Requirements engineering as the foundation for the success of substantial shipbuilding projects

The paper presents the general principles of requirements engineering with particular attention for the requirements specification presented on the example of an ambitious national program for the fleet expansion of the Polish Navy. The introduction outlines the origins of requirements engineering and its strong relationships with software engineering. It appears that most large IT projects usually struggle to meet the precisely formulated criteria of requirements engineering, which results in the tremendous waste of project resources. Next the concept of requirements and good practices in the preparation of requirements specifications is formulated. Later the example of the 15-year history of the Polish Gawron-class corvette, Project 621, is used to illustrate how systematic violations of the cardinal principles of requirements engineering and disregard for regulations can lead to major losses and consequently to suspending the whole project. An emergency solution was planned to conduct the thorough modification of the project so as to complete this very costly investment (about PLN 1 billion) and construct a much weaker patrol vessel – Ślązak, Project 621/M. The main research thesis can be limited to the statement that amateur and improvised requirements specification in the case of a large shipbuilding project, which was mainly based on socio-political needs, leads directly to the collapse of the project and significant material losses accompanied by the painful embarrassment of state bodies on an international scale.