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FKAB, Fartygskonstruktioner AB, is Sweden's largest consulting firm specializing in ship design and ship construction. FKAB, which was founded in 1961, has 40 employees in Sweden and over 50 employees in China. FKAB designs all types of commercial ships and boats from pilot boats to 174 000 dwt bulk carriers.[ citation needed ]
In 1997, a british court found FKAB criminally guilty of "gross errors" under the Health and Safety at Work Act for their role in the Ramsgate port disaster which resulted in the collapse of a passenger walkway that caused the deaths of six people just four months after the walkway was installed. [1]
As part of their conviction, FKAB were ordered to pay a £750,000 fine and court costs totalling £251,000. FKAB refused to pay the fine which created a diplomatic situation in the United Kingdom, Sweden and the European Union. A campaign was launched by Members of the European Parliament to "shame" FKAB in to paying the fine. As of 2024, FKAB have still not paid the fine. [2] [3] [4]
The Health and Safety Executive found that FKAB had failed to make simple calculations and to include vital information in their design that was "inherently unsafe and was a design that was both inept and incompetent". [5] The Health and Safety Executive found that "FKAB did not provide a safe design for the walkway and is primarily responsible for the technical design defects that caused the accident". [6]
Ernst & Young Global Limited, trade name EY, is a British multinational professional services partnership based in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and PwC, it is considered one of the Big Four accounting firms. It primarily provides assurance, tax, information technology services, consulting, and advisory services to its clients.
KPMG International Limited is a British multinational professional services network, and one of the Big Four accounting organizations, along with Ernst & Young (EY), Deloitte, and PwC. The name "KPMG" stands for "Klynveld Peat Marwick Goerdeler". The initialism was chosen when KMG merged with Peat Marwick in 1987.
Ramsgate is a seaside town and civil parish in the district of Thanet in east Kent, England. It was one of the great English seaside towns of the 19th century. In 2021 it had a population of 42,027. Ramsgate's main attraction is its coastline, and its main industries are tourism and fishing. The town has one of the largest marinas on the English south coast, and the Port of Ramsgate provided cross-channel ferries for many years.
MS Estonia was a cruiseferry built in 1980 for the Finnish shipping company Rederi Ab Sally by Meyer Werft, in Papenburg, West Germany. It was employed on ferry routes between Finland and Sweden by various companies until the end of January 1993, when it was sold to Nordström & Thulin for use on Estline's Tallinn–Stockholm route. The ship's sinking on 28 September 1994, in the Baltic Sea between Sweden, Finland and Estonia, was one of the worst peacetime maritime disasters of the 20th century, claiming 852 lives. An official inquiry found that failure of the locks on the bow visor caused water to flood the car deck and quickly capsize the ship. The report also noted a lack of crew action. A 2023 investigation noted additional construction flaws in the bow visor.
The Sunshine Skyway Bridge, officially referred to as the Bob Graham Sunshine Skyway Bridge, is a pair of long beam bridges with a central tall cable-stayed bridge. It spans Lower Tampa Bay to connect Pinellas County to Manatee County. The current Sunshine Skyway opened in 1987 and is the second bridge of that name on the site. It was designed by the Figg & Muller Engineering Group and built by the American Bridge Company. The bridge is considered the flagship bridge of Florida and serves as a gateway to Tampa Bay. The four-lane bridge carries Interstate 275 and U.S. Route 19, passing through Pinellas County, Hillsborough County and Manatee County. It is a toll bridge, with a toll assessed on two-axle vehicles traveling in either direction at a rate of $1.75 cash or $1.16 with the state's SunPass system.
The Tasman Bridge disaster occurred on the evening of 5 January 1975, in Hobart, the capital city of Australia's island state of Tasmania, when the bulk carrier Lake Illawarra, travelling up the Derwent River, collided with several pylons of the Tasman Bridge and caused a large section of the bridge deck to collapse onto the ship and into the river below. Twelve people were killed, including seven crew on board Lake Illawarra, and the five occupants of four cars which fell 45 metres (150 ft) after driving off the bridge. Hobart was cut off from its eastern suburbs, and the loss of the road connection had a major social impact. The ship's master was officially penalised for inattention and failure to handle his vessel in a seamanlike manner.
Condor Ferries is an operator of passenger and freight ferry services between the United Kingdom, Guernsey, Jersey and France.
MV Kaitaki is a roll-on/roll-off ferry built in 1995. It previously operated under the names, Isle of Innisfree, then Pride of Cherbourg, Stena Challenger and Challenger. As of 2008, MV Kaitaki was the largest ferry operating the Interislander service between the North and South Islands of New Zealand having taken her latest name in 2007. KiwiRail, the operator of the Interislander service, bought the Kaitaki in 2017.
This is a summary of notable incidents that have taken place at various European amusement parks, water parks, or theme parks. This list is not intended to be a comprehensive list of every such event, but only those that have a significant impact on the parks or park owners, or are otherwise significantly newsworthy.
The Port of Ramsgate is a harbour situated in Ramsgate, south-east England, serving cross-Channel freight traffic and smaller working and pleasure craft. It is owned and operated by Thanet District Council.
The Puget Sound mosquito fleet was a multitude of private transportation companies running smaller passenger and freight boats on Puget Sound and nearby waterways and rivers. This large group of steamers and sternwheelers plied the waters of Puget Sound, stopping at every waterfront dock. The historical period defining the beginning and end of the mosquito fleet is ambiguous, but the peak of activity occurred between the First and Second World Wars.
MV Ben-my-Chree is a Ro-Pax vessel which was launched and entered service in 1998. The flagship of the Isle of Man Steam Packet Company, she primarily operates on the Douglas to Heysham route until replaced by MV Manxman in Late 2023.
On 23 October 1989 at approximately 1:05 PM Central Daylight Time, a series of explosions occurred at Phillips Petroleum Company's Houston Chemical Complex (HCC) in Pasadena, Texas, near the Houston Ship Channel. The initial blast registered 3.5 on the Richter scale, and the resulting fires took 10 hours to bring under control, as efforts to battle the fire were hindered due to damaged water pipes for the fire hydrants from the blast. The initial explosion was found to have resulted from a release of extremely flammable process gasses used to produce high-density polyethylene, a plastic used for various consumer food container products. The US Occupational Safety and Health Administration fined Phillips Petroleum Company $5,666,200 and fined Fish Engineering and Construction, inc, the maintenance contractor, $729,600. The event killed 23 employees and injured 314.
ST Cervia was built in 1946 as a seagoing tug for use as a fleet auxiliary by Alexandra Hall & Company Ltd of Aberdeen, Scotland. Today she is a floating Museum still undergoing restoration in Ramsgate, Kent.
The Mianus River Bridge is a span that carries Interstate 95 over the Mianus River, between Cos Cob and Riverside, Connecticut. It is the second bridge on the site. The original bridge collapsed in 1983, killing three motorists. The replacement span is officially named the Michael L. Morano Bridge, after a state senator Michael L. Morano who represented Greenwich.
David Frederick Green is a British civil engineer, who served as president of the Institution of Civil Engineers from 1996–1997. He spent much of his career in Sheffield where he became director of operational services for the city council. In this role he spearheaded a reform of the city's direct labour operations, driving down costs and enabling it to operate on a competitive level with the private sector. As president from 1996 he sought more influence for the Institution of Civil Engineers over national policy. He was later chair of the Together Housing Group, a company providing social housing. Green was involved in the campaign for the introduction of new design standards for ship-to-shore walkways following the 1994 Prins Filip ferry walkway collapse that killed six people in Ramsgate.
Seaborne Freight (UK) Limited was a company that planned to run roll-on roll-off (ro-ro) ferries between the Port of Ramsgate, England and Port of Ostend, Belgium. It was formed in April 2017 and announced its plans in October 2017. It was awarded a £13.8 million contract by the UK Department for Transport in December 2018 in the case of a no-deal Brexit but there was controversy and doubts about the company's ability to provide the service and the contract was cancelled on 9 February 2019. On 8 September 2020, the company began a voluntary liquidation owing £2 million.
MS Estonia sank on Wednesday, 28 September 1994, between about 00:50 and 01:50 (UTC+2) as the ship was crossing the Baltic Sea, en route from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden. The sinking was one of the worst maritime disasters of the 20th century. It is one of the deadliest peacetime sinkings of a European ship, after the Titanic in 1912 and the Empress of Ireland in 1914, and the deadliest peacetime shipwreck to have occurred in European waters, with 852 lives lost.
The sinking of the ferry Neptune, a Haitian commercial ship which regularly carried people and cargo from Jérémie to Port-au-Prince, occurred on the night of February 16, 1993. It capsized and sank off the coast of Miragoane, due to a mix of the passenger crowd's size and movement, and the conditions of the ship and weather.