TURKU, Finland -- Richard D. Fain isn't just the chairman and chief executive of Miami-based Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd., which owns Oasis of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship.

He's also the chair man.

``Richard has sat in every chair on this ship,'' said Raimund H. Gschaider, hotel director for the Oasis of the Seas, as he led a Miami Herald reporter on a tour of the new ship at the STX Europe shipyard here, just before its completion.

Fain and other Royal Caribbean executives set up ``chair shows'' to test out each type of chair for comfort and fit. ``I was at three shows myself,'' Gschaider said. ``The executives go through the various mock-up models with the designers and operations people, and they all sit in every chair. Literally.''

By all accounts, Fain gets intimately involved in the nitty-gritty details of new ship construction and design, including the furnishings, entertainment and amenities.

COMPLETE PICTURE

``He is engaged at the highest and lowest levels of altitude,'' said Adam M. Goldstein, who is president and chief executive of Royal Caribbean International, the largest of the company's five brands. ``There isn't any discussion too big for him to have and there isn't any minute detail too minute for him.''

Fain -- who as top executive at the large public company juggles a wide range of responsibilities from overseeing dealings with Wall Street to working on industry issues -- has been traveling back and forth between Miami and Turku, the Finnish shipbuilding center, as the massive Oasis project came together over the past two years. The $1.4 billion ship arrived November 13 at its home port of Port Everglades, which got a $75-million upgrade to welcome the high-profile vessel.

Oasis is operating a few promotional cruises for travel agents and media before it begins regular voyages December 1. One big priority upon its arrival at Port Everglades was the installation of some 12,000 plants, bushes and trees that provide greenery to Central Park, a large open-air atrium in the center of the ship.

Fain's fingerprints are all over the 5,400-passenger vessel, which is so large it's designed with seven distinct neighborhoods.

Well into the construction process, Fain noticed that the space above the ship's bridge made for an ideal lookout for passengers, Gschaider said.

BIRD'S EYE VIEW

``One of the many things he saw was the [opportunity for an] observation deck on the bridge. He said, `This view is too good. We have to have it for our guests,' '' said Gschaider. ``So there is this observation deck, which is right on top of the bridge, so you can have the same view as the captain. . . . I can see this thing chockablock every time we go alongside.''

At the Seafood Shack, a casual restaurant on the Boardwalk, one of seven themed ``neighborhoods'' on Oasis, Fain noticed the ornamental surfboards hanging on the wall looked too new to seem authentic. So he and others suggested they be scruffed up a bit.

Fain, who graduated from Berkeley and the Wharton School of Business, got his feet wet in shipping at Gotaas-Larsen Shipping Corp., a London-based firm that held a large stake in Royal Caribbean. He sat on Royal's board, and was promoted in 1988 to be its chairman and chief executive.

Fain turned around the small, loss-ridden company and led it on an ambitious fleet expansion that has turned Royal Caribbean into the second-largest cruise operator in the world behind Miami-based Carnival Corp.