Jess Fetterman is the Chief Engineer for the Polar Icebreaker program at Seaspan, where she has been a key member of the team for four years. She is also one of our February-March Game Changers. With 24 years of experience in the defence and security industry, Jess brings extensive expertise in shipbuilding and engineering.
Growing up on the Great Lakes in a family of automotive engineers, she initially expected to follow a similar path. However, a visit to the University of Michigan’s Marine Hydrodynamics Lab ignited her passion for shipbuilding. Over the years, she has worked at multiple shipyards across Canada and the United States, gaining valuable experience in marine engineering.
At Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards, Jess provides technical oversight for the design and construction of Canada’s new heavy Polar Icebreaker, a PC2-class vessel being built for the Canadian Coast Guard under the National Shipbuilding Strategy. She is committed to ensuring the ship is delivered safely, completely, and in full compliance with all technical requirements, contributing to Canada’s vital polar operations.
1. How did you start out in this industry and how has it brought you to where you are today?
I grew up on the Great Lakes in a family full of automotive engineers and always assumed I’d end up in that industry, but when I had my first visit of the University of Michigan’s Marine Hydrodynamics Lab I knew that shipbuilding was the right challenge for me. I worked at a number of different shipbuilders across Canada and the United States before starting at Seaspan, however getting the opportunity to join the team designing and building Canada’s new heavy Polar Icebreaker was one I couldn’t pass up.
2. What is your role at your organization today?
I’m the Chief Engineer for the Polar Icebreaker program at Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards. Canada’s new heavy Polar Icebreaker is a PC2 class icebreaker being designed and built for the Canadian Coast Guard under the National Shipbuilding Strategy (NSS), and as the Polar program’s Chief Engineer I’m responsible for technical oversight of the engineering and construction of the ship, ensuring we deliver a safe, complete, and compliant ship to Canada.
3. What was your most challenging moment?
I’ve been very fortunate over my career to have worked on an array of projects, spanning submarines and surface ships, towed sonar arrays, and aviation support as well as commercial ship design and construction. But through all these difficult, though rewarding, roles my most challenging moment was making the decision to emigrate to Canada in 2015. I had an amazing opportunity to join the community of shipbuilders supporting the NSS, but it meant leaving friends and family behind and starting over in a new country. However, making that choice and coming to Canada gave me the strength to continue pursuing even more exciting opportunities to further my career, which has helped me get to where I am today.
4. What was your A-HA moment or epiphany that you think will resonate most with our reader, tell us that story.
In 2001, shortly after I started with NAVSEA Carderock as a newly graduated engineer, I was sent to Pascagoula, Mississippi on a ship-check of the USS Ticonderoga (CG-47). My supervisor gave me a hardhat and a pair of coveralls and handed me off to the crew members assigned to help us. We spent a very long day checking compartments, crawling tanks, surveying the ship from stem to stern, and in those 8+ hours I learned more from those sailors about ship operation and life aboard than I thought possible. My “a-ha!” moment thanks to those Tico sailors was the realization that there are people on the other end of all that paperwork we engineers create, and every decision we make about design, procurement, and construction has to be lived with by the operators for 20-, 30-, 40-plus years.
5. What is the one thing that has you most fired up today?
Seeing the renewed interest in Arctic defence and science exploration through such agreements as the Icebreaker Collaboration Effort (ICE Pact) is immensely exciting both as a shipbuilder and as a Canadian. Over 70% of Canada’s coastline is located in the Arctic and it’s critical that we as a country maintain access year-round to support and defend our northern communities/waters, and Canadian sovereignty and security as a whole.
6. What is the best advice you received?
If you’ve made a mistake or noticed something is incorrect or unsafe, say something—it’s ok to be wrong, but it’s not ok to sweep it under the rug. Nearly everything is fixable if known, and the sooner it gets corrected the less impact it has on the project and on the workforce.
7. What is a habit that contributes to your success?
Building and maintaining relationships has been crucial to the Polar Icebreaker project. We have a huge amount of collaboration happening across Canada and the world. Regular, clear communication has been critical to identifying and solving issues during the design process that otherwise wouldn’t have been caught until the manufacturing phase had already begun. This is especially important when difficult issues arise; if you have a strong connection with your colleagues any challenge is solvable.
8. What is your parting piece of advice?
Opportunities come to those who say “yes”. Be open to new ideas, experiences, and connections as they have the potential to expand your own knowledge as a subject matter expert and help drive forward the industry.
Organizational Insights:
1. How is your organization changing the game within your industry sector?
Seaspan has only been building ships for 10 years. We cut steel on our first NSS vessel, the first Offshore Fisheries Science Vessel, in 2015. But, in only a decade, we have help to rebuild a shipbuilding industry on the West Coast from essentially nothing. Through these efforts, we have created a cross-Canada marine supply chain of nearly 800 Canadian companies who are helping us build ships, more than half of which are SMEs. Seaspan has also developed the largest marine engineering and design capability in Canada. Through our continuous improvements efforts and lessons learned on building complex, first-in-class ships, Seaspan has become one of the most modern, efficient, and capable shipyards in North America, and completely changed how ships are designed and built in Canada.
2. What are some of the biggest impediments to innovation in your industry sector?
Shipbuilding and repair as a whole tends to be slower to innovate than other industries. The size of the projects, both by mass and value, means new construction project durations of multiple years, so what may have been cutting edge during the design phase of the ship may outdated by the time delivery or the ship’s first maintenance period occurs. With ship service life now regularly exceeding 40+ years, it can be very difficult to incorporate innovative technologies.
Also, a large majority of ships designed and built for the defence sector are custom products of either a single ship delivery or a small flight. These small quantity, custom, costly products mean the industry cannot reap the benefits of true repeatability such as increased manufacturing throughput, lower per-product cost, and standardized maintenance, logistics, crew training, and onshore support services.
3. How has innovation become engrained in your organization’s culture and how is it being optimized?
Shipbuilding continues to evolve, as does the needs of our customer, so we have to evolve and innovate alongside it to ensure that we are building ships as efficiently as possible. Over the past decade, that need for continuous improvement, innovation, and learning has been at the core of our organization. We have built out our supply-chain, improved our manufacturing methods, as well as upgraded the technology we use for engineering and design. All of these efforts put us in the best position to design and build the complex vessels Canada needs to protect our security and sovereignty, like the heavy Polar Icebreaker. With every ship we design and build, we become better shipbuilders for the next one on our order book.
4. What technologies, business models, and trends will drive the biggest changes in your industry over the next two years?
NATO’s push for member countries to raise their defence spending to meet or exceed 2% of GDP will likely drive the biggest push for domestic shipbuilding in the near term. In a constantly evolving geo-political climate, coupled with our immense coastline, now is an opportune time for Canada to leverage the success and momentum of the NSS by considering what additional vessels could be added to current order books that would be beneficial for the Royal Canadian Navy and Canadian Coast Guard.
