Melissa Johnson
Quality Control and Safety Manager
Ben’s Structural Fabrication
“It’s a very quick way to verify assembly and it saves a lot of time and a lot of issues with rework and making sure that we can verify right away if something’s wrong.”
Keep commercial shipbuilding
FabStation identifies errors early in the build lifecycle, reducing costly and schedule breaking rework.
AR INSPECTION FOR SHIPBUILDING
Catch the errors before
they are welded in
FabStation isn’t built to live at a desk. It’s used in the shipbuilder’s yard.
Fabricators, QC teams, and Class Surveyors use AR to overlay full-scale 3D models directly onto real block builds, verifying errors, dimensions, and missing parts before consolidation.
No manual faulty verifications. No guesswork.
FabStation stops the build from drifting away from the correct one.
Real-scale AR overlay
Project your digital model directly onto the physical build
Multiple device access
Built for AR headsets, tablets, and web for complete visibility
Software integrations
Connects with leading engineering, modelling, and BIM softwares
Project tracking
Audit, analyze, and report across every build and stage
FabStation is built for precision
Watch how FabStation is delivering efficiency across diverse production floors
IMPORT DESIGN FILES DIRECTLY FROM YOUR ENGINEERING SOFTWARE
FabStation x TKMS
Supporting Canada’s Industrial and Technological Benefits Framework
FabStation is Canadian-built, Canadian-funded technology developed for advanced manufacturing. Integrating it into TKMS’s Canadian operations and supply chain creates direct, documentable ITB value across several policy-recognized categories.
Direct Canadian Technology Spend
FabStation is developed with NRC-IRAP funding and active SR&ED investment. Software licensing through Canadian operations qualifies as direct ITB-eligible spend. Deploying it across TKMS’s Canadian facilities and recommending it to your Tier 1 and Tier 2 fabrication suppliers generates measurable offset credits tied to a genuinely transformative platform.
Workforce Development and Modernization
FabStation puts AR-guided work instructions, quality inspection, and dimensional verification directly in the hands of apprentices and tradesmen. Documented outcomes: 40% increase in apprentice productivity, 75% reduction in production errors. Deploying it in Canadian fabrication operations qualifies as workforce development under ITB, with measurable, auditable results.
Continuous improvement in your AR R&D
With our proven expertise in AR based 3D modelling of complex metal structures, we can provide deep domain information in your efforts of research and development of AR in shipbuilding. Recommendations emerging from our research will help TKMS’s Canadian subcontractors: structural steel fabricators, equipment manufacturers, tech partners — generates ITB credit through product development while improving quality, traceability, and delivery across your tier suppliers.
FabStation continues to be the leader in this space by becoming device agnostic; transitioning to new headsets as the market grows.
Advanced Manufacturing Innovation — R&D Co-Development Opportunity
This is the highest-multiplier ITB angle available. FabStation is executing an NRC-IRAP funded R&D project (April 2026–October 2027) developing a 3D Gaussian Splatting (3DGS) automated capture and compare pipeline — a system that generates photorealistic, spatially accurate (as-built) records of complex fabricated assemblies and compares them against CAD reference models for anomaly detection.
The naval scope is clear: submarine and vessel documentation, refit workflow support, and maintenance records. At TRL 5 post the UVic Mitacs POC, it directly addresses one of the most persistent costs in naval refit: the gap between design documentation and actual vessel state.
A co-development partnership between TKMS and FabStation would:
- Generate ITB credit as a qualifying R&D co-investment with a Canadian SME
- Potentially qualify under the Defence Innovation Consortium and ISED’s naval industrial capability priorities
- Produce IP held in Canada (Eterio owns full IP from the Mitacs work; partnership terms structured accordingly)
- Create a fieldable capability specific to TKMS’s Canadian vessel programs
3D Gaussian Splatting Model
FabStation’s speed and accuracy
meets TKMS’s commitment to industrial future
TKMS’s commitment to Canada’s shipbuilding sector demands real industrial innovations. This commitment will increase Canadian shipbuilding capacity in which domestic steel will feed Canadian shipbuilder’s yards and these operations will have to meet Surveyors and Royal Canadian Navy expectations.
FabStation is built for exactly meeting those expectation. By using AR 3D technology work can be verified against the approved build designs before errors moves downstream, when rework is at its most expensive and schedule-damaging.
For a program designed to prove Canada can build and sustain a submarine to superior German engineering rigour, FabStation makes sure the work it produces is built right the first time.
01 QUALITY CONTROL
Build fast with precision
Verify builds against the engineering designs by overlying 3D models at full scale, not against a stack of paper based 2D drawings. QC inspectors and Class Surveyors use the same model during the entire inspection cycles eliminating errors early on.
- See misalignment, missing parts, and wrong-position instantly during builds
- Catch the defects at various stages of completion and minimize corrective hot work during consolidation
- Cut fabrication rework by up to 95% by catching errors early, before builds move down the production stages
- Reduce request for build information by up to 80% by resolving questions visually from the 3D models
02 OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY
Production visibility across every stage
Rework is the stat nobody puts on the dashboard. FabStation’s Production Module makes build progress, where it’s drifting, visible across every block built, at every stage.
- Track each build through the completion stages with customizable production workflows
- Tie shop floor verification to your weekly targets: pipe spools installed, NCR, and defects resolved
- Collect identified defects into your database, not a separate silo. Run reports to see what’s causing rework.
- Go paperless. Access drawings, models, and inspection records digitaly on tablet or desktop
03 WORKFORCE ENABLEMENT
Make transitional workforce productive faster
Canadian shipbuilding is rebuilding its trade base from a transient workforce. FabStation has cutting edge tools that shows a new tradesperson exactly how to build fast and error free.
- New hires train using AR technology and 3D models for building the ship blocks. No wasting months on learning interpretation of a 2D drawing
- Fewer questions are asked back to the detailer generating faster, on-time production cycles
- Quicker adoption and success of apprentices allows staying on schedule
- Training and information available digitally on FabStation’s Knowledge Base, allowing teams to learn from anywhere
UPCOMING: German language support
A shared space between German and Canadian workforce shouldn’t lose clarity in translation.
German-language support is on the FabStation roadmap — built for TKMS teams on both sides of the Atlantic.
- Production workflows, inspection reports, model annotations, and defect records in German and English
- The same 3D overlay everyone reads the same way, engineers in Germany, fabricators in Canadian yards
- Remove the layer of interpretation barrier at exactly the points where interpretational mistakes cost the most
Numbers that matter to shipbuilding
FABRICATION
95%
Less rework by catching errors before they move downstream
INSPECTION
2x
Faster inspections without using traditional tape measure and paper stack chaos
DETECTION
+25%
More errors caught at QC vs. traditional inspection
TRUSTED BY CLIENTS IN 31 COUNTRIES
Hear it from our happy customers
Social Feed: LinkedIn Feed & Interactions | Videos: FabStation’s Customer Success
Kirk McGraw
Executive Vice President
Zimmerman Metals
“We’ve been using Fab Station for a little over a year, year and a half now. It’s actually working out really well for us. We can expand our QC department…”
Jesus Rodriguez
Plant Manager
Staley Steel
“It basically does all the layout for you. You can see which holes are off and if the beam is short or long. This makes QC a whole lot simpler and easier.”
Contact: Randy Warnaar (CEO & Founder, FabStation)