With a displacement of approximately 70,600 tonnes she is 280 metres (920 ft) long and the largest warship ever constructed for the Royal Navy.
The two Queen Elizabeth Class (QEC) aircraft carriers are to be home-based in HM Naval Base Portsmouth and within touching distance of USP Maritime’s design office in Portsmouth. We have been well placed to support prime contractors, key subcontractors and OEMs that have been contracted by the MoD to maintain the vessels throughout their in-service lives. We have been involved with the QEC project from the early days of production. Our coded welders worked around the clock despite the elements to meet tight deadlines to ensure the barges were able to successfully depart on schedule.
To date we have worked directly with the Aircraft Carrier Alliance (ACA), BAE Maritime Services and other prime contractors in the preparation for each ship’s arrival and planned maintenance periods which are already being scheduled for these mighty vessels. One of the challenges we have overcome is the need to be able to flex our resources to meet the short and intense maintenance periods planned for the QEC vessels. Our concentration of labour resources available in the Solent Area enabled us to support the surge requirement without directly impacting on our wider customer base. We have had a team of tradesman working 7 days a week supporting the various preparation and maintenance tasks being undertaken.
We have started how we mean to go on and will be able to support both QEC vessels for a long time into their bright future. Having invested heavily in increasing the number of our Lloyds Register Coded Welders, we now have within our Solent based footprint a winning team. We have also spent a great deal of effort ensuring that our workforce have all of the necessary security clearances to be able to gain access to the QEC vessels. The experience we have gained during the short but intense maintenance packages at HM Naval Base Portsmouth will set us up well to continue to support the QEC programme long after the vessels are handed from the ACA to the Royal Navy at the vessel’s acceptance date. USP are pleased to be part of the UK industry team headed up by the ACA in delivering Britain’s largest ever warship and proud to ultimately contribute to the effectiveness of our nation’s Royal Navy.