Ship Thickness Measurement in Trondheim and the Trondheimsfjord Ports

Inspection services for ships at Trondheim

Each service has its own page with the method, the class requirements and what the report contains.

Berths, industrial quays and repair options around the fjord

In the city, the quays near the centre handle the coastal express and cruise ships, and the commercial port handles container and general cargo. Industrial quays around the fjord, at Orkanger and further in, serve bulk carriers and cargo ships calling for the plants they supply. During discharge or loading, empty holds, hatch coamings, deck plating and ballast tanks can be gauged, provided the ship's crew and the terminal agree the access and the order of work.

Repair work is spread among smaller yards and workshops around the fjord and on the outer coast, which maintain ferries, fishing and aquaculture vessels and other coastal craft. Larger vessels go to the yards of the Møre coast or further afield for dry-docking, chosen by the owner. Aquaculture vessels often come to quays near the fish farms or to sheltered berths inside the fjord for maintenance, and idle ships can lie at moorings in the fjord's sheltered arms, where they are reached by boat.

• City quays — engine-room piping, tanks and accessible structure on coastal express and cruise ships during planned technical stops.
• Commercial port — deck, hold and ballast tank gauging on container and general cargo ships during cargo work.
• Industrial quays around the fjord — hold, hatch coaming and ballast tank readings on bulk carriers serving the region's plants.
• Maintenance quays for aquaculture vessels — fish tank, circulation piping and pump foundation gauging on well boats and feed carriers.
• Research vessel berths — hull, tank and piping measurement on research ships between cruises.
• Lay-up moorings in the fjord — reactivation gauging on idle ships, reached by boat.

Port state control, passenger ship rules and fjord industry

Trondheim lies well north of 62°N, outside the North Sea emission control area. The Norwegian Maritime Authority carries out port state control on foreign ships under the Paris MoU, and it is also the flag authority for most of the coastal fleet in these waters: coastal express ships, ferries, aquaculture vessels and fishing vessels. Passenger ships on Norwegian coastal routes are surveyed under demanding domestic and international rules, and their operators keep thorough records of structural condition, because a structural finding at the wrong moment can take a ship out of a fixed timetable.

The coastal fleet in this region has been through a wave of technical change: hybrid and battery systems on coastal express ships and ferries, LNG on some cargo and passenger vessels, and larger, more complex well boats. Retrofits usually reuse older hulls, which raises the question of what condition the existing steel is in before new loads, tanks and foundations are added. Among the bulk carriers and cargo ships calling at the fjord's industrial ports, older tonnage under foreign flags is common, and owners can use a call here to collect thickness data for an approaching intermediate or renewal survey.

Wherever a ship is outside a sulphur emission control area, the global 0.50% sulphur cap applies, and many of the ships calling at Trondheim meet it with an exhaust gas cleaning system rather than compliant fuel. Scrubber wash-water piping, the overboard discharge and the hull penetration around it corrode quickly in service, especially on open-loop systems, and are worth adding to the gauging scope.

How a thickness measurement job runs at Trondheim

The sequence for a thickness measurement job at Trondheim is short and written down, so the yard, the surveyor and the superintendent know who arranges what.

Trondheim Airport, Værnes, east of the city, has frequent domestic flights and direct links to several European hubs, which makes it the natural arrival point; the industrial ports around the fjord are reached by road from there. Port access is arranged by the ship's agent, and work at a yard by the yard on the owner's request. Norway is part of the Schengen area, so the team from India travels on Schengen visas, and owners planning a technical stop or maintenance period should give notice as soon as the dates are fixed.

• Send the vessel name or IMO number, ship type, class society, the survey due (annual, intermediate, renewal survey number, CAP or owner's condition survey), the port and dates, and the scope you expect.
• We confirm the scope against the class rules for that survey, prepare the thickness measurement plan with frame and section references, and say whether the measurement will be credited to a class survey.
• Mobilisation is planned around visa lead times and the vessel's schedule; the ship's agent arranges port access, and the yard or ship arranges staging, lighting, ventilation and gas-free certificates.
• Gauging with calibrated ultrasonic thickness gauges: through sound coatings only where the gauge's through-coating mode has been verified on a coated reference, otherwise on cleaned bare steel, with every reading tied to its frame, strake and location on the sketch.
• Readings are compared with original thicknesses as work proceeds; substantial and excessive corrosion and any cracks are reported to the attending surveyor and the superintendent the same day.
• The final report is issued on the class thickness-measurement formats with sketches, a summary of locations exceeding the allowable margins, piping tables where piping was in scope, and the gauge calibration and technician certificates.

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