Shipyards & marine services
Shipyard software scoped for the yard you actually run
Ship-repair ERPs are built for national yards. A mid-size yard needs live job costing and digital permits without twelve months of consultants.
What makes a yard different
4 things that decide this
- 01A repair job runs weeks across many trades, and the real cost is usually learned after the job closes. Estimates, work orders and time capture live in separate systems that a person joins by retyping.
- 02Safety paperwork is daily, not annual. OSHA's shipyard employment standard (29 CFR 1915) governs hot work and confined spaces, and NFPA 306 marine chemist certificates gate the work each morning.
- 03The dry dock is the scarcest asset in the business, and in most yards it is planned on a whiteboard.
- 04Industry vendors report that fragmented paper processes cost yards up to 20% of revenue (Dockmaster). The enterprise systems that fix this are sized for national yards.
Repair yards, boatyards and the gap between them
Marine software splits by yard type. Marina and boatyard suites handle slips, storage and small workshops well. Enterprise ship-repair platforms serve national and defense yards that can absorb long rollouts. The mid-size repair yard sits between them: multi-trade jobs, class surveys, government work, and no system built for its size.
That gap is where we build. Scoped systems for one yard's estimate-to-invoice flow, its permits, its schedule. Defense-adjacent work adds data-handling rules, which we treat as schema decisions on day one rather than a retrofit.
- 01Yard GMs buy one view of every job's cost while the job is still open.
- 02Ops directors buy permits and HSE records that hold up under inspection.
- 03Owners buy the dry dock back.
In production
Numbers from the closest problem shape we have shipped
40%
Fewer manual errors after replacing paper field records (TankAware)
30%
Higher inspection accuracy across distributed sites (TankAware)
70%
Less manual compliance verification (Shift Link)
The work we take in this sector
Sorted by where yards leak money, not by what sells.
Live job costing per vessel and trade
Labor, materials and subcontract hours captured against the job while it runs. The margin conversation happens mid-job, when it can still change the outcome.
Digital hot-work and confined-space permits
Permits issued, signed and closed on a screen at the waterfront, with the marine chemist certificate attached. The morning gate becomes a record instead of a clipboard.
Dry-dock and bay scheduling
The whiteboard becomes a live schedule that knows tide windows, trade availability and survey dates. Conflicts surface before the tug is booked.
Estimate to work order to invoice
One flow instead of three systems and a retyping step between each. Change orders carry their cost with them instead of surfacing at settlement.
Time capture at the waterfront
Trade hours logged where the work happens, against the vessel and the work order. Built for gloves, weather and patchy signal, because that is the jobsite.
QA and HSE evidence
Inspection points, test records and sign-offs stored as system output. When a class surveyor or an OSHA inspector asks how, the answer is a query.
- EstimateScoped by trade
- Work orderCarries the estimate
- Time & materialsCaptured at the berth
- Job costLive, mid-job
- InvoiceNo retyping
The yard's leak is the seams: every handoff between estimate, work order, time and invoice is a retyping step today. The build closes the seams, and the job's cost is known while it is still a job.
Permits on paper fail audits slowly, then suddenly
A yard issues hot-work and confined-space permits every working morning. Each one is a legal record under 29 CFR 1915, and most live on carbon paper in a site office. The system works until the day an incident review or an inspection asks for six months of them, sorted by vessel and space.
We have replaced paper inspection logs across hundreds of fuel sites. A yard has the same shape: capture at the point of work, signatures on the device, records anyone with the right to ask can query. The permit process does not change. What disappears is the paper chase after it.
- A permit that cannot be found is treated as a permit that was not issued.
- Certificates attach to the permit itself.
- Closure is part of the record: who ended the permit, when, and what the space held.
Field operations we have taken off paper
“TankAware has revolutionized how we manage petroleum sites. The real-time data and automation have exceeded expectations.”
Blake Sutherland · President, Sutherland Excavating Ltd.
The enterprise rollout, and how we scope it instead
Starting point
The enterprise ship-repair rollout
Replace everything, then configure.
How we scope it
One flow first: usually estimate-to-invoice or permits. Live before anything else is touched.
Job costing
The enterprise ship-repair rollout
A module, populated when timekeepers comply.
How we scope it
Capture built for the berth, so compliance is the easy path.
Fit
The enterprise ship-repair rollout
The yard adapts to the platform.
How we scope it
The system encodes how your yard already runs its trades.
Timeline
The enterprise ship-repair rollout
Consultant-led, measured in budget cycles.
How we scope it
Fixed price after a free scoping call. A paid two-week diagnostic applies only where existing code must be read.
What this work runs on
Where we usually build
Field capture
Standards buyers raise
Questions yard operators ask
01Can a mid-size yard justify custom software against the enterprise platforms?+
The enterprise platforms fit yards that can absorb long consultant-led rollouts, and they earn their keep there. A mid-size yard usually needs three flows fixed: job costing, permits and scheduling. Building exactly those, integrated with the accounting you already run, is a smaller project than a platform migration and it starts paying inside one season. The honest dividing line is whether you need a yard operating system or your three worst leaks closed.
02How do digital permits hold up in an OSHA inspection?+
Better than paper, because the record is complete by construction. Each permit carries who issued it, who signed, the marine chemist certificate where one applies, and when it was closed. An inspector asking for six months of confined-space permits on one vessel gets them in minutes, sorted. The standard your yard works to does not change. What changes is being able to prove you worked to it.
03Our trades barely tolerate timekeeping now. Why would capture work?+
Because the capture is built for the berth, not the office. Logging time against a work order takes seconds on a device that works with gloves on and syncs when signal returns. When the easy path and the compliant path are the same path, compliance stops being a discipline problem. That design rule comes from field systems we run across hundreds of distributed sites.
04We do government and defense-adjacent work. Does that change the build?+
It changes where data lives and who can see it, and those are day-one schema decisions. Contract-marked records get isolation, access control and an audit trail from the start, because retrofitting separation into a shared database is the expensive version. We design for the strictest contract you hold, then the rest of the yard's work rides the same rails.
05What would you need to see before quoting?+
Scoping calls are free. We ask for one job traced end to end: estimate, work orders, time records, final invoice. That single thread shows where the seams are and what closing them is worth. Where the honest answer requires reading an existing system's code, a paid two-week diagnostic runs first. It produces the scope, the risks and a fixed price.
Go deeper
- TankAware case study →Paper inspection logs replaced across hundreds of fuel sites.
- Oil and gas software development →The neighbouring problem: field records that prove the work happened.
- Custom software development →Built for one business. Kept running after launch.
- Paper logs fail audits slowly, then suddenly →Why paper records break at exactly the wrong moment.
