A day as a ship fitter: inspection, repair and preventive maintenance

As a ship fitter you work where the machinery is: in engine rooms at shipyards at repair shops and aboard ships. The tasks are wide-ranging but they revolve around the same thing: keeping engines and systems running finding faults and fixing them before they lead to downtime. A ship that is idle due to a defect costs a lot of money — therefore reliability is alpha and omega.

§Preventive maintenance as backbone

Work alone home

• 01Inspection of diesel engines: valves, injection, bearings and seals.
• 02Inspection and service of cooling systems, pumps and piping
• 03Lubrication, filter replacement and fluid checks
• 04Inspection of cranes, deck pumps and other equipment
• 05Documentation of what has been done and what should be monitored

§When something breaks

The other side of the trade is repair and troubleshooting. A symptom — an abnormal sound, a temperature running too high, a pressure dropping — is the start of an investigation. You work methodically forward: what do the instruments show, what does the manual say, where in the system can the fault be? Only when you understand the cause do you start to remedy it.

§An example task

Imagine a cooling system is not cooling well enough. You measure temperatures and pressures, check whether the pump is performing as it should, and look for blockages or leaks in the pipes. Maybe a seal is worn, a filter is clogged or a pump has started to fail. You disassemble the part that needs repair, replace or clean it, reassemble and check that the system now works. Finally you document what you have done.

§Cooperation and independence

You often work with others — machine masters, other fitters, suppliers — but you must also be able to stand alone with a task and take responsibility for it being solved correctly. On a ship far from land there is not always help to be found, and therefore the trade values both technical skill, care and the ability to plan your work.

The everyday alternates between the routine and the unexpected. One day you follow a service plan point by point; the next you face a problem no one had counted on. It is precisely this mixture that many ship fitters love: you never stop learning.