Project Management.....

[AppleNation]

Does anyone have a broad Project management methodology for yacht building?

Some sort of outline of all the tasks required and in what order?

Thanks.

[Frosty]

Lots of boats for sale, some companies have canceled orders.

Would be wise to search this out before going through the horrendous task of building your own, dont ask me how I know.

A lovely new shiny boat that some one else has paid a lot of.

Ille bet a boat like that would sail lovely.

[AppleNation]

thanks frosty... but i'd like to build and sell them myself also !

[Frosty]

Take a look around boat builders are in trouble, if Woolworths, MFI cant make it?

Im sure you will do what you want but I cant imagine a worse time to sell expensive toys that you can do without.

Its hard enough trying to sell a car.

I would find it very interesting to know why you think you can sell boats and at the same time ask how to build them. No offence.

[AppleNation]

Frosty,
No offence taken.

In my business life I've never found that there is a relationship between knowing how to build something and sell something. In fact i've found that the people who build something are the people you don't want to do the selling......

The important thing is I know how to sell, brand and market a product.

[AppleNation]

besides by the time I'm ready to sell something the recession will be long gone.

Woolworths and MFI were dogs and were dying a slow death already.

[whoosh]

Frosty,
No offence taken.

In my business life I've never found that there is a relationship between knowing how to build something and sell something. In fact i've found that the people who build something are the people you don't want to do the selling......

The important thing is I know how to sell, brand and market a product.

you are so right there, as you are abt woolies UK
i had a fabulous boat, but marketing it was something alien to me, even travelled the word trying do so .Yacht market is very hard to break in to

[rasorinc]

I made up a complete cost breakdown sheet which listed everything and anything which went into a 24' to 36' cruiser. I had several lines empty so you could write in something special as an item. There is over 100 listed items but not listed in order of construction progress. It is used for both wood and metal boats. Quite easy to do--just start listing out all you can think of. Need lots of room for a heading of 12V/110 not counting light fixtures or appliances which have their own heading, I used a similar cost breakdown in comercial construction and now on boats. IT IS A MUST. Stan nOW i HAVE TO ADD A CATAGORY
Pirates, and add another catagory SOLUTIONS and that is easy http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=p4ebtj1jR7c&NR=1

[AppleNation]

Whoosh,

Selling anything is hard especially today. As Frosty rightly points out selling a boat is VERY hard.

Having a yacht is an aspiration. Selling aspirations, dreams and status is different to selling something functional.

[apex1]

Does anyone have a broad Project management methodology for yacht building?

Some sort of outline of all the tasks required and in what order?

Thanks.

Hello AN.....:)

yes to the first question...................
as to the second.............
BUT..............
These tools feed my children and so are worth almost my life.
But the question here is not to have some nice "Excel" files or so, the painstaking point is another:

after some 42 years of experience as a established developer (that includes project management, architecture etc. in my case), i can say marketing is 99% of your success, as long as the product is worth talking about.

I. e. if you are able to produce a Mercedes S class car at say 30.000€ instead of the 85.000 Daimler needs, if the quality is absolutely the same as if it was from Daimler, how could you find a single customer?:?:
Who is going to believe that your product is as fine as you claim?
Who trusts in your service capability, if there is any?
How do you pay the upfront cost for sales activity?
How do you outcompete the market position Daimler has in terms of reputation, by heresay, advertisement, neutral tests, customers experience?
:o
Naturally there is a solution.....................
Go and tell Daimler! Provide the proof that you are able to do better, cheaper, faster and/or the like. They will buy it!
If not............. youre lost! That is a matter of fact, no phantasy.

Selling a boat means selling something worthless! NOBODY needs a yacht!
Not even the finest for almost free!
Except you are going to fill a market niche and prospective customers buy from a first sketch or proposal, your way ist hard.
There is a sort of run for economical, heavy built long range cruisers at present. But even they have to be sold! At least through designers and/or yards reputation.
Sorry for this sort of disenchanting reply, but I do not buy your claim that marketing is not a problem for you, cos you are obviously not in the market.

Take Frosty´s words for serious.................:rolleyes:

Ask one (or all) of the NA s here if he/they would endeavour such challenge with say 1.000.000 bucks in the pocket?

Anyway all the best for your immense task.:)

Regards
Richard

[marshmat]

Ask one (or all) of the NA s here if he/they would endeavour such challenge with say 1.000.000 bucks in the pocket? Not an NA, but I'd take the $1M, invest it at the best guaranteed rate I could get (wouldn't hope for any better than 3-5% in this economy), reinvest just enough to stay ahead of inflation, and use the remaining $15-30k a year or so to go sailing :D

Thing is, we're not in a market where anything is selling all that well. Granted, Apple, things will probably have picked up in the year or two it'll take you to get your business planning together and get started. But Richard's made some good points there. Reputation, history, and being well established count for a lot in the boat biz. Few people end up making a fortune off it.

[apex1]

Not an NA, but I'd take the $1M, invest it at the best guaranteed rate I could get (wouldn't hope for any better than 3-5% in this economy), reinvest just enough to stay ahead of inflation, and use the remaining $15-30k a year or so to go sailing :D

Thing is, we're not in a market where anything is selling all that well. Granted, Apple, things will probably have picked up in the year or two it'll take you to get your business planning together and get started. But Richard's made some good points there. Reputation, history, and being well established count for a lot in the boat biz. Few people end up making a fortune off it.

Marshmat..... this was a offer exclusively for NA´s!:D So go and fascinate one of them to step into your Project, share the harvest with him, go sailing for 6 month instead. Use the other 6 to find the bum who makes the boats!
Or so..............ähh.. :confused:

Regards
Richard

[Frosty]

Ok,--- whats an NA?

[DGreenwood]

It's short for No Accou...I mean Naval Architect.

[alex folen]

Hello all, I was considering making the keel swivel. Would this be advantageous? It's a 30 foot coronado. I have a fin keel 5 feet in length. My friend suggested we just cut the bugger off and add a shaft and some bearings and min hydrolics, and the keel would swivel +/- 30 degrees. We may also add lateral fins with servos via computer program to link to hold vessel. My friend is an aeronoticl engineer and loves to sail. Input on the swivel keel would be great befor we saw-zaw.

[AppleNation]

thanks. All good advice and all welcome as usual.

just to clarify... I'm not looking to make a fortune!

Just not looking to spend one! LOL...

I'd be happy with break even for eternity... and just pay myself a little wage.

[apex1]

Ok,--- whats an NA?

Nautipedia >NA > Naval Architect : sort of mental disorder, does´nt hurt the infected subject, impossible to cure.
see also:> starved artist
The typical subject suffering from NA is white, male, single and able to exist under waiver of a social environment.
NA usually proceeds in several stages:

Stage 1 usually substituting childhood

Subject is focussed on generating senseless drawings almost always showing boats, ships, nautical structures, impossible to build.

Stage 2 usually developing during higher education

Subject believes that mathematics and science being related to boats and yachts. Develops a sort of kryptic language like "Metacoefficientlateralprismaticdisplacement" means: I know that you don´t know I know nothing.

Stage 3 unusual, most subjects stay on their student job at Mc Donalds, if not:

Subject produces drawings, sketches, pictures nobody needs, to impress innocent morons. Some of these victims buy his stuff.

Stage 4 rare occurance most subjects die from hunger at stage 3, if not:

Subject was able to force one ore two of his innocent victims to get a yacht built by use of his paperwork. At least one of them ends up with a floating thingumabob by following the adverse advice of a shipwright.
Now the deep seated disease changes dramatically.
Subject believes to make a fortune by generating more senseless curves, scantlings and the like on much larger sheets of paper accompanied by endless, kryptic formulae. Ability to exist outside a social environment is substituted by the ability to live in unsocial environment. Subject tends to stay in proximity of the rich and famous.

Stage 5 infrequently found, most subjects decay at stage 4 by the misuse of drugs and alcohol, if not:

Subject manages to force some NOT innocent morons to neglect eons of knowledge and buy his effusions.
Subject inadvertently makes a fortune.

Final stage
Subject ends up at the lunatic asylum or wins the "Rolex Cup"


Nautipedia> RC> Rolex Cup> very important tool for frequent travellers:

the typical RC is a very cheap² mug filled with plain water. RC serves the purpose of verification of genuineness of the bargain watch bought in Istanbul.
² RC always gets destroyed after the first use! :D :D :D

So Frosty now you have it........

Sorry TAD and peers.... could´nt resist.....

Regards
Richard

[jim lee]

In fact i've found that the people who build something are the people you don't want to do the selling......

Oh boy, your right on that one.

AppleNation, We're in the middle of tooling a sailboat for production. (first time for us) We got buried in the logistics of the whole project.

Things that help : Database for tracking contacts - suppliers and parts we buy from them. Without this we would be buried in paper scraps.

We tried project planning s-ware and it just didn't help. Actually gave me a headache.

The biggest help was putting a large white board on the office wall. We call it the "Tomorrow board" Along the top is the list of projects were doing.

Deck, Footrest, Keel mold, Hatch, hull, rudder, stereo..

Along the left side is the list of people available.

Each project is broken into about 3 to 5 "next" steps like "cut dry-stack", "gelcoat mold", or "sand thru grits".

Every evening we look at the board, update the steps and put an "X" for who starts working on what the next day.

What we found was that, for this project, anything that added any structure/rigidity made things worse. The prigect is too unpredictable. The whiteboard gets things done "today" and is extremely flexible.

For doing a production project where things repeat? Completely different animal.

Hope this helps!

-jim lee

[AppleNation]

Cheers Jim and good luck.

[ancient kayaker]

AppleNation, if you have the selling ability you're ahead of the game in my experience. That's a personal attribute like height, and cannot be learned.

Project management on the other hand is a learnable skill and a recognized science. It can be learned in college but maybe the best hands-on way to learn it would be to sell your marketing skills to a company with the PM people on board and watch it happen.

As far as PM for yacht building is concerned, while there are some things unique to each field, 90% of PM is common to anything from missile development (where the critical path method originated) to mining.

There is a snag in all this, real actual live PM is hideously boring unless you are a born mandarin-style desk jockey. You don't sound like one. Perhaps you were thinking of something else?

[AppleNation]

Thanks AK.
You are probably right, it is the other parts of running a business that I am best at.
However, I'm a bit of a stickler for understanding every part of the business that I am involved in.

Cheers.

[ancient kayaker]

Wikipedia has a good summary of modern PM practices but it's boring ...

[AppleNation]

THanks for that AK.

It's not so much the PM part of it I need.... I have 5 years PM experience outside of boat building.... and have used and been trained in methodologies such as Prince2...

What I require really is an idea of every single step in a build.... in what order.. dependencies etc.

Looks like I'm going to have to work this out myself.... cheers.

[Frosty]

After 5 years of PM you expect someone to write down here, to you, all the details and nuts and bolts of how to be sucessful in bullding a boat?

When you've got one knocked up and its selling well at all the boat shows maybe you could tell the forum how 'you' did it.

The last words of your post have been the most sensible.

Sorry sounds a bit aggressive,--not meant to be.

[ancient kayaker]

You want to be a boat-builder and small-time is OK by you. I'm going to assume you will be content with building and do not want to get into design.

Lots of boat-related business are failing right now, good people are being laid off right and left. You cannot reasonably expect to get a job with a boat-builder even if you offer your services for free if you have no related experience.

So the only way you're going to get that is to buy material and build boats. Being a PM you want to go about it in an organized manner. I suggest, if you haven't already done so, that you buy some books on the subject. They will concentrate on materials and skills, but will give you some insight. Buying a plan will provide more. There will be some embedded PM in boat-building instructions that you can extract and elaborate on. Although you will find the odd book in places like Chapters, if they are in UK, but the best place to find them would likely be a boat-building supplier.

The next stage I imagine would be to build a small boat, limit the risk, learn the skills. You will realise that PM is far less important than tools, knowledge of materials, attention to detail and sheer determination. You will have to be quick to catch the next boat-selling wave. Good luck!

[jim lee]

What I require really is an idea of every single step in a build.... in what order.. dependencies etc.

What's your plan again? This sounds more like research for a software project.

-jim lee

[rasorinc]

What you want is not free. Those of us with extensive building experience are not going to share for zero. You are asking for to much from forum members. If you want to build a boat for yourself you will find mucho help. If you want free bussiness advise so you can compete in the difficult world that's a NO NO

[Frosty]

You would think that after 3 years in Pm he would know that.

The young are great are'nt they? so much enthusiasm and nothing is too hard.

I can remember!!

Everything is easy if I just knew how to do it.