Shipyard process management, from keel to delivery.

A shipyard project spans months or years, thousands of work orders, dozens of subcontractors and an unbroken chain of class and owner approvals. The work that derails a delivery is rarely the steel — it is the inspection that was not logged, the permit that was issued informally, the punch list that never made it back to the right engineer. Tenderely BPM connects every step from block production to handover in one structured record, without code.

What does a shipyard repeat on every project?

01
Block and production tracking
Steel cutting, block assembly and erection progress must be recorded against a schedule. When progress lives in spreadsheets, the first sign of a slip is usually the delivery date itself.
02
Engineering document approval
Drawings and specifications go to the classification society and the owner for review. Comments arrive back, revisions are made and the cycle repeats — often across dozens of documents at once.
03
Inspection and ITP execution
Each hold point in the inspection and test plan must be witnessed and signed off before work continues. A missed sign-off discovered late means rework, not just paperwork.
04
Work permits for high-risk tasks
Hot work, confined-space entry and lock-out/tag-out each require their own authorisation before the job starts. A permit issued verbally or on a lost paper is a permit that cannot be proved.
05
Subcontractor work and payment
Subcontractors execute blocks of work and submit progress claims. Verifying what was done, by whom, against what agreed scope, before authorising payment, is a cycle that runs every month.
06
Punch list and final delivery
Outstanding items accumulate through commissioning. Each one needs an owner, a due date and a close-out confirmation before the vessel can be handed over without a dispute.

Where does this break down today?

Document revisions lose their history
When drawings are exchanged by e-mail and comments are tracked in a shared folder, knowing which revision is current and which class comment has been resolved takes more time than resolving the comment did.
Permits exist but cannot be audited
Paper hot-work and confined-space permits are filled in and filed. After an incident, proving that the permit was properly authorised, by the right person, before the work started, is a different matter entirely.
Inspection gaps appear at the end
Individual inspectors record their own sign-offs. A consolidated view of which ITP hold points are still open only appears when someone collates everything manually — and by then, delivery is already under pressure.
Subcontractor claims are hard to challenge
When scope changes, extra work and progress are tracked informally, a subcontractor's month-end invoice is difficult to verify line by line. Disputes follow, and they slow everything that depends on the subcontractor finishing.

What changes with Tenderely BPM

01
Every revision is a structured record
Document submissions, class and owner comments, revision cycles and final approval each become steps in one flow. The current approved revision is always findable, and the history of every comment is permanently attached to it.
02
Approval chains match the risk level
Conditional branching means that an extra-work approval above a certain value routes to a different set of authorisers automatically, without anyone having to remember the rule. The logic lives in the flow, not in a policy document.
03
Permits are issued and closed in the system
A hot-work or confined-space permit is requested, authorised by the named responsible person and closed when the job ends — all as timestamped steps. The audit trail is a by-product of the normal process, not a separate effort.
04
Inspection status is a live dashboard
Open hold points, overdue inspections and unresolved punch-list items are visible in real time rather than assembled from scattered sign-off sheets the day before a class survey.
05
Subcontractors submit from outside
A public form link lets a subcontractor submit their progress claim or inspection request directly into the same record their work order came from. They need no account, and nothing arrives by e-mail to be re-entered.
06
Delivery is a gate, not a scramble
Punch-list closure, final inspection sign-off and owner acceptance each become steps that must be completed before the delivery record closes. Tenderely BPM makes the handover sequence enforceable, not just intended.
FAQ

Can we track different vessel projects separately while still seeing across all of them?

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Yes. Records are organised by project, so each vessel has its own production history, inspection log and document set. Role-based access controls who sees which project, while managers can view across all active projects on a single dashboard without any project being mixed with another.

Can classification society surveyors or owner representatives access the system?

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If you choose to give them access. An external user linked to a specific record sees only what you have made visible to that role — inspection requests awaiting their witness, documents submitted for their review — and nothing else inside your operation.

How does the work-permit process handle shift changes and overnight jobs?

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A permit is a record with a defined validity window and an owner. If the job runs across a shift, the closing step must still be completed by the authorised person. SLA reminders alert the responsible party when a permit is approaching its expiry without being closed, so nothing is left open silently.

Can we start with the shipyard package and adjust it to our own way of working?

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Yes. The package installs with forms, approval flows and a dashboard already in place and gives you a working starting point within minutes. You then adjust each form and flow to match your yard's own terminology, approval hierarchy and process sequence. The package is a foundation, not a constraint.

How are subcontractor payment approvals handled when the scope has changed mid-project?

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Extra-work requests are logged as separate records tied to the original work order, so the agreed scope, the variation and the revised value are all traceable before the payment claim is submitted. The approval step for the claim then routes to whoever is authorised to sign off at that value, without anyone having to piece the history together from e-mails.