaces. All of that adds weight, power draw, and footprint that have to be designed in early, not retrofitted later. Wellness areas — gyms, spas, pools, treatment rooms — put disproportionate load on chilled-water, potable-water, and grey-water systems, and they need to be sized alongside cabin density, not after. Noise and vibration also get more attention than before. Careful shaft alignment, resilient mounts, isolated thruster rooms: these used to be premium specifications. Now they are baseline. The yards that integrate all of this cleanly during commissioning are the ones owners come back to.

Q5. How are digital tools, simulation technologies, and smart sensors transforming commissioning and testing processes in shipbuilding?

Commissioning has changed a lot in the last five years, probably more than in the twenty before that. The 3D model walk-throughs in AVEVA PDMS and Tribon, which I have been using since my DSME days, now feed straight into digital-twin platforms. We can rehearse start-up sequences and clash-check piping and cable runs before a single FAT is witnessed. On the yard itself, smart sensors on bearings, shafts, and switchboards give us live vibration, temperature, and harmonic readings during sea trials, instead of the paper checklists we used before. Remote witness testing, which COVID forced on us and which has stuck, lets class surveyors and owners attend FATs from anywhere without flying. On the OSM Thome programs we are running now, this combination of digital pre-validation and live sensor data is what allowed us to cut the commissioning timeline by roughly 20 percent.

Q6. Where do you see the biggest opportunities for innovation in shipbuilding—particularly in passenger vessels and onboard systems?

For passenger vessels, a few areas really stand out. Hybrid and fully-electric propulsion on short-sea ferries, expedition vessels, and harbor cruise tonnage is one. Permanent-magnet azimuth thrusters with battery banks and shore power are technically mature now; the bottleneck is integration and commissioning capacity, not the hardware itself. Modular, pre-outfitted accommodation is another. Cabin and wet-unit modularisation can take months off a build schedule and tighten quality control, but very few yards globally have actually industrialized it. And then there are smart onboard systems — IoT-instrumented HVAC, fuel, and ballast networks that feed predictive-maintenance and EEXI / CII reporting platforms. That turns the vessel from a static asset into something closer to a live data source. The companies that combine all three with real integration discipline, rather than selling them as separate point solutions, will capture an outsized share of the next orderbook cycle.

Q7. If you were an investor looking at companies within the space, what critical question would you pose to their senior management?

The question I would push hardest on is around commissioning and delivery risk, because honestly, that is where most of the margin on a newbuild gets won or lost. Specifically: how many sea-trial-experienced commissioning engineers do they actually have on staff, per active newbuild slot? What is the retention on that group? And how are they securing the long-lead items — main engines, dual-fuel skids, switchboards, azimuth thrusters — given that vendor backlogs right now are running 18 to 24 months? A strong-looking orderbook does not mean much if the company cannot resource execution. For me, the answer to that question, more than yard pricing or design IP, is what tells you whether the delivery dates and margins they are reporting are actually credible — and whether class approvals will land on schedule.