From one man with talent

It all began with wooden cutters and small ferries

Consulting Naval Architects Ole Steen Knudsen ApS was founded in Lystrup (Denmark) in 1966, and the first projects were mainly designs of newbuildings and re-buildings of wooden fishing vessels. But, business was soon booming, and the company expanded as the projects kept coming in.

During the seventies, the project portfolio expanded to designing the first passenger and cargo vessels, and over the course of the following twenty years, OSK saw its operational area spreading all over the world. OSK was involved in various assignments like Ro-Ro ferries in Bangladesh, fishing vessels for Greenland and the Faroe Islands as well as providing assistance to Danida in connection with the rehabilitation of vessels and ferries in East and West Africa.

Going Global

Client and project portfolio kept growing at a steady pace. During the nineties, OSK could add the following to the list of references: 24 home guard vessels for the Marine Home Guard; design and management of the fleet of Police vessels in Greenland for the Danish Police Force; development of a modern fleet of rescue vessels for Esvagt A/S; design and supervision of ferry and shipyard building projects in Asia and transport studies in Africa and the Far East, to name a few.

Into the New Millennium

In 2003 Anders Ørgård became the new owner and managing director of OSK, and the following year the activities of maritime consulting company ShipTech A/S were acquired and combined as the company known today as OSK-ShipTech A/S. With offices now both in Aarhus and Copenhagen, OSK-ShipTech A/S kept expanding with local project offices around the world as well as embarking on two new areas of work: offshore wind installation vessels and mega yachts.

Growing the Family: OSK Group

Since 2010, a growing list of companies has been added to the maritime consulting family of OSK Group. Sister company OSK-Offshore A/S was established in 2010 to concentrate on assistance for the offshore wind industry with consultancy on loading plans, transportation of monopiles, seafastening and seakeeping. Joint venture-company Lo-Noise ApS saw the light of day in 2011 with the aim to design and build cofferdams for reduction of waterborne noise when monopiles are driven into the seabed.

In 2015, consulting naval architects A/S Jørgen Petersen and its employees were acquired, and OSK-ShipTech saw the addition of many years’ extensive expertise in domestic ferries and passenger transport of ASJP contributing to OSK’s strong brand.

Latest addition to the OSK Group – Steen Friis Design A/S in 2016 – cements OSK’s position as Denmark’s leading naval architects with marine engineering, naval architecture and interior design in one highly specialised design- and consultancy house offering our entire pool of accumulated expertise and in-house synergies to our clients.

Award-winning Designs

OSK-ShipTech A/S and its sister companies are working with the world’s leading operators on newbuilding and conversion designs, concept developments, hybrid propulsion systems, and innovation projects. We have been part of the largest ever, Danish maritime green innovation project Blue INNOship.

Over the past years, we have received numerous awards for our ship designs. In 2014, we won the Shippax Award together with Fjord Line A/S for the conversion of m/v Oslofjord. For three consecutive years – 2014, 2015 and 2016 – we won Maritime Denmark’s Danish Ship of the Year: Bergensfjord (Owner’s Advisor), Princess Isabella (design of Denmark’s first domestic LNG passenger ferry) and OV Bøkfjord (concept and basic design). Further Shippax Awards and Ship of the Year Award from Ferry Shipping Summit has been added to the walls.

New Horizons

In 2016, OSK-ShipTech A/S celebrated its fifty years’ anniversary marking half a century in successful and innovative ship design and marine consulting. 2016 was also the year when Anders Ørgård passed the baton to Jacob H. Thygesen. As CEO of OSK Group, Jacob will lead OSK-ShipTech and its sister companies into the following fifty years as one of the world’s leading independent ship designers and maritime consultants.