Q&A with Erik van Mourik, Manager Cost & Accounting Design & Development Heesen

At Heesen, Dutch quality and efficiency are at the heart of everything we do. With the size of our projects and the numerous teams and disciplines involved, this is no small task. In our newest Q&A series, we’ll be speaking with Erik van Mourik, Manager of Cost & Accounting Design & Development, who has been pivotal in the creation of many Heesen yachts for over three decades. How do you calculate the cost of a complex product like a superyacht? How many labour hours go into such a project? What has been his most challenging yacht?

You have now been working for Heesen for more than 30 years. What is your motivation?
“What makes it interesting for me is that I have to come up with new concepts all the time. When a client approaches us with a challenging request, for instance, ‘I want a 60-metre yacht with a fish cockpit that can do 40 knots,’ we start thinking about how we can achieve this. We can accomplish this by developing a yacht with waterjet propulsion. So we conceptualise that initial idea, and if during sea trials the boat actually reaches that top speed and your ideas become reality, it is incredibly satisfying for me.”

What exactly do you do as Manager Cost & Accounting Design & Development?
“I’m responsible for everything that happens before a contract is signed. At Heesen, we have two options. Either there is a client with specific wishes and we will investigate which yacht best fits this profile, a Full Custom or a Smart Custom. Or we propose a Series yacht, one of the unique selling points of Heesen, and we investigate what changes are needed to fully meet the requests. When we develop a new Series yacht together with Sales and Marketing, we decide which yacht concept we want to build. What engines do we need? What’s the ideal layout of the yacht? Once we have completed that block schedule, as we like to call it, we send it to an architect to create a nice design. Then we determine the specifications and perform the cost calculations. This complete package of the general arrangement plan, specifications, and costs is what we deliver as Cost & Accounting.”

How do you calculate such a complex project?
“Yachts are indeed getting bigger and more complicated. But the key is really to find the right parameters. Is it interior area, volume, surface area, or engine power? Engine type is easily determined by the desired speed and speed-power graph of the vessel. Then you roughly know the amount of engine power you need to install. Next, we decide on the major subsystems; these are the large components that we need to order, like electric installations. Then we calculate the construction cost, whether it’s steel or aluminium, using fixed costs per ton, or hours per ton if we produce the hull and superstructure ourselves. What makes it challenging is the wish list of additional equipment because there’s always limited space on board. The more equipment you try to fit into a small space, the more hours it takes to engineer and install. That’s what makes it extremely complicated and expensive.”

Yachts are almost completely handcrafted. How many labour hours go into a yacht on average?
“An average-sized Heesen yacht takes around 150,000 hours for the shipyard alone to build; including construction, engine room installation, and interior construction. But there are many subcontractors working on our yachts as well, and then that amount easily doubles to around 300,000 hours for a 55-metre yacht. That equates to about 160 man-years.”

Which project was the most challenging for you?
“For me, the 80-metre project Genesis – formerly known as Cosmos – stood out as one of the most challenging that I had the pleasure of working on. That yacht was conceived as an idea to create a long, slender, lightweight aluminium vessel, resulting in extensive feasibility studies for the lateral strengths of the hull. To tackle that problem, we invented the Backbone construction. Then we found a client for this concept, but he requested a top speed of 30 knots, which was only possible if we installed four engines. I went to Sweden to research the propulsion system and find out how we could transfer the engine output to the controllable pitch propellers. That was quite a challenge. But that was not the end of it; we had a battery bank for two hours of emission-free at anchor, a fully certified helipad, and many more innovative features that made the 80-metre project exceptionally challenging.

At the start of my career, there were also two 35-metre yachts with waterjet propulsion and a requested top speed of over 50 knots. I will never forget the sea trials when we were sailing next to each other at that speed on the North Sea; that was really impressive.”

One of your tasks is to reduce the footprint of yachts. Can you give some examples of what you are working on?
“One of the areas we are working on is reducing the energy consumption of a yacht. Yachts spend about 90% of their time at anchor or docked, on average. We calculated that about half of the yacht’s total emissions can be attributed to the generators and the hotel load. Unlike propulsion, there is immediate and substantial room for improvement in this area. One of the solutions we have investigated is waste heat recovery, which can reduce hotel load energy consumption by as much as 10 per cent.

Additionally, we are exploring alternative fuels, specifically methanol. There are still quite a few challenges that our team is looking into, but there is definitely potential for methanol in the yachting industry.”

What do many colleagues not know about you?
“The fact that I actually started at Heesen as a composite specialist. At the time, Heesen was working on two 35-metre composite yachts that could reach 50 knots. When I was young, I made several surfboards out of polyester and during my studies I made composite water bikes with hydrofoils. That’s how I learned so much about composites, and that’s why Heesen hired me. Of course, after those two boats, we never did a composite yacht again, but I stayed on because I also knew a few other things.”

Which is you favourite Heesen yacht and where would you take it?
“If I could choose a Heesen yacht for myself, it would be a sleek and elegant yacht with relatively small volume to reach a decent top speed with little installed engine power, like MY Home. This yacht also features the Heesen Hybrid propulsion system that I helped develop. My dream destination would be the Nordic coastline, where the Heesen yacht Cinderella currently navigates. During my traineeship in Finland, I used to sail quite a lot in the archipelago of the Baltic Sea. That’s a very beautiful region, which is not highly frequented by superyachts. And of course, I would take my wife and two children with me. We would also take some surfboards and dinghies with us to go sailing, and I think we would have a great time!”