ABL Group completes engineering design on USS Texas restoration
ABL Group’s Houston office, together with group company Longitude, are proud to have contributed to ongoing restoration work on the USS Texas.
The USS Texas is the only surviving battleship to have served in both World War I and World War II. In recent years, the 110-year-old ship’s deteriorating hull condition has resulted in major leaks and rusting, with pumps deployed to extract over 2,000 gallons (7,570 litres) of water per minute.
Longitude’s scope of work included preparing the engineering design basis for the refurbishment, steel renewal calculation and renewal plans of the hull, intact and damage stability calculations, docking verification calculations, anode calculation and arrangement on the hull.
Longitude equipped Valkor Energy Services, EPCI lead provider on the project, with the basic design that enabled them to approach dockyards for realistic project cost assessments.
Kevin Highfield, ABL’s director of Casualty and P&I Services was aboard the historic vessel as it was towed, in August, from its long-time berth at San Jacinto Battleground Historic Site in La Porte, Houston to Galveston. The Texas will now undergo extensive repairs to the ship’s structure that have been in planning since 2019.
ABL Houston (operating as LOC at the time of instruction) provided marine consultancy services and ultimately marine warranty surveying for the tow to the dry dock in Galveston. The ABL team also conducted a JH143 risk assessment of the shipyard.
Longitude Engineering, provides independent engineering, design and analysis services, specialising in marine and vessel design, conversion and upgrade, and marine operations engineering. It includes within the company independent ship design specialists OSD-IMT. The company serves the renewables, maritime, defence, oil and gas and infrastructure industries.