• Marine

Rule Britannia!

James Fisher Mimic rules the waves with its condition monitoring software onboard the UK's largest cruise ship.

When Britannia, the largest ship ever designed for the UK holiday market, embarked on its maiden voyage around the British Isles this summer it sailed with James Fisher Mimic’s condition monitoring system onboard.

Mimic’s technical consultant, Steve Heath and software technician, Ben Lloyd joined the ship in the Monfalcone shipyard in Italy last February to set-up and test the condition based maintenance (CBM) system, and were onboard when she sailed into Southampton (accompanied by a parachute display team) for her official launch in March.

This new contract demonstrates the enthusiasm of P&O Cruises to embrace and utilise the many advantages of CBM as part of its maintenance strategy.

Mimic has forged strong links with P&O’s cruise line operators, Carnival UK, over recent years and its software has been fitted on every cruise liner and vessel built since 2005. But Britannia, at 141,000 tonnes, is by far the biggest.

The CBM system (which supports ship owners in the optimisation of their maintenance function, helping to improve reliability and reduce operational costs) covers air conditioning compressors, boiler feed pumps, ballast pumps, fresh water pumps, chilled water pumps, salt water pumps, fuel centrifuges, heat exchangers, steering gear and fuel pumps and incorporates training and initial baseline data acquisition.

During their luxury cruise experience, Steve and Ben were kept extremely busy:

‘It was great to be onboard, but we did have to spend 12-hours a day in the engine room and the ship was very busy with over 1000 contractors putting the finishing touches to everything and the crew having practice drills around us - we only got to test two of the restaurants,’

says Steve.

Shaun Rowe, operations manager at James Fisher Mimic says JFM will also provide on-going consultancy support to Britannia in the form of a monthly data analysis service of machinery health and recommendations for any impending problems.

‘Our work with Carnival UK over the last 10 years has provided the stepping stone to approach other cruise companies and expand into the commercial shipping market – so Carnival, and its cruise line P&O Cruises, remains a very special client to us and we are thrilled to be showcasing Mimic on Britannia,’

says Shaun.

Mimic has a long record of service with the Ministry of Defence. It has been used by the Royal Navy since 1991 and is fitted on every Royal Navy surface ship and submarine and also every vessel in the Royal Fleet Auxiliary - it is also scheduled for use on the new aircraft carrier Queen Elizabeth II.