Studying naval architecture

Added to the archive in 2026 · Reference note, not an original Bennett Offshore page

The man who founded Bennett Offshore never took a degree in naval architecture. According to the restored key personnel page, William T. Bennett graduated from Tulane University in 1963 with a Bachelor of Science in mathematics and psychology, added an MBA in operations research in 1964, and did postgraduate work in civil engineering. He then worked offshore for a pipeline contractor, in a naval architecture office and in the design and estimating departments of a shipyard before joining Friede & Goldman in 1974, where he rose to president. His motto, quoted on the same page, was that technology is best tempered by earned experience.

That route is rarer now. Offshore design work today runs on analysis software, passes through classification society review and in the United States often needs a licensed engineer's stamp, so the usual way in today is a formal engineering degree. This note describes how the field is taught and qualified in North America, using the work shown in this archive as the yardstick.

What the job actually covers

The service lists on the restored pages are a fair syllabus. The naval architecture page names hydrostatics and intact and damaged stability, ballasting and lifting analyses, loading charts, launch analysis, global strength, hydrodynamic and mooring analysis in the time domain, dynamic positioning, vessel motions and tow analysis, plus fieldwork: deadweight surveys, inclining experiments, site surveys. The structural engineering page adds global and local finite element analysis, fatigue analysis and spudcan and hull analyses, and the systems design page covers piping, HVAC, electrical and instrumentation, the side of the work that marine engineers handle. A graduate in this field needs fluid mechanics, structures, ship stability and enough soil mechanics to understand why a jack-up leg can punch through, a problem set out in our note on legs, spudcans and preload.

A small firm also needs people who can turn analysis into tools. The illustrations and custom software page lists hydrostatics calculators for heel, trim, draught, hog and sag, stability and cargo loading spreadsheets, global strength tools and simplified site assessment programs for jack-ups. Someone who can program as well as calculate was, and is, worth a lot to an office of the size the careers page describes: at its peak Bennett employed up to 40 people in two cities, having started with one employee working out of the founder's son's bedroom.

Where it is taught

A handful of North American schools offer the degree under its own name. The best-known specialist school is Webb Institute in Glen Cove, New York, founded in 1889 by the shipbuilder William H. Webb. Every graduate leaves with a Bachelor of Science in naval architecture and marine engineering. The student body numbers around 90, domestic students pay no tuition, though room and board are extra, and each January and February students spend eight weeks in what the school calls Winter Work: shipyards in the first year, sea time in the second, design offices after that. Every senior writes a thesis, and the campus has a 90-foot model basin.

Large universities fill out the map. The University of Michigan has a Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering and a Marine Hydrodynamics Laboratory. In New Orleans, where Bennett studied and founded his firm, the naval architecture and marine engineering programme sits in the College of Engineering building, the tallest on the campus of the University of New Orleans, which returned to its original name, LSU New Orleans, in July 2026. In Canada, Memorial University of Newfoundland offers a combined degree in ocean and naval architectural engineering, close to the Grand Banks fields. Texas A&M offers ocean engineering at its Galveston campus. It is also possible to come in through civil or mechanical engineering and pick up the marine part at work or in a master's programme, which is closer to Bennett's own path.

The professional bodies

Two societies shape the profession. The Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers, SNAME, was organised in 1893; William H. Webb was among the men who helped found it. It publishes peer-reviewed papers and runs technical and research committees, and one of those committees produced the Recommended Practice for the Site-Specific Assessment of Jack-ups, T&R 5-5A. The restored technical papers page notes that William Bennett co-chaired the committee that drafted the original version. The British Royal Institution of Naval Architects, RINA, is older, founded in 1860 as the Institution of Naval Architects. The key personnel page lists Bennett as a member of both, and of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the International Association of Drilling Contractors.

SNAME offers a student membership grade, and for a student the main draw is access to papers. Our note on how offshore engineers publish explains where those papers appear and how to read one.

Licensing: FE, then PE

In the United States the letters P.E. after a name, as on the key personnel page for Mohamad Mansour and Jake Alford, mean a state licence. The path has two exams, both written by the National Council of Examiners for Engineering and Surveying, NCEES. The Fundamentals of Engineering exam comes first and is open to final-year students in ABET-accredited programmes; it is a computer-based test of 110 questions in a six-hour session. Webb, for one, strongly encourages its seniors to sit it.

After the required years of experience, which vary by state, comes the Principles and Practice of Engineering exam. Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering is one of its disciplines; SNAME publishes a reference handbook for candidates. According to the Wikipedia article on the PE exam, first-time pass rates for the April 2010 sitting ranged from 85 percent for Naval Architecture to 46 percent for Structural I.

Graduate school and the international route

Offshore engineering is an international trade, and this archive shows it. The Q4000 grew from a concept by SPD/McClure, was designed by Bennett and was built by Keppel AmFELS in Brownsville, Texas. The going on and off location service was carried out by Keppel affiliates in Singapore, with soil research done with the University of Western Australia and centrifuge tests under a joint industry project led by the Dutch institutes Marin and Deltares. The 2005 jack-up primer was written jointly by Bennett and Keppel FELS engineers.

Many engineers in that world earn a first degree at home and a master's or doctorate abroad. For applicants writing in a second language, the statement of purpose can be the hardest part of the file to get right, because it has to argue for a research fit rather than tell a life story. Structora has a worked statement of purpose example for international applicants that shows the shape US programmes expect, including a research interests section. For a naval architecture applicant that section might name a problem from this archive, such as spudcan-footprint interaction or going-on-location motions, and the papers that first set it out.

Learning from the field

No programme replaces time on a vessel. Webb builds sea time into its second year for that reason, and the restored general consulting page shows how much Bennett's own work happened on site: construction supervision, model test supervision, inclining experiments, consulting during damage situations. A student who has stood on a jack-up during preload, or watched an inclining test, reads a stability booklet differently afterwards.

For self-study, start with the primer Bennett and Keppel engineers wrote in 2005. The full document is not available here, but selected text from its first chapter survives on the restored jack-up primer page, and our glossary decodes the vocabulary.

Next in the archive: How offshore engineers publish · History of Bennett Offshore, 1997 to 2017 · Restored page: Marine operating manuals