Irving Shipbuilding is one of a few shortlisted Canadian yards invited to propose a delivery plan for the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy. If the bid is successful, it will be a transformational 30-year project for Halifax Shipyard

It may be the most ignored mile and a half in Halifax. The thousands of commuters who stream along Barrington Street and over the Macdonald Bridge every day barely notice the motley collection of offices, floating dry docks, and sturdy fabrication buildings that stretch along the shore of Halifax Harbour. How many give thought to the fact that 1,200 people come to work here each day—21st-century artisans who assemble huge steel hulls in modules for customers around the world?

It could be because most of the work is done out of sight in a massive structure that resembles an airplane hangar. Or maybe, after 120 years of operation, it could be that Haligonians simply take Halifax Shipyard for granted. 

No one could blame Steve Durrell if he feels a sense of responsibility for rekindling the future attention of his local business community right now. After all, if the 50-year-old Maine native, who is president of Irving Shipbuilding Inc., has a good year, it could change the economic landscape of Halifax, the province, and the entire Atlantic region for a couple of generations. 

Durrell and his team at Irving Shipbuilding (ISI) are working to secure a place as one of two shipyards to deliver the Canadian government’s new National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy (NSPS), a 30-year plan that was unveiled last June. The NSPS will see the construction of naval frigates, patrol vessels, joint support ships, scientific research vessels, and icebreakers designed to help Canada monitor its northern regions, meet NATO obligations, and protect its coastline—a transformational project estimated to be worth $35 billion over its three-decade lifespan. It will be the greatest round of shipbuilding in this country since World War II, with significant industrial regional benefits. 

For ISI, the competition will be stiff. Five major shipyards on two coasts and the St. Lawrence Seaway are believed to be in the running for the two contracts that will be handed out: one to build a new fleet of combat vessels, and another contract for the construction of non-combatant ships, including the most powerful icebreaker ever built for the Canadian government. 

Durrell is cautiously optimistic about his company’s chances. “We’ll be putting in proposals for both the combatant and the non-combatant vessels, but we’re focused on the combat package,” he says. “That $25-billion package over 30 years yields some tremendous numbers. In direct employment we’re looking at about $7 billion in wages, an average of 4,000 Nova Scotians employed, more than $6.5 billion of spending in Nova Scotia, and capital investments on top of that. I believe it’s the biggest business opportunity for the region since the Canadian navy decided to establish a base here over 100 years ago.”

Irving Shipbuilding started preparing for the bid long before the NSPS was announced or even conceived. In 2006 the company began a $65-million refit of its Halifax harbourfront operation—extensive facility upgrades that included crane pads, pier improvements, office space, and work areas. Future plans include a new state-of-the-art side-launch system for large ships and an extension of the fabrication shop that will allow two ships to be built at once under the same massive roof. The prep work has gone well beyond capital investments. “We also invested in training, to make sure we have the right people in place, and we’re building the shipbuilders of tomorrow by mentoring more than 250 apprentices in our yard,” says Durrell. “It has given us great strength, and we’re a great team.”

Durrell is the quarterback. Irving Shipbuilding’s relatively new president grew up in Farmington, Maine, a small town county seat not far from the Sugarloaf ski area. He graduated from the Maine Maritime Academy in 1984 with a degree in marine engineering, moved to Saint John, and took a job with Irving Shipbuilding working on the new Canadian patrol frigate program. He met his wife, Karen, a New Brunswick native, soon after and settled down for a new life in Atlantic Canada. “Plans get altered,” he says with a chuckle, then quickly admits he made the right choice.

In 1994 Durrell moved to Halifax to take on a project-management role for Irving Shipbuilding. He became vice-president of shipbuilding in 2003 and was promoted to vice-president of commercial operations in 2006, then to company president in 2008. “It has been a great career path and a great opportunity to live in Halifax,” he says. “We raised our family here, and we love it. The quality of life is tremendous.”

Even without the NSPS contract, Irving Shipbuilding is an impressive economic force in Halifax. In the last two years, the company has conducted business with 630 Nova Scotia-based suppliers and subcontractors. One hundred and thirty-six of those suppliers have earned revenues of over $100,000 from Irving Shipbuilding contracts, with 37 companies with contracts exceeding $1 million. “That’s a whole array of suppliers, from major contractors and construction companies to taxies and caterers,” says Durrell. “There’s a broad range of opportunity here, and not just in the hardware of building a ship.”

Take the impact of the Halifax Shipyard’s building of 12 coastal defence vessels for the Canadian navy. “That brought a very robust shipbuilding industry in the Atlantic region right up until the year 2000,” says Durrell. At the same time, the company built almost 40 tugs and offshore supply ships for clients in Denmark, the Dominican Republic, Panama, and throughout Atlantic Canada and Quebec. 

In 2010 Irving Shipbuilding began cutting steel for a new fleet of mid-shore patrol or Hero Class vessels for the Canadian Coast Guard. Halifax is also feeling a ripple effect from the Halifax-class Canadian Patrol Frigate program 25 years after the first ship rolled down a slipway in Saint John. The first ship of the class, HMCS Halifax herself, is currently undergoing a midlife refit in the shipyard’s graving dock—the same earthen-and-stone structure that 120 years ago housed the construction of wooden windjammers. Wrapped in white plastic and shorn of its steel masts and radar arrays, the frigate that just a year ago carried Canada’s flag during the relief effort of Haiti’s earthquake disaster will spend the next year being refitted with upgraded electronics, communications, weapons systems, and countermeasures.

If HMCS Halifax is a complex piece of sophisticated machinery, the next generation of Canadian combat vessels will be even more intricate. A program such as NSPS will need thousands of highly paid professionals to support the contract-winning shipyard: software developers, acoustics and weapons experts, engineers and designers, welders, steelworkers, electricians, and other skilled tradespeople. “Thirty years of work would generate huge spinoffs in this area,” says Durrell. “The opportunity for entrepreneurs, the opportunity for young tradespeople coming into this facility, is like no other time in our industry. This is bigger than the frigate program. The longevity, the duration is so huge, it’s unprecedented.”

Centre of excellence

Predicting what kind of new companies and industries will spin off from the NSPS isn’t an exact science, but there are examples. The former Saint John Naval Systems, now known as Fleetway Inc., is a case in point, says Durrell. The company began as a small engineering firm contracted to provide integrated logistics support for the Canadian Patrol Frigate program. From a modest office in Halifax’s Young Tower, Fleetway has expanded to four offices across Canada—St. John’s, Halifax, Ottawa, and Victoria—with almost 200 highly paid engineers working for a variety of international and domestic clients, including the Canadian navy. “That’s an example of the kind of legacy we’re going to see coming out of the NSPS,” he says.

Irving Shipbuilding is bidding on both NSPS contracts, with a keen eye on the combat-vessel component. “We’ve always felt, and we still believe, that our sweet spot is the combat vessel,” says Durrell. “We have the management, skills, and experience required to fulfill that contract. Over 400 of our employees have combat-ship experience. We’ve got some great talent to draw on.”

Not to mention history and tradition. Halifax Shipyard is just a pop-fly ball away from where the munitions ship Mont Blanc exploded in 1917 and took most of North End Halifax with it. Today virtually all of the buildings in the shipyard are post-Halifax Explosion. During World War II, thousands of Nova Scotians left jobs as mechanics in Canning, plumbers in Debert, and fishermen in Port Morien to work in the port city on the Liberty Ships, destroyers, and corvettes that rolled down the slipways to do battle against the Axis. 

“The history of this place is phenomenal,” says Durrell. “It first opened in 1889, and it has been pretty robust ever since. We started building steel ships here during the First World War, and even during the 1980s Irving Shipbuilding built nine major warships. For this region, even after 120 years, shipbuilding is still the manufacturing industry of the future.”

“This longevity is a direct result of unwavering commitment to the industry by our owner Jim Irving,” adds Durrell. “By choosing to build ships for the company’s fleet at home during the lean years between federal shipbuilding contracts, they kept faith with our shipyard workers, and we were able to retain the management, workforce, and related skill level needed to build and maintain Canada’s fleet.”

Right now Durrell’s main job is making sure that everyone at Irving Shipbuilding is focused on making the Halifax Shipyards a “centre of excellence”—an Irving-coined phrase that describes the company’s vision. “Being a centre of excellence means more than just winning the NSPS bid,” he says. “It means we’ll be committed to providing the best value for money and be seen as a global high performer. It means we’ll continue to strive to be an employer of choice, to invest in and develop our people. If you talk to the people who work here, everybody understands what we’re trying to do. It makes going after the National Shipbuilding Procurement Strategy a whole lot easier when you have 1,200 people all moving in the same direction.”