Farewell to the "Mountain of Blueprints," Sailing into the "Sea of Data" — A Chronicle of Digital Ship Delivery Practices by the Jiangsu Branch of China Classification Society

On July 11, at the 2026 China Maritime Day Port and Shipping Enterprise Development Seminar, the China Classification Society (CCS) awarded COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry the world's first General Design Approval (GDA) certificate for a ship digital delivery system, marking a key step in CCS's efforts to drive industry transformation through digital and intelligent upgrades.

From "mountains of paper" to "the cloud," from 2D to 3D, CCS completed the comprehensive establishment and full-dimensional coverage of digital delivery capabilities in less than a year. In this wave of digital transformation in the shipbuilding industry, CCS has played the important roles of "navigator" and "practitioner," vividly interpreting the profound changes brought by new productive forces in the water transport sector through "new technology, new elements, and new models."

Defining the "Three-Level Standards" for Ship Digital Delivery

During traditional ship deliveries, the most eye-catching sight at the dock is often not the ship itself but the mountains of paper boxes piled up.

Ship drawings, certificates, equipment manuals, spare parts lists, test reports... Hundreds of thousands of pages of documents are transported by forklifts and reviewed manually. What troubles shipowners even more is that the "identity files" of the same ship are scattered across design institutes, shipyards, suppliers, and classification societies, with inconsistent versions and compounded errors.

One shipowner calculated that receiving a ship requires a chief engineer and a team of over ten people to spend three months just organizing data. Another shipowner mentioned that a team of dozens worked for nearly half a year, yet the operational data of the ship was still unclear.

On July 1, 2025, CCS's "Guidelines for Ship Digital Delivery" (2025) officially came into effect. This document, which took more than two years to refine, systematically proposed a three-tier progressive standard: F/D/M. The F-level focuses on electronic documents to solve the problem of "finding information"; the D-level emphasizes structured data to break down data silos between systems; and the M-level uses 3D digital models to create high-fidelity digital representations of ships, allowing data to be presented intuitively and three-dimensionally to operators.

Overcoming technical challenges was not easy. To address data consistency issues, CCS introduced the "One Code Pass" technology to build a standardized ship model, unifying equipment aliases into standard names. Faced with challenges such as the large size of original 3D ship model files and high licensing costs for dedicated servers, the team compared over a dozen mainstream technologies domestically and internationally. They ultimately chose a proprietary 3D platform, customizing a lightweight engine from the underlying code. This reduced data size to a few hundred megabytes while maintaining millimeter-level precision, enabling smooth operation on ordinary computer browsers.

The three-tier standards progress step by step, respecting industry realities by starting with electronic documents to lower the entry barrier while guiding the future direction towards 3D intelligent operations. This provides a clear roadmap for shipowners with varying levels of digital maturity to advance.

Jiangsu's Role Behind Multiple "First Certificates"

In CCS's overall blueprint for digital delivery, the Jiangsu branch of CCS has played a significant role.

During the standard-setting process, the Jiangsu branch of CCS was actively involved. In May 2025, it sent experts to participate in the review and acceptance of the draft "Guidelines for Ship Digital Delivery," rigorously scrutinizing and providing optimization suggestions. In December of the same year, it participated again in the final review meeting for the "Research and Application of Supporting Technologies for Ship Digital Delivery" project, offering follow-up application suggestions based on the needs of shipyards and shipowners, contributing "Jiangsu wisdom" to CCS's comprehensive digital delivery technical capabilities.

On May 7, 2026, under the guidance of the headquarters, the Jiangsu branch of CCS issued the first Approval in Principle (AIP) certificate for a conceptual digital ship based on digital delivery to Yangzhou COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry. This certificate, based on the new 325,000 DWT ore carrier project built by Yangzhou COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry, successfully established a fully digitalized pathway for the entire shipbuilding chain.

"This is not just a technical project but a profound industrial transformation. It signifies that future ships will possess a complete 'digital gene,' advocating a new concept of data integration throughout the ship's lifecycle," said Zhuang Zhong, General Manager of the Jiangsu branch of CCS. This certificate indicates that China's shipbuilding industry now has the comprehensive capability to define the technological form of the next generation of ships.

On July 11, in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, at the 2026 China Maritime Day event, CCS awarded COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry the world's first GDA certificate for a ship digital delivery system. This means that COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry has become the first shipyard capable of 3D digital delivery, providing a data foundation for the digital and intelligent management of the entire lifecycle of delivered ships. Under the guidance of the headquarters, the Jiangsu branch of CCS provided full technical support based on the "Guidelines for Ship Digital Delivery" (2025).

How powerful is this system? Using a lightweight 3D model as its core carrier, it constructs a dynamic digital representation covering the entire lifecycle of a ship, enabling the simultaneous delivery of physical and digital ships. Addressing pain points in traditional delivery models, such as incomplete, inaccurate, and non-standardized deliverables, this system unifies data delivery standards, connects the entire "design-procurement-manufacturing-delivery-maintenance" data chain, and incorporates an AI multimodal intelligent search module. This enhances the utilization value of delivery data and provides a digital and intelligent upgrade path from "moving mountains of paper" to "cloud sharing" for ship delivery.

Notably, in conjunction with the completion and delivery of the first 325,000 DWT ore carrier built by Yangzhou COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry this October, the Jiangsu branch of CCS plans to issue CCS's first class certificate for a bulk carrier type with the additional notation "Digital Delivery (HM, ED)." This will certify that the new shipbuilding project has completed the aggregation and application of all ship delivery information based on a 3D digital model, effectively meeting the digital management needs of both the ship and shore. It will provide solid data support and technical assurance for the safe operation, intelligent maintenance, and efficient management of the ship.

The AIP defines the concept, the GDA certifies the system, and the class certificate validates the actual ship, forming a complete capability framework for CCS in the field of digital delivery. Together, these efforts are driving the standardization and orderly development of ship digital delivery.

Bringing Services "Down to Earth" and Making Standards "Come Alive"

The Jiangsu branch of CCS has been promoting standards from paper to the workshop through a series of on-site technical exchanges.

In early June, upon learning that Nantong Xiangyu Marine Equipment Co., Ltd. planned to apply for a digital delivery additional notation for a new project but lacked relevant practical experience and understanding of the standards, the Jiangsu branch of CCS quickly coordinated digitalization experts to visit the factory. They provided a detailed explanation of the "Guidelines for Ship Digital Delivery" (2025), covering delivery scope, technical indicators, and format requirements, with on-site demonstrations and immediate Q&A sessions. "We had no idea before, but now we feel much more confident," said a representative from the company.

To meet the needs of different shipyards, the Jiangsu branch of CCS has upgraded its services from "basic literacy" to "problem-solving" and "deep collaboration."

Qidong COSCO Shipping Offshore Engineering Co., Ltd. faced very specific challenges: misalignment between internal material codes and shipowner standards, a massive workload for organizing equipment data, and difficulties in handling 3D models. On June 17, the Jiangsu branch of CCS coordinated with the headquarters expert team to conduct a special exchange via video conference. They demonstrated in detail how to establish a mapping relationship between inspections and models to resolve the issue of inconsistent data standards among multiple parties. Addressing concerns about the "difficulty of handling 3D models," experts provided a "turnkey" solution: the shipyard only needed to provide the original design models and internal naming rules, while CCS would take full responsibility for subsequent lightweight processing, data anonymization, and association, giving the shipyard peace of mind. As a leading enterprise in the region, Nantong COSCO Shipping Kawasaki Ship Engineering Co., Ltd. proposed new service demands covering digital delivery, carbon footprint certification, and intelligent manufacturing. In early July, the Jiangsu branch of CCS coordinated a multi-department expert team to conduct in-depth exchanges at the shipyard. They responded to the submitted list of difficult issues one by one, providing constructive opinions on lightweight processing of 3D models and confidentiality solutions for hull line data. They also reached a consensus with the shipyard on building a ship carbon footprint calculation platform and certifying the carbon footprint additional notation for a 24,000 TEU methanol dual-fuel container ship. The "problem-forward, precise docking" approach further advanced CCS's collaboration on cutting-edge technologies with leading shipyards.

Since 2024, the Jiangsu branch of CCS has been leading demonstrations of product digital inspection within its jurisdiction. Anqing CSSC Power Equipment Co., Ltd. has completed over 3,000 digital inspection certificates. Currently, the Jiangsu branch of CCS is accelerating the construction and joint testing of digital systems and certificates. Through test bench upgrades, it has achieved data collection and automatic verification during testing processes, further improving work efficiency and promoting full digital certification coverage for the three enterprises of CSSC Power Group in Anqing.

On June 18 this year, the Jiangsu branch of CCS signed a cooperation agreement with Yangzhou COSCO Shipping Heavy Industry to jointly establish a "Collaborative Innovation Demonstration Base for New Technology Shipbuilding Projects." The collaboration will focus on areas such as ship digital delivery, intelligent manufacturing, green low-carbon technology, and talent development. According to Zhuang Zhong, this marks a new era of collaboration between the two parties, transitioning from the construction and inspection of steel giants to the co-creation of "digital twin ships" in the digital age.

Looking ahead, CCS has anchored three directions for continued deep development: first, integrating classification inspections into intelligent manufacturing processes to support explorations in intelligent welding and digital twin factories, promoting the leap from "shipbuilding" to "smart manufacturing"; second, exploring the application value of delivery data across the entire chain, including operations and finance, to establish new business models based on trusted data; and third, cultivating multidisciplinary talent proficient in green, intelligent, and digital technologies through training and joint research.

From paper to dust, data becomes the vessel. Through digital delivery, CCS is deeply involved in this profound transformation of China's shipbuilding industry, driving it towards greater precision, higher quality, and broader horizons.