SECTOR · SHIPYARDS, DRY DOCKS & MARINE FABRICATION
Dry dock and fabrication hall openings sized to a hull section, standing in the worst wind exposure there is. Three things decide whether a shipyard door lasts: the terrain category it was calculated to, the corrosion specification of the parts that move, and whether the leaf seals well enough to be part of a containment envelope. We quote all three in writing.
Fabrication halls are dimensioned around the largest section that will ever leave them, and that size changes with the order book. An opening specified to today’s block quietly caps what the yard can bid for.
A quayside hall stands in open-sea exposure with nothing upwind. This is the one sector where the highest EN 12424 class is the starting assumption rather than an upgrade, and where the guide-column reactions on the building are largest.
The leaf survives the marine atmosphere; the rails, rollers, fasteners and drive housing are what corrode. Specifying the fabric and leaving the ironmongery to the catalogue is how a door lasts five years instead of twenty.
Where the hall does surface preparation, the door is part of the containment envelope: overspray, abrasive dust and extraction pressure all act on it, and a leaf that seals against the header is the difference between containment and a permit problem.
Clear spans to 60.0 m and heights to 22.0 m, with multi-leaf configurations where the elevation is wider than one leaf. Dimensioned against the largest block you intend to build, not the one on the floor today.
Fabric vertical lift doors →Terrain category 0 is calculated, never assumed: leaf, guides and header reactions are worked out together for the quayside, and the classification is issued with the calculation note. Governing class EN 12424 class 5.
How wind load is decided →Guide profiles, rollers, fasteners and drive enclosure specified for the marine atmosphere with the corrosivity category stated in the offer — C4 / C5-M to ISO 12944, to be confirmed per project. The wear parts are the ones we name.
Talk to an engineer →Full-perimeter seal at head, jambs and sill, with fabric selected for overspray and abrasive exposure. Where extraction runs at negative pressure, the leaf is specified against that pressure rather than to a nominal figure.
How the mechanism works →There are suppliers in this sector with better domain names than ours. None of that tells you whether the door on your quay was calculated for your quay. These are the five answers we would want in writing before signing anything — and they are the five we issue as a matter of course.
A quayside hall is category 0. If the answer is „class 5, standard”, nobody has calculated anything — the class is a test result, not a site assessment.
The door hands a load to your structure. A supplier who cannot issue that figure has not sized the guides for your opening.
Ask for the ISO 12944 category in writing. Fabric specifications are easy to quote; ironmongery specifications are where marine doors are won or lost.
On a quayside programme, three companies in the chain means three sets of dates. Ask whether the calculation, the manufacture and the crew are the same organisation.
Individual panel replacement, roller sets and seal lengths held to a schedule — or a whole new curtain. This is the number that decides cost of ownership, not the tender price.
The two openings behave differently. A dry dock door faces the water with no shelter and rarely cycles; a fabrication hall door cycles with the production programme and takes traffic on both sides. The same leaf family covers both, but the drive, the seal and the corrosion specification do not transfer between them.
Corrosivity category, coating system and fastener material stated per project: C4 / C5-M to ISO 12944, stainless fasteners, sealed roller bearings. Where a figure here is dotted we have not released it yet — the marine variant list is with our engineering department.
Naval work carries the same restrictions as an air base: vetted crews, escorted works, no site photography, references released under NDA. The defence documentation set applies here without modification.
Where the elevation is wider than one leaf, the opening is closed by leaves working to a common control with a defined sequence — and the header is calculated for the case where one leaf is loaded and the other is not.
The projects below are illustrative of the type of work we do, not released references. Every span, height and class is dotted because none of them is confirmed yet — real references, named or anonymised, replace them once the client releases them.
Vertical lift door on a fully exposed quayside elevation, calculated together with the header structure of the building.
Request the reference sheet →
HARDWARE, GENERIC
The load path and the corrosion path are the same components. Shown here on a standard installation — marine variants are specified per project.
Marine variant specification →Lift plan and sequence written around dock traffic, with the yard working through the programme.
Request the reference sheet →Sector is already set to marine. Send the opening and the quay, and we come back with the terrain category we have calculated to, the class, the corrosion specification and a price — usually within three working days.
We have not photographed a shipyard installation for publication yet. Rather than show you a hangar and call it a dock, the panels on this page state what is missing.
