Menu

Ireland's sailing, boating & maritime magazine

H&W Appoints New General Manager at its Appledore Shipyard

11th August 2021
Harland & Wolff have taken the appointment of Tom Hart as General Manager at their Appledore Shipyard facility in south-west England. Tom joins following a series of upgrade works at the north Devon site near Bideford, that has become fully operational. Afloat adds the site features the main building yard including 119m covered dry-dock (above) as well as the adjacent repair, commissioning and outfitting quay. Harland & Wolff have taken the appointment of Tom Hart as General Manager at their Appledore Shipyard facility in south-west England. Tom joins following a series of upgrade works at the north Devon site near Bideford, that has become fully operational. Afloat adds the site features the main building yard including 119m covered dry-dock (above) as well as the adjacent repair, commissioning and outfitting quay. Credit: H&W -twitter

Belfast's iconic Harland & Wolff shipyard, has announced the appointment of a new General Manager, Tom Hart to its Appledore shipyard in England, which was acquired a year ago.

Bringing over 30 years of experience in project, operations and construction management throughout the United Kingdom and United Arab Emirates, Mr Hart joins Harland & Wolff (Appledore) from Dubai based, Drydocks World where he was Director of Projects & Engineering.

He joins after the site has enjoyed major investment and upgrades since the InfraStrata plc acquisition and is now fully operational.

Mr Hart began his career in the Merchant Navy as a cadet before moving to P&O Ferries, where he rose through the ranks from Marine Engineer to Chief Engineer.

Moving shore-side, he then headed to the UAE to join Dubai Drydocks as a Ship Repair Manager. During his time in Dubai, Mr Hart moved from drydocks into the oil and gas industry, where he project managed new-build jack-up oil rigs and offshore wind turbine installation ships with MIS & Lamprell Energy. He also held various other positions such as Commissioning Manager and Group Operations Manager, where he ran three shipyards.

Mr Hart then returned to Dubai Dry Drydocks for a final two-year stint as Director of Project Management & Engineering.

Now in his role as General Manager, based in Appledore, North Devon, Mr Hart will be responsible for the overall day-to-day running of the site. This includes the organisation and logistics for all incoming projects, site safety and security as well as overseeing all monetary aspects.

Tom Hart commented: “Leaving Dubai to move “home” after 20 years was a huge decision but one that I, along with my family, are very excited about. I’m really looking forward to settling in at Appledore, and hope to share some great practices, and skills I have gained from my international experience to build up British shipbuilding and ship repair and be a part of its revitalisation. Building up business, creating work for the local community and increasing the yard’s revenue and margins with a steady flow of work will be my main goal. I am delighted to be appointed General Manager of Harland & Wolff (Appledore) – a yard with a very impressive history. I am looking forward to leading the team there and collectively bringing success to the Harland and Wolff Group.”

Harland & Wolff is a multisite fabrication company, operating in the maritime and offshore industry through five sectors: commercial, cruise and ferry, defence, oil & gas and renewables and six services: technical services, fabrication and construction, decommissioning, repair and maintenance, in–service support and conversion.

Its Belfast yard is one of Europe’s largest heavy engineering facilities, with deep water access, two of Europe’s largest drydocks, ample quayside and vast fabrication halls.

As a result of the acquisition of Harland & Wolff (Appledore) in August 2020, the company has been able to capitalise on opportunities at both ends of the ship-repair and shipbuilding markets where this will be significant demand.

In February 2021, the company acquired the assets of two Scottish based yards along the east and west coasts. Now known as Harland & Wolff (Methil) and Harland & Wolff (Arnish), these facilities will focus on fabrication work within the renewable, oil and gas and defence sectors.

Harland & Wolff is a wholly-owned subsidiary of InfraStrata plc (AIM: INFA), a London Stock Exchange-listed firm focused on strategic infrastructure projects and physical asset life-cycle management.

In addition to Harland & Wolff, it owns the Islandmagee gas storage project, which is expected to provide 25% of the UK’s natural gas storage capacity and to benefit the Northern Irish economy as a whole when completed.

Published in Shipyards
Jehan Ashmore

About The Author

Jehan Ashmore

Email The Author

Jehan Ashmore is a marine correspondent, researcher and photographer, specialising in Irish ports, shipping and the ferry sector serving the UK and directly to mainland Europe. Jehan also occasionally writes a column, 'Maritime' Dalkey for the (Dalkey Community Council Newsletter) in addition to contributing to UK marine periodicals. 

We've got a favour to ask

More people are reading Afloat.ie than ever thanks to the power of the internet but we're in stormy seas because advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news sites, we haven't put up a paywall because we want to keep our marine journalism open.

Afloat.ie is Ireland's only full-time marine journalism team and it takes time, money and hard work to produce our content.

So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

If everyone chipped in, we can enhance our coverage and our future would be more secure. You can help us through a small donation. Thank you.

Direct Donation to Afloat button

Shipyards

Afloat will be focusing on news and developments of shipyards with newbuilds taking shape on either slipways and building halls.

The common practice of shipbuilding using modular construction, requires several yards make specific block sections that are towed to a single designated yard and joined together to complete the ship before been launched or floated out.

In addition, outfitting quays is where internal work on electrical and passenger facilities is installed (or upgraded if the ship is already in service). This work may involve newbuilds towed to another specialist yard, before the newbuild is completed as a new ship or of the same class, designed from the shipyard 'in-house' or from a naval architect consultancy. Shipyards also carry out repair and maintenance, overhaul, refit, survey, and conversion, for example, the addition or removal of cabins within a superstructure. All this requires ships to enter graving /dry-docks or floating drydocks, to enable access to the entire vessel out of the water.

Asides from shipbuilding, marine engineering projects such as offshore installations take place and others have diversified in the construction of offshore renewable projects, from wind-turbines and related tower structures. When ships are decommissioned and need to be disposed of, some yards have recycling facilities to segregate materials, though other vessels are run ashore, i.e. 'beached' and broken up there on site. The scrapped metal can be sold and made into other items.