Steel-cutting ceremony

The steel-cutting ceremony marks the first cutting of plate for a newbuilding, the earliest of the four traditional shipbuilding milestones: steel cutting, keel laying, launch or float-out, and delivery. A profiling machine, typically a CNC plasma or oxy-fuel cutter, makes a symbolic first cut on a hull plate, often witnessed by the owner and class society. It signals the start of fabrication in the cutting and panel lines that feed block construction, and it fixes a contractual and program reference date ahead of keel laying. The ceremony itself is a yard and owner event; the engineering significance is the production start it records.