COVID-19 Field Work Procedure
Since the New Jersey government has formally announced a stay-at-home order on March 21, 2020 to curtail the spread of coronavirus, the Martin & Ottaway office doors have been closed. However, even as many other states continue to implement stay-at-home orders, as marine engineers, surveyors, naval architects, and appraisers, our doors are always open. In… Read more »
Office COVID-19 Protocol
At this moment the M&O office is operating. We are fortunate to have a spacious office where there are inherently large social distances, and personnel can choose to work from home whenever they feel it helps the overall situation. We developed our own office Coronavirus fighting procedures based on CDC guidelines and the best information… Read more »
The Unpredictability of Innovation in Wheelchair Use
Standard wheelchairs have not changed in decades. It is a chair with wheels and has foot pads to support a person’s feet and to keep them from dragging on the ground. The foot pads are actually quite complicated, because they need to flip away when the person is being seated or stands up and they… Read more »
Death by Ship Value
Martin & Ottaway has been performing ship values since its formation in 1875. Our records go back to the late 1800’s and we have hung onto our historic records through all our office moves. A lot of our actual project work has now been digitized which is a huge space saver, but other paper records… Read more »
Build a Little, Test a Little and Learn a Lot; A Waterpomptang story
Note: The Waterpomptang family is fictitious and occasionally a Waterpomptang story appears on the M&O website. Some say their adventures resemble real events, but that is just a coincidence. It was early morning at Watt & Fulton’s office above the BuyLo Packy in Red Bank. After the VC investors had overcome their initial… Read more »
Hey UN! Here is your Golden Opportunity for Global Relevance
Earlier this week the United Nations issued the “2020 World Economic Situations and Prospects report,” a high-level annual report. It is chock full of economic information collected by just about every United Nations Economic analysis body. The report has a foreword by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. In it, he stresses the importance of… Read more »
The Big Maritime Thing(s) in 2019
I actually enjoy taking stock of a past year in its last few days. The office tends to be quiet and a few moments of introspection can be interesting. This year I did not have any real innovations or significant developments in mind as far as 2019 milestones are concerned. I wondered if 2019 was… Read more »
Marmaduke Redux
Marmaduke Surfaceblow was a much beloved character in a monthly column in the trade magazine Power Magazine. I very much enjoyed reading the stories. Marmaduke was a fictional character who was a ship’s engineer who became an engineering consultant. Marmaduke traveled the world and solved various power problems. The problems probably were actual technical problems… Read more »
Solar Math Update
I installed roof top solar on my house in July 2017 and wrote a blog about it promising to provide an update in a few months. I did not get to it until now, but after more than two years of operation it is even more fun to revisit the project to see how it… Read more »
Liberty Meats
By a weird coincidence my sister, Annemarie, came across this story that my father, Henk van Hemmen, wrote on Veteran’s Day in 2004. “Liberty” Meats Looking into the history of warfare and battle ground victories it is a well-known fact that in general terms, the army that is well-fitted out and well-fed will have a tremendous… Read more »