New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy

[Colin Parkinson]

We over classify everything. I wouldn't be surprised if someone just slapped a SECRET sticker on the document, when the capabilities/systems could be described in broad strokes in an UNCLASS format.

yep like a manual on our 105mm howitzer being secret, despite all the details of this WWII era gun being in many library books. 

 

[MilEME09]

yep like a manual on our 105mm howitzer being secret, despite all the details of this WWII era gun being in many library books.

Could be worse, with the PRes weapons techs need SECRET to go on your trades courses. Your first trades course is ancillary kit, IE stoves and lanterns. Someone want to try and take a stab at why you need secret for that coleman stove from Canadian Tire?

 

[Underway]

Could be worse, with the PRes weapons techs need SECRET to go on your trades courses. Your first trades course is ancillary kit, IE stoves and lanterns. Someone want to try and take a stab at why you need secret for that coleman stove from Canadian Tire?

The senior members of the trade are the ones who set the requirements.  If they wanted too they could change it.  Might be some sort of random institutional inertia on this one.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

I hope everybody realizes that we are talking about Army weapons tech here. There is no such animal as a reserve naval weapons tech.  The only naval weapons techs in the reserves are those that chose to stay in the Supplementary reserve after their regular service.

 

[MilEME09]

if anyone has over an hour to waste, Davie has posted the recent hearing into the naval readiness of the RCN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH9pMRWydeg

 

[Underway]

if anyone has over an hour to waste, Davie has posted the recent hearing into the naval readiness of the RCN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH9pMRWydeg

My thoughts on this:

-Our MP's are generally ignorant of naval matters, shipbuilding matters even one's whom are in the backyard of the shipyards for NSPS chosen yards

-Davie makes me laugh with their honest yet sarcastic jabs at the other shipyards ("I think they're very good at building tugs and barges...")

-Three other countries are looking at doing the Resolve type conversion (this is a big win if it happens)

-Davie is pushing for a second Resolve conversion as the JSS is still behind schedule

-we are getting shafted on costs for the ships we are building

-the real reason that the Canadian ships are so expensive is because of the rules for profit from military contracts (1-7%) and that the overhead on yards is reduced the more civilian contracts the shipyard has saving money for the gov't.  Hence why European yards can make ships so much cheaper as they are also working on civilian contracts at the same time.

-building ships in many shipyards at the same time saves money because of inflationary pressures

 

[Colin Parkinson]

The Westcoast yards have limited capacity for new builds, most of the new build yards here surfaced for a contract and then died. Burrard Shipyard used to have about 7-10 slips for building in it's heyday. There was no way Seaspan could handle the latest BC Ferries contract had they won. I am all for 2x Project Resolve ships, by the time the 2 AORs are ready, those Resolve ships will need a good refit and frankly having a 2 AOR on each coast with one in hot/cold layup or refit makes sense. In fact by the time the AOR's are 7 years old, replace the Resolves with 2 new conversions.

If you want functioning shipyards, you are going to need to give them new builds. The shipyards out here do really good repair and modification work and survived mainly on commercial contracts. However the domestic civilian fleet is not really that big and shipyards struggle with competing with Chinese yards that can build barges for a fraction of what they would cost here. (amazing what can be done by ignoring environmental and labour laws) 

 

[Cdn Blackshirt]

Would building additional Project Resolve vessels start to cut into yard space required for the SCC?

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

A question worthy of a Member of the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence, Cdn Blackshirt (being sarcastic here).

Short answer: NO!

Assuming you are talking of the CSC (SCC is the Supreme Court of Canada, and I am pretty sure their request for a new building does not involve shipyards  ;D), they are to be built at Irving shipyard Limited in Halifax, while even a second "resolve" would be built at Davie, in Quebec city. So no reduction of CSC capability at all.

One thing to understand here as an illustration of Davie's capacity: If the GoC was to keep the current build pace it has set with the two yards that won the right to contract under the shipbuilding strategy, Davie could do both of their work simultaneously and still have excess capacity to build.

Basically, Seaspan and Irving have two slips each, while Davie operates seven by itself.

I have to say, Colin, that I am a little surprised by your assertion that Seaspan could not have handled the latest contract for new built BC ferries had they won it. It is a lot simpler to put together a BC ferry than a Berlin class AOR and the even more complex Arctic class icebreaker. If you are correct, it does not augur well for those two types of ship. As the heads of Davie testified, ship repairs and maintenance is a different world than new build.   

 

[Colin Parkinson]

I think they could do it if they had to, but it would likely cause some further slippage. There has been almost no new builds out here since the Spirit class and that shipyard was closed up and dismantled, they actually built the hull in 2 different places and then slid the superstructure built at a new yard on the Fraser and then all the pieces joined together. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S-class_ferry

I think Seaspan will be in a better position to bid in the next couple of years, it had to rebuild the yard from scratch and start on the ships at the time BCF was looking for replacements. BCF will have to replace the C class at some point and I hope that goes to Seaspan. I think the 2nd OSFV will go quicker than the first and things will speed up, they are a good yard and now have the right tools. Davie also had to go through some painful processes and to be completely fair to them, did it without a major federal contract, which bodes well. Frankly if I could wave a magic wand I would give Davie the Irving contract and Irving can whither and die, which would be good for the whole east coast. 

 

[FSTO]

if anyone has over an hour to waste, Davie has posted the recent hearing into the naval readiness of the RCN.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HH9pMRWydeg

That was so painful to listen to.
The worst was to hear how tortured the entire process of getting a new AOR has been and how utterly indifferent the MP's were towards that byzantine system. You would think they would be outraged at the time and money wasted.

 

[Oldgateboatdriver]

For me, FSTO, the most painful was to hear how bone-head basic the questions from Committee members were. A couple hours of research over the internet and even just keeping up with the MSM should have educated those members to the incredibly basic facts they elicited from their questions. If this is a standing Committee and you want to be on it, educating yourself to the basics of the subject matter of the Committee would seem to me to be an absolute requirement.

And Colin, I wouldn't mind letting Irving wither and die where new build is concerned, but I think that some repair and maintenance capacity is still required in Halifax - for the merchant ships, not the Navy - but still. There is enough such work coming from  fishing/oil and gas/commercial shipping industries to warrant a small yard.

BTW, the way you describe Seaspan putting together the S-class BC ferries is exactly what Davie points to when they talk of module build off-site. Davie knows all about that as it, itself, built such modules for the US Navy's last two Nimitz class aircraft carriers (they didn't win the bid for the first Ford class, but may yet get some more work as that class builds up). And just on the St-Lawrence River/Seaway system, there are four other smaller yards that could easily do module work for Davie if need be (and I am not including Aecon in Pictou or Newdocks in St. John's which could easily be added to the list). 

 

[The Bread Guy]

Note to headline writer:  they're not alone in seeking something simpler - from the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, via the CAF Dispatch blog, shared under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act ...

Shipbuilders Seek Simplified Government System
By: ANDREA GUNN, The Chr(o)nicle Herald

Having someone make swift decisions would save time and money on the National Shipbuilding Strategy, according to the government’s two key shipbuilders.

Both Irving Shipyard in Halifax and Seaspan in Vancouver have recommended Ottawa take a page from other seafaring nations and hire someone to act as a single point of accountability and decision-making in shipbuilding.

Jonathan Whitworth, CEO of Seaspan — which has contracts to build DFO and Coast Guard vessels as well as the navy’s Joint Support Ships under the NSS — told the Chronicle Herald the current system is cumbersome, often requiring extensive consultation among different bodies and levels of bureaucracy for simple decisions on things like engineering changes or matters of priority on the shipyard floor.

“What we’re asking for from the government side is that we have one person that can speak for all of the stakeholders within the government,” he said.

Whitworth said it’s often unclear who the point of contact is for a particular decision, and queries could end up with any number of government bodies: national defence, DFO, Public Works and Procurement Canada, or even the Treasury Board.

“There’s a lot of individuals,” Whitworth said.

“I will say we get along well, we talk in large groups, but that’s just really not the most efficient way to really make decisions.”

Whitworth said ideally there would be a central point of accountability within government for the NSS combat package, which Irving is building in Halifax, and one for Seaspan’s non-combat package.

“Just like any project, especially complex projects, time is money. The ability to make decisions on a more timely basis means the ship will be built quicker, which means it will inevitably be cheaper,” Whitworth said.

Though Irving president Kevin McCoy was not available for an interview, he offered similar comments to the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence in Ottawa earlier this month. Asked why the U.S. and U.K. tend to not have the same issues with delays as Canada when it comes to naval procurement, McCoy sa speed of decision-making as a major concern.

“I think one thing that does work against the system here is the very distributed authorities and responsibilities through many departments rather than what I’m used to, a single accountable officer, particularly for a program as huge as the Canadian service combatant,” McCoy told the committee.

“Somebody that can say, yes, in that area I’m going to go with Canadian content, in that area I’m going to go with operational requirements, in that area I’m going to go with low costs and risks and be able to push forward rather than debate it for a very long period of time.”

He went on to say that for major builds like the Canadian Surface Combatant, inflation is a real killer to a ship count, putting even more importance on swift decision-making if the navy wants the best bang for its buck.

Whitworth told the Chronicle Herald that Irving and Seaspan have already made the recommendation to government both at the defence committee as well as at a regular private meeting with government officials several weeks earlier, but have yet to get any sort of concrete answer.

He said the recommendation is not a particularly new or groundbreaking one and is something both the U.S. and U.K. have employed for years.

In fact, Whitworth said, Steve Brunton — the man hired by Ottawa last year as the government’s independent advisor on shipbuilding and ship acquisition — used to hold that position within the U.K. ministry of defence.

“This is something you don’t have to plough new ground with,” he said.

Retired navy commander and defence analyst Ken Hansen said there is definite value in having a single point of accountability on shipbuilding, from a time-saving point of view, but also to avoid issues with industrial capacity and workforce management.

“In a country like Canada where shipbuilding has not been very active for a long time, the suppliers have dwindled and their industrial capacity is reduced, so if you suddenly inject two, three, four more different construction programs under the central policy you can create conflict between them,” he said.

By putting a point of co-ordination in place, the government could better prioritize its shipbuilding activity to get the most value for the money.

The only potential issue, Hansen said, is that sometimes decisions will have to prioritize a certain project over another to arrive at the best option for the NSS as a whole.

“Whenever you have to make choices between various priorities, there’s always someone who is disappointed in the outcome.”

Public Works and Procurement Canada did not respond to an interview request by the Chronicle Herald’s deadline.

 

[Kirkhill]

Note to headline writer:  they're not alone in seeking something simpler - from the Halifax Chronicle-Herald, via the CAF Dispatch blog, shared under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act ...

That would require:

A knowledgeable person
A person authorized to act independently
A person willing to make decisions and accept the consequences of the decisions made
A person with sufficient budget to manage the inevitable errors.

:rofl:

 

[Old Sweat]

That would require:

A knowledgeable person
A person authorized to act independently
A person willing to make decisions and accept the consequences of the decisions made
A person with sufficient budget to manage the inevitable errors.

:rofl:

and would be protected by checks and balances imposed from outside or internally to cover her or his butt not to mention the Crown's Royal Canadian Rump, that we would be back at square one, unless this super executive aka paragon of procurement was recruited from a homeless shelter in the Byward Market..

 

[Underway]

and would be protected by checks and balances imposed from outside or internally to cover her or his butt not to mention the Crown's Royal Canadian Rump, that we would be back at square one, unless this super executive aka paragon of procurement was recruited from a homeless shelter in the Byward Market..

That person already exists and was hired by Canada for a different job.

Steve Brunton — the man hired by Ottawa last year as the government’s independent advisor on shipbuilding and ship acquisition — used to hold that position within the U.K. ministry of defence.

 

[Kirkhill]

Underway:

What is his current role and how does he fit into the scheme of things?  Is he authorized to make decisions?

 

[Underway]

Underway:

What is his current role and how does he fit into the scheme of things?  Is he authorized to make decisions?

http://news.gc.ca/web/article-en.do?nid=1035509

Not sure if he is finished or not but he more than qualified to be the "Super Project Manager" on this project.

 

[Colin Parkinson]

To borrow from the Game of Thrones, he would almost need the powers of the "Hand of the King" and the integrity f a Stark and more wisdom than one.

 

[jollyjacktar]

Irving is looking for expertise in Poland.  Not surprising at all for me.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/novascotia/1442036-exclusive-ships-start-in-poland-irving-looks-to-europe-for-n.s.-shipbuilding