When discussing the subject of the next generation, perhaps thoughts of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, Lieutenant Commander Data, the Klingon Worf or Geordi La Forge of the hit science fiction television series Star Trek comes to mind. If so, that will most likely place you into a certain age bracket, one that is somewhat dated and placed into the “old” or “has beens” category. Using modern technology, or in today’s vernacular AI, would be upper most in the discussion for many when discussing "the next generation."
But what do we really mean by this?
In my “old, has been days”, it simply meant a pathway to learning via an in-house training program and/or via mentors within the company that guide the development and progression of knowledge and experience that would be called time served. The objective was that, after a period of time, the graduate naval architect would become more rounded and fully versed in the general basics and with a sense of professionalism installed to ensure that only facts and truth, rather the subversion and misdirection in order to gain, guide us in our decision making.
In large companies, there used to be these four-year training programmes or apprenticeships that would cover all manner of subjects that a fully qualified naval architect is required to know as their base background knowledge (within the market they are in) coupled with what is required to make decisions as a professional, based upon a set of data or unknowns.
During this training period, a professional diary was kept against a prescribed set of time for each discipline to be learnt, whether it be structures, project management, shipyard construction, sales, etc. These types of jobs were once very common many decades ago, and graduate naval architects would aim to be employed with companies that offer these training programmes as they were linked to them becoming fully qualified naval architects and full members of RINA, much in the same way a doctor is required to undergo an internship in a hospital first.
After this period of training and then becoming full qualified as a professional naval architect, they would then continue in their employment and slowly find their own niche and/or expertise and always be guided by a mentor, often their immediate superior or the chief designer. Thus, after a period of around 10 years, there would be a well-versed person grounded in all manner of disciplines and able to make informed decisions at an extremely high level of professionalism.
Thus, any new graduate had a path ahead of them from point A, knowing little to point B, where point B was the gold standard to achieve in their career, and to be accepted within the industry as a professional. Bear in mind that most of this was in the backdrop of the once Great British shipping industry in the 1950s, when more than 50 per cent of the entire world's merchant shipping fleet was designed and built in the UK. Today, it is just a fraction of one per cent.
During the latter part of the last century, as many shipyards started closing down (at least in UK and the EU) due to the competition from Asia, this route to becoming a fully qualified naval architect become less obvious.
The shipyards that did exist were either smaller, with no training programmes, or larger ones that appeared to no longer have the time to invest long-term in new graduates (thus, long-term builds were no longer guaranteed). There was a degree of working on-the-job as the learning/teaching experience, to the point that RINA had the basic rule of two years of on-the-job training as the equivalent of one year in a formal training programme.
As an example, in the 1980s, there were around some 35 shipyards in the UK; today, there are only around 17. So, this begs the question, where do graduate naval architects go to get their prerequisite training to become fully qualified professional naval architects, and more importantly, where are they going to receive quality mentorship and guidance with such a dwindling number of shipyards?
This is where the role of technology is both good and bad. Joining a small- to medium-sized company, one would likely be put onto a specific task, such as stability. The time required to produce a fully detailed worked up stability booklet is not a five-minute job. Using software to help create the loading and damage cases takes time to learn and understand to ensure the correct output is being produced.
Then, learning the statutory rules for compliance to produce the booklet to a professional standard is an essential skill. It is not just a series of graphs and computer printouts. As such, the person performing this task tends to end up as the “stability” specialist. Then, through no fault of their own, they often end up doing just this one task as their main job.
Similarly, one may have an interest in structures and be given the task of doing structural calculations, and more often than not, using FEA (it seems no one does hand calculations anymore). Again, time is required to learn to use such a complex software to ensure the output can be verified and believed. And as noted, through no fault of their own, these people often end up doing just this one task as their main job.
In both cases, these are very good well-respected jobs, but each one is of a single discipline. In the absence of a four-year training programme, the two years in lieu of a formal training programme is on a weak footing. Just doing FEA for eight years, the naval architect will become very versed using structural software, but what else? The same is true for the person just doing the stability booklets.
What other disciplines will they be taught (probably very few, if any) beyond their subject matter discipline? Is the eight years of just doing stability or FEA treated as an equivalent route to becoming a fully qualified professional naval architect?
This also brings us to the elephant in the room, which is the naval architect, a designer of ships and boats. So, how does the graduate naval architect learn how boats and ships are built if there are now very few shipyards available in which to learn these skills and with a time-served chief designer to guide and mentor them?
A quick Google search indicates there are over 2,600 maritime firms in the UK, which means most graduates are likely to end up working in the marine sector in some fashion, and even in an air-conditioned office, but unlikely to step into a shipyard. Perhaps, if lucky, they may make the odd site visit.
The final nail in the coffin is AI. Today, when scrolling through many a social media post, it is full of AI-generated data/images. The AI is doing the legwork; it is attempting to reproduce 10 years of skill knowledge and expertise in 10 seconds. And on the face of it, it does.
But what is being learned by the person punching commands into their keyboard to get the AI to do their work for them? What skills and disciplines are they learning, and how can they write a diary of the skills and lessons learnt during the week for their submission for professional membership, if they default to such programs rather than taking the time to learn them? And where is the critical thinking and objective analysis skill that is required to be a professional if it is all outsourced?
Southampton University has a mentorship programme where former students sign up to a database where current students seek a person in their chosen discipline or subject for guidance and perhaps support to get into the employment market.
Given the direction of where graduate naval architects are heading, perhaps it is time for RINA and others to set up a mentorship of some kind. To allow these new graduates to search for a person(s) to help guide them and mentor them in their progression through the years so that they become well-rounded and educated in many disciplines could eventually results in them becoming fully qualified naval architects.
In this way, the many lessons learnt from those before us are not lost in the AI slop of output, which is seen as the current means of progression and is used by many smaller companies merely for publicity (owing to the lack of knowledge within such companies to begin with).
