Piet J . C . M . van Rooij
Commercial Manager Defence & Security Dept DAMEN
Piet van Rooij works at Damen Shipyards Gorinchem . He was born in the Netherlands in 1960 and he completed his technical studies in 1982 . Since then he held various positions on which was 39 years as designer of all kind of ships and his current position started in 2021 in the role of Commercial Manager of the Defence & Security Department , this Department that he was leading for more than five years as Product manager is specialized in the design and construction of what he called the light grey vessels such as OPV ’ s , Naval Support vessels but also Sail Training Vessels of which Damen has built already several in the last years . In that more than 40 years of work for Damen he seen the company changing from small with 300 workers to large with 12.000 workers and 33 shipyards spread over the world .
" Damen ' s patrol vessel series and new developments in naval ship design " The presentation was split in five ( 5 ) main topics and were as follows :
- Damen Today , where in short , the current situation of Damen as a family company was explained . - What kept us busy : an overview of the current military projects from small patrol vessels to large destroyers . - Portfolio update : an overview of the portfolio starting with the small interceptors followed with the Stan Patrol series based on the Axebow hull form and the OPV series with special topic the OPV 1400 - Trends : In operations will be more military with stealth , large combat suite , shock and many more technology such as Uavs , USVs and ROVs on board of OPVs , also the trend to autonomous was shortly highlighted with a glimp to the Damen future on extreme light materials and the carbon flyer technique . - Remote monitoring was presented with the focus on preventive maintenance , fleet management and reporting . -The last topic was Sustainability what is very important , and Damen has the aim to become the most sustainable yard in the world and there for we requested the audience to think about the environment even though Naval vessels don ’ t need to according to international rules .