First Progress Report on a Novel Idea: Proactive Elicitation for Ship Design
Authors: Ou Cheng Feng , Trodden David 
Published: September 2022

Background: Nowadays, ship design is based on clients, standards, and engineering practices. This information can be considered as requirements of design. The Surveyors have the responsibility to review the design, and after their approval it will put into the construction. In general, this leads to an acceptable design. However, when the ship be delivered and put into service, issues appear, demonstrating that the existing elicitation process is inadequate.

Purpose: While it is clear conflicts must be minimized, there are a least four key stakeholders who may have difficulty in achieving a consensus. These four protagonists are: the client, the end-user, the naval architect, and the supervisory organization. It is the naval architect, as the designer, who must mediate between these four parties. As it is impossible for naval architects to have a complete understanding of every issue their role needs to include proactive gathering of design information rather, rather than passively waiting to receive it. In this paper the extent to which the naval architect’s elicitation activities could be extended will be explored, to enhance the final designs.

Methods: This research will use an ethnographic to investigate stakeholders’ expectations, and from the results of surveys propose improvements to the elicitation process. Those surveyed includes experts from different elements of the maritime and design professions. The aim is to propose a process that can enable naval architects to identify the crucial stakeholders for a given design task, with the objective of engaging them to enhance the elicitation process. Below are some proposals.

For industry: Using the requirements stated in the contract is not sufficient so the naval architects need to enhance this specification with additional end-user requirements. This relies on naval architects being able to seek information directly from specific stakeholders.

For the academic: Marine educational programmes could be expanded so that in addition to the traditional engineering subjects other interdisciplinary knowledge is incorporated that widens the students understanding of the issues affecting all the stakeholders, including seagoing personal, harbour officials and pilots, and others.

Result: This paper will report on an elicitation process that is informed by, and developed from, the experts’ comments from ongoing surveys, and that will establish a systematic elicitation procedure designed to acquire all stakeholders’ requirements. This process will enable naval architects to gather information that enhances the contract design information. The core value of this process would be to enable the naval architect to have a sounder understanding of the design problem, and to have greater insights when developing solutions in discussion with the client.

Conclusion: This research seeks to provide a new approach to the elicitation process, such that the naval architect will be able to engage with their client in a way that will produce designs that are deemed successful by all stakeholders. The essence of design is based on human needs, and this will be reflected in this process, where the naval architect proactively seeks to understand the requirements of all stakeholders and brings that knowledge into the discussions with their client.