Under the current COVID scenario, stringent safety measures have to be adopted for minimizing the risk of contagion between workers. One basic measure is to keep a minimum safety distance between workers (or a maximum workers density in working-places and access-zones).

Consequently, the typical action-plan applied traditionally in shipbuilding for meeting a scheduled completion date (or a final delivery date), which is to increase human resources per work-zone to the maximum possible and to apply the maximum man-hours-per-week possible, is simply not feasible in a COVID scenario.

On the other hand, the policy of simply reducing the allocated work force is obviously neither a valid alternative. Instead, a new planning system must be developed for organizing the works in shipbuilding processes, concurrently protecting human safety and also due dates, specially for works on-board ships (i.e., outfitting and completion of new buildings, transformations or retrofitting of ships, ships’ repair, etc.)

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