On top of these projects, Deltamarin had
one particularly famous client at the
32 time.
“Disney decided to enter the cruise
business. It started looking for a designer to
help it set up a shipping company. We were
competing against heavy-weight colleagues
from European shipyards. The Disney people
first visited the shipyards and then came to
us,” Kanerva says.
“The impressions on their faces were great
when they came to us. You could see that they
had made the decision to work with us. We
had already become acquainted and knew
some of the people beforehand from other
occasions and companies. They told us that
it was difficult to cooperate with the yards.
Disney had no experience in shipbuilding,
and they felt the yards simply wouldn’t listen
to them. That was an important lesson for
us, too – avoid arrogance at all costs – even
though our design was well-known, and we
had confidence in our abilities.”
“Internationally, this has often been the
cardinal sin of ship designers and builders
– people are not keen to learn from others;
everybody wants to make their own mistakes.”
“At the same time, we understood the
importance of having good connections
internationally. You have to show up at
conferences and fairs, not only to promote
your message but also to keep your ears and
eyes open to see what others are doing and
understand that they can do those things too.
Building an international network became
essential.”
“We have learnt to listen to the clients,
consider and understand their wishes and
support their business with our innovative
and reliable solutions. The best evidence of
this was the contract with RCCL to start work
on the “Solstice” and “Oasis” projects. This
small contract of about 3,000 hours ultimately
became our biggest concept design contract
with more than 70,000 design hours on behalf
of RCCL. Further down the line, it led to massive
basic and detail design contracts, especially for
the Oasis-class ships built in Finland.”
The first of the
Oasis-class cruise
ships, Oasis of the
Seas, was at the
time of her delivery
the world’s largest
cruise ship. The
ship was built at
STX Europe Turku
Shipyard in Finland
for Royal Caribbean
International.
(PHOTO: JOUNI
SAARISTO)