Colin, that has almost certainly already been examined within the RCD production plan. Nobody running a first of class build is sitting there waiting to discover that some modules can be started earlier than others. Sequencing around long lead items, labour loading, module readiness, yard space, subcontractor flow, and critical path work is basic program management 101, not some hidden trick. The problem is not that Irving has failed to notice you can throw more bodies at early modules. The problem is that shipbuilding does not scale cleanly just because Ottawa throws more money at it. You need trained trades, supervisors, planners, QA staff, outfit integration, steel flow, and physical yard capacity to support them. Stuffing extra workers into the system too early can just create congestion, rework, and bottlenecks downstream. And targeted money with strings attached sounds great in theory, but in practice the yard is already under contractual pressure to hit milestones, so if this was an easy acceleration lever it would likely already be in play. The first hull is not slow because nobody thought of prebuilding what they can. It is slow because first of class warships are integration nightmares, and the true choke points are usually design maturity, supply chain friction, skilled labour depth, and production learning curves, not simply a shortage of funded hands on a few steel modules. Other than building a separate yard, production facility or expanding the existing one which is happening there's not much you can do over the short term to get a ship in the water faster.
