Innovation Fall 2026

PEMA stiffener mounting portals at Vancouver Shipyards align and hold each stiffener against a plate before securing the two together with intermittent tack welds. P hoto : S hereen L ee

That experience becomes most valuable when variations appear during the welding process. "You learn to control the molten pool, avoid welding defects, respond when the gap starts to contract or things start to distort, and know what to do when pieces don't fit together the way you thought they would," Smith said. A fleet of purpose-built welding tools Manufacturing facilities such as Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards are often laid out to follow the sequence of fabrication, with each area dedicated to a different stage. “Think of ship construction as assembling puzzle pieces,” said Noel Banduyang, AScT, a welding engineering technologist at Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards. “You build one puzzle piece at a time, beginning at the bottom.” Early on, the process of creating the pieces typically looks like feeding large components through a sequence of finely-calibrated machines, which often take up a sizable portion of the manufacturing space. In early stages, welders’ roles often involve observing and

calibrating the machine from a distance. One building may hold stacks of 40-metre-long steel plates waiting to be processed, while another building houses thousand tonne hydraulic presses for hull-shaping and gantry cranes holding steel beams. But as the hull of the ship comes into view, reaching into the skeleton of a partially assembled ship to secure two joints together becomes much more challenging, for humans and machines alike. “Access is a huge issue,” said Banduyang. “When access is restricted, a welder may only have one small position from which they can work.” The limited range of motion permitted in a mostly constructed ship means that human welders often have to spend hours in awkward positions to perform their welds. So far, this process has been impossible to automate. The physical challenges with these types of welding tasks, however, haven’t stopped Seaspan from searching for a solution. Banduyang and Moallem are part of ongoing efforts at Seaspan to find machines that can accomplish the most taxing welding jobs in shipbuilding.

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Fall 2026

Innovation