GDBIW Shipbuilding Facilities
General Dynamics Bath Iron Works shipbuilding takes place at its yard on the Kennebec River, bordering Washington Street at the south end of the city of Bath, Maine. The yard has been in continuous service since the latter end of the 19th century, but has been extensively modernized in recent years. In terms of technology and sophistication, the Bath yard and its neighboring GDBIW manufacturing locations comprise one of the most advanced manufacturing facilities in the United States.
Facilities at the main plant include a 750-foot drydock, three shipways, three wharves, an outfitting pier, four level-luffing cranes, and covered facilities for pre-outfit and assembly. Also located within the facilities in Maine are engineering, design, ship support, and administrative offices. The shipyard has two principal structural assembly buildings. The larger building measures 15,600 square meters of interior area and houses the Panel Line and 15 Unit Assembly workstations. The smaller building encloses 3,780 square meters and 7 workstations. The Pre-Outfit Building (8,450 square meters) has 16 workstations and is used for installation of distributive systems and operating machinery after the structural units are grit-blasted and painted.
The most recent addition to the yard is the 77,000 square foot Ultrahall, built during 2007 and open for business in February 2008. Here, because of the greater headroom, we can assemble entire keel-to-weather deck sections of ships. With the new DDG 1000, this will mean units weighing up to 4,000 tons can be outfitted in controlled climate conditions. The Ultrahall is already in constant use, housing upsized 'ultrahull' units for our next two Arleigh Burke class destroyers.
The shipyard has two separate facility configurations that support the ship assembly (unit erection) and launching process. Both configurations consist of three shipways that can be used for either military or commercial ship construction. Three level-land shipways are the centerpiece of the Land-Level Transfer Facility (LLTF); all three shipways can accommodate ships of 243 meters in length and a maximum beam of 32 meters. The LLTF building positions are serviced by two, track-mounted, 300-ton level-luffing crane and one, track-mounted, 100-ton level-luffing crane. Operating on an inter-connected rail system grid, all three cranes can be positioned to service any of the three shipways.
Each ship under construction is paired with operational service towers (OSTs) that permit entry at various intermediate levels on the hull up to deck height, and are equipped with tool cribs, offices, lunchrooms, a freight elevator and other features designed to obviate the need for moving off the job. When ready for launching, ships are translated onto a 28,000-ton lift-capacity floating dry dock, using a purpose-built TTS electro-hydraulic transfer system. Outfit Piers #3 and #4, which are adjacent to the LLTF, are serviced track-mounted live-boom cranes; one 90-ton and one 60-ton. In addition to the Land-Level Transfer Facility , the shipyard has an outdoor fabrication zone for deckhouses, serviced by a 220-metric ton, track-mounted, level-luffing crane.
Manufacturing Facilities
GDBIW operates two other major manufacturing work sites in the West Bath-Brunswick area. One is a structural steel fabrication facility (the Hardings Plant) and the other consists of a climate-controlled Consolidated Warehouse facility and an automated pipe and sheet metal facility which include computer-aided manufacturing capability for steel, pipe and ventilation (the East Brunswick Manufacturing Facility, or EBMF). As GDBIW's process has become more sophisticated, prefabrication of large and complex units takes place in both locations, prior to transportation by road to the Bath yard.