CASE STUDY | HamiltonJet Projects

HamiltonJet is a kiwi institution—founded in 1939, they’ve been at the forefront of jet boating and waterjet propulsion for decades. Today, HamiltonJet are the leading innovators in the area of waterjet propulsion and have more than 17 water jet models being sold worldwide. Along with marine jet units, the company also produces its own electronic and hydraulic control systems.

THE CHALLENGE

HamiltonJet has required additional design resource in their New Product Development Team and Current Products Team over a 12-month period, in order to meet their delivery targets and business goals.

The Current Products Team is uniquely customer-focused in the way they support bespoke designs and unique requests within marine design.

The New Product Development Team is focused on the development of new jet models to meet market demand.

To be part of these teams, a high level of experience and attention to detail is required.

Caliber Design has a longstanding relationship with HamiltonJet and have developed a solid understanding of how the company operates and what their business needs are. In addition, we have a pool of experienced engineers, some of whom have worked for HamiltonJet before.

Birdseye view of HamiltonJet HT900 waterjet

THE SOLUTION

Over a 12 month period, Caliber provided four Design Engineers to support HamiltonJet’s inhouse design teams with two key projects:

  1. The redesign of a large order of HT900 waterjets to fit a major international country’s coast guard project. The redesign included extensive changes to the hydraulic systems and manifold in addition to casting design changes of the jet itself. To achieve this, Caliber engineers rapidly came up to speed to work closely with the inhouse design engineers and manufacturing team to ensure the design was fit for purpose.
  2. The development of the two new jet models, including the HTX52. Our engineers assisted with the designs at various stages from concept all the way through to manufacturing and delivery of the jet.

Caliber’s involvement with HamiltonJet over that period of time resulted in:

  • the modified HT900 waterjets being delivered to the customer, exceeding the delivery expectations and with no design rework.
  • the new jet models were developed on time and exceeded their delivery, weight reduction, and performance targets.

At the time of writing this case study, the first two units have already been delivered and another jet is currently under development.

Hamilton Jet
HTX52 HamiltonJet
HTX52 HamiltonJet

We recently had Caliber support us in the new jet development team. We needed extra resource to support our delivery program in order to meet our strategy goals. As I have found working with Caliber in a previous role, their 'in company' model works exceptionally well. Having one of the Caliber guys in the office like they are one of the Hamilton Jet team is invaluable. They are able to pick up our systems and integrate into our project management process quickly. Getting support and answers to questions in both directions happens without delay. They can also easily attend design reviews, daily meetings etc. As our priorities change, we can be agile and shift work around easily, overcoming bottle necks. On top of all this, they are genuinely a good bunch of guys, which makes them a great partner to our business.

Hamish Thompson

New Product Development Manager, HamiltonJet