Time
Count your monthly hours
How many hours a month can you genuinely give this project for the next eighteen to twenty-four months?
Estimate hours honestly
Yard selection & contracts
Turnkey or yard-direct: choose your route
Contract the shipyard yourself or contract one party to deliver the finished vessel. Neither is superior — they allocate risk and effort differently.
- 2 Routes to commission
- 18–24 Months of owner effort
- 3 Questions settle it
- 1 Contract under turnkey
1 contract
One address under turnkey
Two routes
Who carries the coordination?
Yard-direct means you manage design, suppliers, certification and supervision yourself. Turnkey means one party delivers the finished vessel and carries that coordination. The right choice depends on how much effort you can realistically supply.
Read the yard, the quotation and the slot agreement the same way under either route: as evidence of who owns each interface.
- Yard-direct costs less Usually cheaper on paper, but demands substantially more owner time and expertise.
- Turnkey concentrates accountability One contract carries the interfaces, at the price of a coordination margin.
- Avoid the hybrid The worst outcome is a structure where nobody owns the interfaces.
Side by side
Turnkey and yard-direct compared
The same vessel, two allocations of risk, cost, control and workload.
- Cost
- Adds a margin
- Real yard price, no intermediary margin
- Owner workload
- Decisions only
- Design, suppliers, surveyor and registration coordinated by the owner
- Interface risk
- Provider’s
- Carried by the owner, who pays for the resolution
- Pricing visibility
- Can be obscured
- Direct view of the yard’s pricing and behaviour
- Accountability
- One contract
- Spread across yard, naval architect, suppliers and surveyor
- Equipment choice
- Owner specifies
- Owner chooses freely and carries integration
- Speed
- Usually faster
- Matches turnkey only when the owner is present and decisive
- Best suited to
- Remote owners
- Owners with time, technical confidence and regional presence
Turnkey fees vary with scope and vessel complexity; ask for them quoted transparently as a management fee, not buried in the vessel price.
Route checklist
Six checks before you choose
Answer these honestly and the right route usually becomes obvious quickly.
Red flags
Where commissioning routes fail
Problems concentrate at interfaces. When nobody owns them, the default resolution is delay.
Choosing honestly
Match the route to your availability
Owners with time, technical confidence and regional presence are usually better served yard-direct, with a surveyor for key stages. Owners building around a career, in another time zone, with a fixed first season, usually do better with a verified turnkey provider.
- Yard-direct plus surveyor Appoint a surveyor for key stages and hold the supplier relationships yourself.
- Verified turnkey Delegate coordination without surrendering information about yard or equipment.
- Switch at a gate Move to managed supervision at a natural gate, such as structure to systems.
Yard Selection & Contracts guide
Keep reading this guide
Choose a yard and sign a contract that protects you.
FAQ
Turnkey and yard-direct questions
It varies with scope and vessel complexity and should be quoted transparently as a management fee. What matters more is what the fee covers: design coordination, procurement, supervision, certification support and warranty follow-through are very different scopes.
Yes, and many owners do once the coordination load becomes clear. It is easiest at a natural gate, such as structure to systems. The new manager will need the full document and decision history, so keep a written record from day one.
No. A good turnkey contract still lets the owner specify major equipment; the provider carries responsibility for integrating it and will push back on selections that create service, spares or compatibility problems.
Turnkey is usually faster in practice, because decisions and procurement do not queue behind an owner in another time zone. Yard-direct can match it when the owner is present and decisive, and falls badly behind when they are not.
Build desk
Weighing the two routes?
Describe your availability honestly with vessel length, operating area and delivery window. We reply in writing with yard options and programme dates.
+62 811-3941-4563 · bd@juaraholding.com