ACCOMMODATION VESSEL BASED IN MANILA

The ship will be moored in the bay outside Manila where a new island for the new airport will be built by the Dutch company Royal Boskalis. The ship will be used for just over a year and about 1,000 people will be on aboard. In heavily populated Manila, living quarters and distances to the workplace are a problem and often entails long commutes. This makes an accommodation vessel moored at a nearby location a good solution. 

“This project has come about through a commercial partnership with the Canadian company Bridgemans Services, specialists in the field of marine mobile residences for large industrial projects,” says Per Westling, Managing Director, Stena RoRo. “The combination of our knowhow and Bridgeman’s specific market knowledge is quite viable and we see opportunities for collaborating on various projects in the future. This collaboration opens the way for new business opportunities.”

“One of Stena RoRo’s specialist skills is converting and adapting ships to chang-ing requirements and needs. With the conversion of the Saga, we have broken new ground. For us, this is a new kind of project,” says John Kollander, General Manager, Stena RoRo, based in Shanghai and responsible for the commercial aspects of contract execution.

Conversion Manager Johan Kippel has been the project manager and responsible for the conversion team’s work in Piraeus, Greece. He describes the Saga’s new configuration after conversion:

“The previous four-bed cabins have been converted into two-bed cabins. The construction workers will work in shifts, enabling the ship to be used around the clock. There will be just over 530 cabins as well as wardrobes for private use. In addition to cabins for housing the workforce, there will be 99 desks in an open-plan office area, the space that was previously used for tax free shopping. 

“The car deck has been converted into a logistics center. There is laundry and the ship will be self-sufficient with food and drinking water. In addition, there will be a restaurant and a bar. As a preventive measure, four cabins and a day room will be furnished to be able to serve as quarantine spaces if necessary.”

Mattias Kjellberg, Contract Manager, sees this as a pioneering contract and definitely a new business area for Stena RoRo. It also points to a promising future for some of Stena’s older night ferries, which might be phased out in the future. 

“We have developed new technical and operational solutions that will make it easier for the 1,000 people who will have the Saga as their home and workplace,” says Niklas Andersson, General Manager, Technical and Commercial Operations. “As an example, we have built a steel structure in the stern as a platform to facilitate boarding, as well as the loading and unloading of goods.”