HEC's primary area of expertise is in the conceptual, preliminary, and contract design of commercial vessels. We have extensive experience in newbuildings and conversions of containerships, break-bulk carriers, ro-ro's, and tankers. Our offshore group handles floating and fixed offshore structures such as FPSO, TLPS, SPARS, and offshore terminals. Through the years, we have been fortunate to have relationships with clients looking for innovative and cost effective solutions, and willing to venture beyond "current practice".

We also provide general naval architecture and marine engineering support services including detailed structural design and analysis, mechanical system design and analysis, cargo securing optimization, and analysis in support of class and flag/port state requirements. Our advanced analysis capabilities allow us to apply the latest techniques to a wide range of engineering problems.

We currently maintain a staff of about 15 naval architects and engineers, with several additional drafting and support personnel. Collectively our staff represents over 200 years of commercial design and ship operation support experience with 6 of our senior principals averaging 30+ years in the business. All of this valuable expertise is available to our clients for their newbuilding and conversion projects, as well as their general engineering and analysis needs.

Herbert Engineering designed one of the first open-hatch bulk carriers in the early 1960's. Our firm has been involved in the design of subsequent generations of open-hatch vessels, and has introduced many innovations and refinements. Other newbuilding innovations in which we have been involved include high-deadweight ro-ro's for carriage of forest products, the first 4,800 TEU post-PANAMAX containerships as well as recent ultra-size containerships, and ultra-large LNG carriers. Innovative solutions for notable conversion projects include the conversion of a ro-ro vessel to a PANAMAX containership, and the first conversion of a conventional containership to a hatchless configuration.

Quality and customer satisfaction are our highest priorities. We operate on a Project Engineer basis, with a single point of contact for each project. All work is independently checked and verified before it is delivered.

Our firm has gained a reputation for producing effective and efficient designs while maintaining a high level of safety and environmental performance. We make every effort to control overhead costs to keep our billing rates at reasonable levels. We invest in state-of-the-art computers and software to continually improve our efficiency and productivity.