A floating drydock is a type of pontoon for dry docking ships, possessing floodable buoyancy chambers and a "U"-shaped cross-section. The walls are used to give the dry dock stability when the floor or deck is below the surface of the water. When valves are opened, the chambers fill with water, causing the dry dock to float lower in the water. The deck becomes submerged and this allows a ship to be moved into position inside. When the water is pumped out of the chambers, the dry dock rises and the ship is lifted out of the water on the rising deck, allowing work to proceed on the ship's hull.

The Project SPD-201 floating dock was developed specifically for servicing small anti-submarine ships of Projects 1145 and 11451. A characteristic feature of these ships was the presence of a deep-immersed titanium wing and a complex propulsion system (six coaxial rotary propellers with a fixed pitch) that require special means for docking and repair of the underwater parts. Therefore, it was decided to use special floating docks to serve these ships. In total, three units were built under this project in Nikolaev.

Non-self-propelled floating dock with a metal hull, has four towers and is equipped with one crane. The width between the towers is 24 m, and the highest water height above the slipway deck is 8.5 m. The flooding time of the floating dock is 90 minutes, and the ascent time is 120 minutes.

Floating Drydock PD-83 laid down in Nikolaev, commissioned on 1987.

In 2021, the floating dock was excluded from the fleet lists, and transferred to SRZ Persey LLC (Sevastopol) without changing its name.