Boksa Marine Design: multi-discipline, cross-sector experience leads to innovative, efficient solutions

Finding one with more than two decades of global cross-sector experience in everything from fiberglass sport fishers to luxury yachts to commercial and governmental vessels is rare. Finding a firm that offers all of this and whose key team members have practical, hands-on experience at sea as Captain or crew is almost unheard of.

“Our team has served on vessels and gained experience that is extremely valuable and something that you just can’t get from a classroom or sitting in an office,” explains Jeff Kuenning, president and naval architect at Boksa Marine Design (BMD), when discussing the advantages the Florida, US-based company brings to the drafting table.

The cross-sector experience is invaluable, especially when you consider the fact that the firm recently signed on its 1,000^th project. Applying yacht design concepts – where Boksa got its start in 2003 - to heavy-duty commercial vessels and the converse is unique; though the design criteria, regulatory compliance and safety issues have some overlap.

“To a degree, a vessel is a vessel, once you strip away the finish work, they’re very similar,” Kuenning says. “A lot of the requirements, though there may be some variations, are also similar. You see a lot of the same criteria, which allows us to easily flex between vessel types.”

With in-house naval architecture, marine engineering, production engineering, and specialized marine electrical engineering, clients don’t have to rely on a broker or other consultant to gerrymander disjointed engineering teams. Every discipline works side-by-side, which gives BMD a leg-up during the initial client consultations and the ability to make mid-project changes without missing a beat.

“Everything has a ripple effect,” says Kuenning. “Any change, any modification can have a potential impact that affects other aspects of the vessel or its operation. So being able to have that expertise in-house and access to that is invaluable.”

Working across sectors, Kuenning says, keeps the team at BMD from creative stagnation.

“Being able to hop from segment to segment and then taking those learning experiences from each segment – each type of boat, passenger vessel, tug, barge, large yacht, commercial yacht – taking all that and applying those learnings, experiences and applications to different projects is enormously beneficial in my eyes.”

Chief among those benefits, client solutions that are as efficient as they are innovative, shorting the time from concept to delivery and eliminating costly overruns along the way. And when it comes time to refresh and refit the complicated infrastructure that is a luxury yacht, who better than the original designers?

Boksa Marine Design’s recreational undertakings read like a Who’s Who of yacht builders and its commercial relationships with shipyards are equally impressive. For these, BMD provides complete engineering packages for vessels constructed in fiberglass reinforced plastic (FRP), aluminum, steel, and hybrid combinations of these materials, including steel hulls with aluminum superstructures.

Beyond design, the firm offers structural, marine, marine systems and marine electrical engineering; stability and structural analysis; hull design and optimization; regulatory and classification support, along with technical coordination, project management and post-delivery owner’s engineering and product support. Most recently, the firm added shoreside support to its portfolio. This new offering on the other side of the water’s edge expands BMD’s core capabilities to include shoreside electrical design and power systems, directly accelerating vessel electrification, shore-power integration, and climate-resilience upgrades for U.S. maritime facilities.

Finding a firm that can support your next design project might not be a difficult task, but finding one with the breadth, depth and hands-on, real-world experience of Boksa Marine Design would be a challenge, indeed.