I’ve been on my share of cruise ships, large and small, over the years. Especially when on the larger oceangoing vessels, I’ve marveled at their complexity — how they function like small movable cities, providing guests everything from guest quarters to food and drink to entertainment. So, for the mechanical engineer in me, it was a treat to be offered an exclusive inside look at how these colossal ships are constructed.

Celebrity Cruises is currently building the Celebrity Xcel, through shipbuilder Chantiers de l’Atlantique in Saint-Nazaire, France. The facility is the largest assembly dock in Europe, with 3,800 employees and another 6,200 contractors on site at any given time.

The Xcel is the fifth vessel in what Celebrity calls the Edge Class, its latest iteration of luxury ships. I toured the shipyard and chatted with executives including Captain Manolis Alevropoulos, VP of marine operations, Stavros Zannikos, chief engineer; Eric Perennou, senior project manager of Edge Class; Henri Doyer, SVP of projects and engineering; and Ivan Klaric, project manager for the Xcel.

It was fascinating to learn from them how the most improvements on a ship generally happen between the second and third ship of a Class. While all the ships are quite similar, adjustments to both behind-the-scenes areas and public spaces do evolve. By the time the first ship goes into service, the design (or even construction) of the second one is already in progress. So, it’s the third ship that really receives the most tweaks in the design and construction phases.

“The most important changes we see are between ships two and three,” said Doyer. “Really, we start to master and have very good knowledge of the inside of the project already on ship number two. You have the low-hanging fruit that you catch on the second one — but the numerous little, tiny things that, as a whole, can make us better are with ship three. Mainly, this is building efficiency, meaning shortening construction times and also cutting our costs. The more upfront we build and assemble, the less difficult the logistics are. The more modular we are, the more efficient we are in building.”

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