Navy

Weathering the Workload: Maintaining the U. S. Navy’s Surface Fleet

The U.S. Navy’s surface forces are on station all over the world every day of the calendar year. There are about one hundred ships at sea either deployed or preparing to deploy. It is an expansive war machine that commands the global commons, protects commercial shipping, and defends American values. However, keeping many complex warships in good working condition is an undertaking that requires a massive investment in national resources. This is particularly true if those ships are going to achieve their desired years of service, spanning decades, while remaining relevant to counter evolving maritime threats. Such an immense responsibility falls to Naval Sea Systems Command (NavSea), which includes several organizations committed to the execution and oversight of daily the shipboard maintenance, modernization, and repair of surface ships.

 

With this daunting task at hand, the Navy has learned how to organize and operationalize maintenance while living up to its constitutional mandate to preserve our floating national arsenal. The modern-day result is the Regional Maintenance Centers (RMC), strategically located throughout the world to provide support, assistance, and oversight of the entire effort. When considering the extraordinary nature of their mission, so that deployed forces can remain equipped and ready for combat action at sea, it is not a stretch to claim that without these organizations, the Navy’s surface force would cease to exist.

To put this into context, the Navy continuously manages approximately 40 major maintenance availabilities, known as Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) availabilities, where ships are undergoing planned maintenance and repairs in over a dozen private shipyards in five regions throughout the United States in addition to three overseas sites. This far-reaching system of industrial activity consumes millions of man-days and billions of dollars annually. Just the notion of a single shipboard maintenance project of such enormity can easily overwhelm anybody who cares to study the details.

Unquestionably, the RMCs are the Navy’s number one enabler for a combat-ready surface force but the challenge to executing maintenance is becoming pressurized by the growing age of the fleet and the introduction of radically new and revolutionary ships, such as littoral combat ships (LCS) and Zumwalt-class destroyers (DDG-1000). With that in mind, there must be greater investment in the RMCs, keeping them at maximum capacity, creating efficiencies in maintenance practices, processes, and production. A thorough knowledge of the challenges and complexities of the naval ship repair community is crucial so that the importance of funding this enterprise is well understood.

Organization and Infrastructure

To the casual observer, it may seem logical that Naval ships undergo depot-level maintenance in naval shipyards, which was once the case, especially since two of those shipyards have embedded intermediate maintenance activities (IMA) that are essentially embedded RMCs. Currently, the U.S. Navy operates four public shipyards located in Kittery, Maine; Norfolk, Virginia; Bremerton, Washington; and Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. However, it is important to distinguish between public ship repair facilities and privately owned and operated commercial shipyards where all Navy conventional surface ship maintenance is conducted.

The naval shipyards are primarily responsible for submarine and aircraft carrier nuclear work along with the associated non-propulsion plant maintenance. But in the private shipyards, the RMCs oversee the work of a certified private contractor as well as provide other technical support. Having said that, it takes more than a shipyard to fully support the repair, maintenance, and life-cycle management of today’s fleet and the RMCs were conceived with that in mind. A deeper look at the history and evolution of these organizations offers a glimpse into the unique operational capabilities of the RMC construct.

The Navy’s RMCs, as a clearing house for all maintenance product lines, did not always look the way they do today. Their appearance was quite the opposite, with a completely non-unified laydown and separate lines of reporting. Prior to 2004, U.S. Navy ship maintenance, modernization, and repair was planned and executed in Fleet Concentration Areas (FCA) under four separate commands; Supervisor of Shipbuilding (SUPSHIP), Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity (SIMA), Regional Support Group (RSG), and the Fleet Technical Support Center (FTSC). In 2004, these four separate ship maintenance organizations were merged to create a single command, the RMCs.

Seeking to leverage the collective functions of those commands, the RMCs experienced a series of reductions in military and civilian personnel and contractors. These reductions were intended to yield projected efficiencies from integrating the four commands. However, many of these efficiencies were not realized and the result was a negative impact to overall Navy ship maintenance. After looking deeply into the circumstances that caused such increased risk to the enterprise, RMC manning was dramatically increased between 2009 and 2015.

After a somewhat uncertain beginning following the reorganization, the RMCs are operating as intended and they serve as the Naval Supervising Activities (NSA) for non-nuclear surface ship maintenance and modernization. Additionally, they manage selected non-nuclear work on aircraft carriers, submarines, small boats, and other surface craft in their assigned regions, along with providing intermediate-level maintenance and fleet technical assistance (FTA) services to ships and submarines worldwide. Overall, the RMCs are comprised more than 4,000 civilian and military personnel with oversight of more than 3 million man-days of commercial shipyard work being executed for the Navy every year. With all this skilled labor and industrial capital there is a lot of activity moving in many directions all the time. But the real challenge is to manage the Navy’s maintenance and upkeep demands without hindering the operational availability needed to support fleet-wide underway requirements. This is where the art and science of fleet scheduling comes into play.

Maintenance Concept of Operations

Determining when to schedule surface ships for both CNO availabilities and smaller maintenance windows is straight forward if viewed through the calendar opportunities for such work. However, when integrating a single ship’s maintenance schedule with the overall schedules of other ships in the fleet and distributing the exact work requirements for maintaining each individual ship over its service life is quit another matter. This synchronization of resources along with the programming of engineered technical requirements necessitates a delicate balance between the operational availability of every ship with the long-term readiness and relevance of every ship in the Navy’s inventory.

It begins when a ship is 720 days away from beginning its CNO availability. As one would expect, the totality and rigor that goes into planning such a large-scale project requires every bit of that two-year period and it consumes the efforts of numerous organizations. But before we go any further, one small caveat seems fitting before diving into the specifics of surface ship maintenance management. This is a technical business and out of sheer necessity, the Navy ship maintenance community has developed a language all its own. So, at the risk of oversimplifying the discussion, caution will be exercised when describing the nuances of ship repair while not deviating too far from the established lexicon.

The surface ship engineering operational cycle (SSEOC) is the basis for determining what maintenance is programmed into availability periods. It is a repetitive schedule that notionally defines the balance between operations and maintenance over the course of the ship’s life. Likewise, the modernization fielding plans add systems upgrades into the SSEOC maintenance windows. The goal of the SSEOC is to ensure that a ship reaches its expected service life (ESL) as a modernized, fully capable warship. The Surface Maintenance Engineering Planning Program (SURFMEPP) under the Naval Sea Systems Command Surface Warfare directorate (SEA-21) is responsible for long-term life cycle planning on surface ships with the goal of achieving ESL for all platforms. With a rigorous engineering approach, SURFMEPP develops class maintenance plans (CMP) for all surface ships then integrates specific technical requirements to produce class-specific technical foundation papers (TFP), which equate to specific mandatory technical requirements (MTR). This approach considers overall systems performance expectations and anticipated operational environments and is intended to stay ahead of systems degradations over time. When combining the maintenance and repair requirements with the planned modernization for any given maintenance availability, a hull-specific ship sheet is produced which represents the budgetary programming requirement for a specific ship in a fiscal year. Ultimately, this work will be authorized by the type commander (TYCOM) and becomes the authorized work package (AWP) that will be solicited for bid by private shipyard contractors. The combination of all AWPs for the fleet for any given year is known as the workload agreement (WLA).

The next step in the planning process is to validate whether the AWP is executable within the proposed availability window. SEA-21 leads the duration analysis process that scrutinizes the work package, determining whether it can be accomplished within the proposed schedule. If critical path work or controlling work might be compromised, recommendations for workload or schedule adjustments will be made to the Fleet and TYCOM. To factor in overall fleet requirements each year, the Surface Fleet Availability Scheduling Team (Surface FAST) convenes twice per year to consider the multiship duration requirements in each port industrial base and to determine whether a region’s port facilities can execute the proposed workload. Port capacity, dry dock availability, RMC oversight capacity, and other factors are analyzed across a nine-year workload forecast to determine whether the overall workload is executable. Recommendations are made to the Fleet Maintenance Board of Directors (FMBOD) to mitigate conflicts and to level the workload to the best of their ability. As intended, the Surface FAST serves as the “feedback loop” into the continuous workload planning process.

Hierarchy of Ship Repair

Consistent with the nature of depot level work, the typical scope of maintenance actions has a wide range of complexity. When planning the work to maintain such a high level of material readiness a scheduling breakdown is a helpful way to organize the work into digestible segments. When a ship is outside of its planned CNO availability period repair work is conducted on a continuous basis through smaller availability windows. These continuous maintenance availabilities (CMAV) are notionally planned to last for 21 days during every non-deployed quarter. However, depending on the required scope of work and schedule availability, these repair periods may last longer. If a ship experiences a significant and unexpected degradation to material readiness, such and a catastrophic failure to a critical system that is required for underway operations, a ship may be inducted into short-duration, unplanned maintenance window of opportunity (WOO) where systems are restored to operational condition.

One of the most imperative elements of ship maintenance and upkeep is the necessity to refresh its military value to remain a relevant contender against all evolving threats. Ship modernization is conducted in two ways. First, as shipboard systems become obsolete or there are known system defects, design changes to those systems are installed on a continuous basis. These are non-intrusive, isolated upgrades to a variety of systems throughout the ship that take relatively short durations to complete. Second, when a ship approaches mid-life, it undergoes a major modernization upgrade during a planned CNO Availability. This is an extremely comprehensive overhaul to the ship’s combat systems in addition to numerous hull, mechanical, and electrical (HM&E) systems so that ESL is achieved. Sufficient space and electrical capacity is available because adequate margin is built into the original design to accommodate future technologies.

Execution Lines of Effort

Given all the components of surface ship maintenance, including the two-year end-to-end process required to plan the work and with the life-cycle management and technical support, the RMC must operate as a well-oiled machine during the actual execution of the workload. The primary line of effort falls to the project teams that perform contract management oversight (CMO) in the private shipyards during CNO availabilities and pier side CMAVs at all naval stations. They reside in the Operations Department at the RMCs.

There are seven critical billets on the project team (PT) starting with the project manager (PM) whose primary responsibilities include everything from leading the project team, coordinating planning and cost estimating to acting as the business agent with other activities to ensure that TYCOM funds are properly utilized. The shipbuilding specialist (SBS), for which several are assigned depending on the actual size of the work package, reviews work specifications, conducts ship-checks and attends daily production meetings. In addition, the SBS processes Corrective Action Reports (CARs), Condition Found Reports (CFRs), Requests for Contract Changes (RCCs), and Work Authorization Forms (WAFs). The SBS is one of the busiest members of the PT. Other positions include an assessments director (AD), project support engineer (PSE), integrated test engineer (ITE), quality assurance specialist (QAS), and a contract specialist (CS). Every member of this team performs integral functions within their areas of expertise so that maintenance availabilities remain on schedule and within the planned budget.

The technical arm of the RMC is the Engineering Department and it provides the distance support and technical assistance which is directed by the Joint Fleet Maintenance Manual (JFMM). The RMCs have a Tech Support Call Center manned 24/7 for teleconferencing and online support in addition to fly-away teams that respond world-wide for Casualty Report (CASREP)-driven requirements. In addition to troubleshooting and repairing degraded or out-of-commission systems, the RMC Engineering Department executes the Total Ship Readiness Assessment (TSRA) program which is a series of ship visits at strategic points throughout the SSEOC that identify critical work that should be included in an AWP or intended to support significant shipboard events such as light off assessment, basic phase training, or upcoming deployment. All this work is depot level, which necessitates the use of industrial facilities since it is beyond the scope of shipboard capabilities. However, the Navy exercises a level of work in-between the organizational-level work conducted by ship’s company and the larger industrial work that is conducted by the private sector.

Intermediate-level maintenance is defined as maintenance that requires skills, facilities, or capacities normally beyond those of the organizational level but does not necessarily require depot level skills, facilities, or capacities. This work is planned and accomplished at the RMCs. Moreover, the purpose of this level of maintenance is two-fold. The personnel assigned to the RMCs who conduct intermediate-level maintenance are active-duty sailors on shore duty, enrolled in a program called Navy Afloat Maintenance Training Strategy (NAMTS), and its purpose is to provide in-rate training and experience in the enlisted ratings that repair and maintain shipboard systems. This allows them to return to sea duty with a solid understanding of shipboard maintenance practices while performing the duties of a work center supervisor. Their ability to identify system deficiencies, troubleshoot casualties, document and plan repair jobs, and leverage logistics capabilities equates to overall higher self-sufficiency at sea. So, the Navy gains a significant production capacity for shipboard maintenance while professionally developing sailors ashore.

Labor of Love

In terms of overall production management where project team leaders contend with balancing costs, quality, and schedules along with the nuances of managing critical path work along with overseeing the movement of a skilled workforce, the U.S. Navy has mastered the art of project management through a resolute focus on surface ships maintenance on a grand scale. But none of that happens without the dedicated men and women who are on the job every day. They are the committed professionals of the engineering duty community along with the thousands of government employees and contractors who are passionate about this business. They are the unsung heroes who do everything from business operations and budget development to turning wrenches or striking an arch somewhere deep in a saltwater ballasting tank. The naval ship maintenance enterprise is truly a “low density, high demand” operation overseeing billions of dollars of deport-level maintenance every year while delivering effective technical support to the Fleet. The people in this business love it and they are the lifeblood of the entire maintenance enterprise. They are an enabling force that creates the conditions for the effective preservation of the world’s most powerful fleet.

With other defense priorities competing for scarce recourses, senior naval officials should exercise great caution when making hard decisions about sponsoring the wide assortment of budgetary program proposals. Any reduction in funding for the Navy’s RMCs will come at a great price to the fleet. And when that cost comes due in the form of degraded fleet combat readiness, it will be too late. On the other hand, it could be argued that the RMC funding levels should be increased significantly, especially given the increasing demand for CMO as LCS enters the fleet in great numbers. In fact, a recent study completed by Commander, Naval Regional Maintenance Center concluded that more than twice the number of man days are required, compared to what is currently programmed, to oversee LCS contractor work during the monthly five-day Preventative Maintenance Availabilities. If this is not addressed in the near-term, RMC oversight capacity will be quickly exceeded. The importance of effective and timely maintenance and modernization of the U. S. Navy’s surface force cannot be overstated. This is truly a pay-me-now, or pay-me later situation and funding for the Navy’s RMCs should be preserved at all cost.

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