Overhaul13: Undeniable Truths of Overhaul 9-12
Introduction
This is the second installment of Undeniable Truths (UTs) of warship overhaul. Just because I consider them undeniable doesn’t mean people won’t try. Much dressing in sackcloth and ashes results from ignoring them. I have deliberately overstated, some might say “exaggerated” but I would say only slightly, the titles to make them more memorable. This installment of the UTs focuses on: the crew’s need to adapt quickly to the SY, disruptions from senior leader visits, the crew being the weakest link of overhaul, and supervision being the crew’s most limited resource.
Undeniable Truth 9: Resistance is futile (for SF)
Shipyards (SYs) are large, highly specialized, industrial activities laid out, equipped, staffed, organized, and optimized (more or less) for building, modernizing, and repairing ships. New construction shipyards sometimes repair ships (slightly better than delaying an overhaul for nine years, Eckstein, 2024), but this is a problem for two reasons. First, they don’t do it often, a big problem for maintaining expertise. Second, their focus (i.e., processes, training, and organization) is on building ships, which, above the level of whacking and bending metal, is quite different from repairing them.
*Eckstein, M. (2024). Sub Boise will begin its overhaul nine years late, with $1.2B contract. Defense News.
https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2024/02/23/sub-boise-will-begin-its-overhaul-nine-years-late-with-12b-contract/
The focus on processes that work best for the shipyard is exactly how their owners, senior leaders, and people paying for their services want it. No sane Program Executive Officer (PEO) would initiate a contract to repair a ship or schedule a ship overhaul at a repair shipyard saying, in effect, “We want you to do this really complex work and finish on time, but you have to organize the way we want and use the processes we dictate.” The Navy didn’t even do that during the Second World War (BuShips back then) when we had thousands of ships constructed and repaired. And yet …
I have seen how it frustrates Navy warship crews that overhaul requires them to learn new processes, new shop names, new phone numbers, new terms (is it a “hull cut” or “shipping and material opening”?) new forms (SYs have forms for everything), and new ways of dividing the work among shops. Even Naval Shipyards, supposedly organized the same, can’t do things the same way with the same shop numbers. In short, sailors have to learn completely new ways to do everything.
After recovering from the shock entering the SY and getting flattened like Bambi under Godzilla’s foot with everything new, the crew starts asking for changes: they want extra notice for removing ladders in spaces, they want a different route than the last ship used to transfer radioactive material, they want to use work authorization forms that the fleet uses, etc. In effect, they are saying, “We don’t want to do things your way. We want you to adapt to us, but we’re not paying for it.” Uhh, right.
Ship crews must adapt to the SY. Everything in the shipyard is optimized for their super expensive and complex work: laydown areas, work authorization, work schedules, tagouts, access to and from SY property, start-stop work times, temporary services, and ladder removal for rigging material into/out of spaces (unless they get padlocked, then negotiations ensue). Everything SF does, training, work, cleaning, and support for the SY must be arranged around SY work so it doesn’t interfere (and raise costs).
Resistance to doing things the way the SY wants is futile. SF will be assimilated.
Undeniable Truth 10: Senior leader visits disrupt work
Senior leaders often visit ships in overhaul. An Admiral or other dignitary decides (rather, their staff decides) to visit the ship to “see just what is going on over there” or demonstrate “we haven’t forgotten them” (yes they have, until there’s a prolonged work stoppage). Leaving aside whether a highly choreographed tour provides useful information except how well the crew prepares for tours, senior leader SY visits are a fact of life in the Navy.
Senior leader visits or changes of command (a special case of senior leader visits), ALWAYS disrupt overhaul work. How could it be otherwise? The crew spends days cleaning to make the tour route “presentable.” The CO isn’t about to let his boss see what a ship actually looks like in an industrial environment. Doesn’t his boss know that overhauls are stygian nightmares environments of dust, grime, industrial debris, sparks, exhaust fans powered by jet engines, and deafening noise? Of course he does, but he plays the game anyway.
When things aren’t getting clean enough fast enough before the tour (i.e., the SY keeps working), crew Chief Petty Officers (CPOs), under pressure from anxious department heads, stop the work. The department head doesn’t TELL them to stop the work. They don’t have to. The CPOs don’t get SY permission. They don’t care and don’t acknowledge schedule impact. If foremen ignore them and try to keep working to stay on schedule, the ship’s Command Master Chief (CMC) orders the disconnection of temporary services.
If the SY doesn’t turn off the exhaust fan blowers that make 747s sound stealthy, the CMC has the crew do it so it won’t be “noisy” during the tour. For changes of command, the entire wardroom departs the ship to attend receptions at the new CO’s quarters so all work authorization stops. Looming key events don’t matter. I’m not making any of this up. I’ve lived it.
Is the overhaul work disruption caused by VIP visits and changes of command sensible or defensible? No. VIP tours and ship-wide ceremonies are examples of things that happen in overhaul that make no sense, but happen anyway.
I’ve been present after tours when Admirals, who should have known better, remarked, “The ship looked dirty.” Of course it did, someone was grinding metal and shooting plumes of sparks twenty feet across the tour route seconds before you walked by! The only reason the SY mechanic stopped is a CPO grabbed him so he wouldn’t set the Admiral’s uniform on fire.
I’ve also been present after tours when VIPs remarked, “Strange. I didn’t see any work going on.” No one tells them, “That’s because we stopped all the work days ago so your clothes wouldn’t catch on fire.” Mechanics grind metal and shoot sparks constantly in overhaul.
Does the SY schedule get modified for the loss of work caused by the disruption? Not after the fact. If a SY project leader blames a key event being late on a visit by the Vice President (of the U.S.A.), everyone in the crew’s chain of command from the CO up starts looking at their steel-toed shoes (like someone asked them for money). They might even get indignant. “You never told us!” As if moving and reinstalling temporary services and stopping work to permit cleaning have no impact.
SYs get no credit for making their best effort to catch up for the time lost AFTER a disruption. After the disruption, operators only want to talk about how the SY will catch up for the disruption THEY caused. I’ve been there too.
There IS a way to get operators and their commanders to acknowledge the schedule impact of a VIP tour or change of command. Insist on it in advance using this model: “You want to do what? No problem. Here is the schedule impact.” This model is a way I found to use advice from a wise scheduler. He said never to play the “When do you need it?” game with anyone who owes you something in an overhaul. Your answer should always be, “You tell me when you can provide it and I’ll tell you the schedule impact.” My version is, “You tell me what you want to do and I’ll tell you the schedule impact.”
I used the “here’s the schedule impact” model before attempted disruptions several times. It forestalled the schedule interruption every time, but boy did it make people mad. I told a submarine squadron Commodore that using a ship as the venue for his change of command in the middle of an availability would extend the end date by a week. He wanted to remove topside temporary services and tow the ship from the industrial area for the event. Red, white, and blue bunting clashes with temporary service lines. “But no other ship is available!” was his reply. I remained firm and my boss backed me up (Thanks, Frank!). The Commodore held his change of command and reception ashore. I didn’t attend. My invitation must have been lost in the mail.
I told the CO of a nuclear aircraft carrier that was already late for sea trials that taking the South Korean Chief of Naval Operations on a tour would delay sea trials by a week. It’s always the Vice President or some country’s CNO that wants to tour. This generated a rapid response from the Admiral in my own chain of command that nearly melted my phone. He also knew better. I just hope he doesn’t read this blog. He likely got a call from NAVSEA who got a call from OUR CNO. CNOs are in a club, I think. While I adjusted my estimate, the Admiral didn’t overrule me, at least not directly. The lesson? In the SY, follow the advice of Bob Marley, “Get up, stand up, stand up for your right. Get up, stand up, don't give up the fight.” Just make sure you’re right.
Undeniable Truth 11: The crew is the weakest link
To state the obvious, the crew has a finite capacity for supporting the SY. This includes processing work documents, hanging tags, authorizing work, operating equipment, being fire watches for welding, and conducting tests. This would be the case even without sick call, dental appointments, and training.
Other crew limitations: numbers of qualified watchstanders, training, operators who can operate nuclear valves without repeatedly putting pens in their mouth (internal radioactive contamination is bad), and crew rest. Crew rest? Expecting sailors to work longer than 12 hours per day (or even that long) for extended periods isn’t a good strategy for recovering schedule. Junior sailors will come to work more fatigued. They don’t sleep much off-duty unless it’s in their cars because they don’t have close parking (Toropin, 2022).
*Toropin, K. (2022, Dec 22). What the deaths of sailors who took their own lives aboard the George Washington reveal about the navy. Military.com. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/12/22/what-deaths-of-sailors-who-took-their-own-lives-aboard-george-washington-reveal-about-navy.html
If “everybody knows” that an organization with thousands of employees can crush one with a hundred to three thousand (even aircraft carriers get overwhelmed in overhaul), why would a submarine squadron Commodore have a conniption lose it at a weekly status meeting and start yelling at shipyard leaders because the overhaul is “taking too long”? Whenever you are in the presence of someone arguing that the SY needs to “go faster” or shorten a multi-year overhaul that it has done more than six times and has *never* been shortened, remember that the only place the SY is going to go faster is to a crew performance induced work stoppage. It seems to bother a lot of people when you say this out loud, but facts are facts.
Undeniable Truth 12: The crew’s most limited resource is supervision
The finite work capacity of the crew isn’t based on crew size. The number one thing that limits crew overhaul throughput is the quality and quantity of its supervision (i.e., Chief Petty Officers and SOME First Class Petty Officers). The reason: at any given time, nearly a third of the crew is new and barely knows how to find the chow line (reasons sailors arrive from training clueless are beyond the scope of this blog and won’t change because the GAO validates it, GAO-24-106525). Of the remaining two-thirds, a large number can’t walk and chew gum at the same time even with supervision. Yes, I wrote that.
The crew’s department heads assume significant operational risk when the inventory of capable operators is low. This is irrelevant to SY managers, of course. They want what they want NOW. In fairness, they aren’t paid to be concerned about the crew’s capacity or quality of its work. SY manager paychecks depend on getting their work done. This puts enormous pressure on a ship’s supervisors to respond to SY support demands quickly. This in turn leads to assigning less capable crew members to do work that no sane CPO would have them doing underway like assigning a lab technician who works with reagents and test tubes all day to do something that “any mechanic can do” (the punchline of many critiques). After suffering the overhaul consequences of inexperienced operators messing up having difficulties with important work, I insisted that my supervisors ask “Have you ever done this before?” every time they assigned work.
Wrap Up
Ignore the undeniable truths of ship overhaul at your peril. I may have stated them too impolitely for some, but you don’t get anything done in an overhaul by being polite. Remember the Bob Marley lyrics.
Undeniable Truth 9: Resistance is futile
Undeniable Truth 10: Senior leader visits disrupt work
Undeniable Truth 11: The crew is the weakest link
Undeniable Truth 12: The crew’s most limited resource is supervision
More undeniable truths of overhaul are coming soon. I thought I only had a small number, but I think of new truths faster than I can write about them. Feel free to cavil in the comments.
