On December 2, at the Harbin Engineering University (HEU) pavilion during Marintec China 2025, the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) presented HEU with the first Design Assessment Certificate in China for the DP3 Dynamic Positioning System.

YIN Jingwei, President of HEU, delivered a speech. The ceremony was attended by WANG Binhong, General Manager of ABS Greater China Plan Review Center; CHEN Hui, Chief Operating Officer of ABS Greater China; XIE Youyong, Deputy Director of the Shanghai Salvage Bureau; WU Wenwei, Deputy Director of the CSSC 702 Institute; WANG Qingyu, Deputy Director of the CSSC 704 Institute; REN Yi, Deputy Director of the CSSC 708 Institute; JIN Xiangjun, Executive Deputy Secretary-General of the Chinese Society of Naval Architects and Marine Engineers; TANG Gulashan, Deputy Director of the Institute of Deep-Sea Science and Engineering, CAS; JIANG Yonggang, Assistant General Manager of the CSSC Huangpu Wenchong Shipbuilding Company Limited; LI Lei, General Manager of the Science & Technology Development Department, China Merchants Industry Holdings, Co., Ltd; YIN Huabing, Senior Expert of the Ship Management Department, COSCO Shipping Specialized Carriers Co., Ltd.; LI Yu, General Manager of the COSCO Shipping (Guangzhou) Co., Ltd.; SHI Yuanqiang, Chairman of the Alumni Marine Industry Association of HEU; Professor XIA Guihua, DP3 project leader and HEU faculty member; and CHEN Hailong, Assistant to the President of HEU.

President YIN Jingwei noted that HEU has steadfastly implemented President XI Jinping’s guiding directives delivered during his inspection of HEU, targeting global S&T frontiers and national strategic needs while achieving a series of breakthroughs. “The ABS approval is a vivid demonstration of HEU’s role in propelling China’s ship and ocean engineering sector onto the world stage,” Yin said, calling for deeper collaboration with domestic and international maritime enterprises, research institutions and classification societies to accelerate the iterative upgrading and industrial application of DP technology, and advance the high-end transformation of China’s ship-supporting industry.

In the presence of the guests, the ABS representative presented the Design Assessment Certificate to the R&D team of the DP3 dynamic positioning system.

Led by Professor XIA Guihua and pooling domestic industry-university-research strengths, the DP3 system took more than two decades to develop, achieving major breakthroughs in overall system design, high-precision modelling, station-keeping control, moving-target tracking, and virtual-reality fused land-sea equivalent testing. Already deployed on numerous large Chinese ships and offshore equipment, the system has demonstrated robust technical performance and market potential, and won the 2024 National Prize for Progress in Science and Technology (Second Class). With the first-ever ABS endorsement granted to a Chinese DP3 system, the approval opens the door to the global market and positions the technology to deliver Chinese solutions to the worldwide maritime and offshore sectors.

Officials from the Offshore Department and Marine Machinery & Electrical Department of the ABS Greater China Plan Review Center, together with heads of relevant HEU administrative departments and colleges, attended the ceremony.