By Erika Fitzpatrick, Seapower Correspondent
The U.S. Navy is modernizing the condition, configuration and affordability of its public shipyards and shore infrastructure, according to Rear Admiral Dean VanderLey, including by departing in some cases from traditional acquisition strategies.
“Our shore infrastructure on our Navy bases primarily [is] where we train our Sailors and maintain our ships and warfare platforms, and so is very critical to the ultimate readiness of our forces,” VanderLey, commander of Naval Facilities Engineering Systems Command, said April 8 in the panel discussion, “Revitalizing Shore Infrastructure: Meeting Modern Naval Demands.”
The Navy’s four public shipyards — Norfolk (Virginia) Naval Shipyard, Portsmouth (Maine) Naval Shipyard, Puget Sound (Washington) Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility, and Pearl Harbor (Hawaii) Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility — were first built in the 19th and 20th centuries.
“Now we’re using them to maintain nuclear-powered vessels,” VanderLey said. The youngest, Pearl Harbor, was founded in 1908 — the year the Ford Model T rolled off the assembly plant and was offered for sale at $850.
“After 100 years, it’s probably time to do something,” quipped panelist Mark Edelson, program executive officer for Industrial Infrastructure at the Department of the Navy. “Everything has gotten bigger and needs more power.”
Fortunately, Edelson said, the Navy has recognized the foundational element of naval installations to all the combat forces, and, in 2018, established the Navy’s Shipyard Improvement Program (SIOP) to upgrade shore infrastructure. Naval ports and bases face myriad issues, including aging facilities and equipment, insufficient utilities and information technology, lack of worker amenities, and rising waters in some places and diminishing sources of fresh water in others.
“We’re benefiting from historic investments in the shipyards to get after all of those things,” Edelson said.
SIOP, led by Naval Sea Systems Command and supported by the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, and Commander, Navy Installations Command, to date has finished 30 facilities projects worth nearly $1 billion, according to the Navy. Another 40 projects are under contract for $6 billion in additional improvements, including construction of four dry docks and upgrades to shipyard utilities.
Some of these projects are hardly straightforward. A recent project to build a new Reactor Servicing Support Facility at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard required negotiating with the state historic preservation office to retain the building’s original architectural features while modernizing ship servicing capabilities and improving workflow.
“Now the light machine shop, the artisans, the engineers are all in the same building next to two dry docks to get the throughput that we need,” Edelson said.
VanderLey said the Navy is making practical reforms to speed up infrastructure modernization by:
•Prioritizing resources. The Navy is first upgrading the most critical infrastructure, including dry dock improvements to support the “future force,” including USS Ford-class aircraft carriers, and future versions of the USS Virginia- and USS Columbia-class submarines.
• Reforming acquisition strategies. The Navy is in some cases departing from the traditional acquisition process, which typically involves firms bidding on Navy-defined requirements in design and construction. It’s now involving contractors earlier, to mold project design, VanderLey said. That’s helpful in complex infrastructure projects, he said, when cost and schedule are “less about what you’re building than about how you have to build it.”
The Navy is also awarding design-build-to-budget contracts, which allow flexibility and speed while controlling costs.
• Alternating construction methods. VanderLey said the Navy is capitalizing on the trend of “industrialized construction” or “off-site construction,” where certain parts or modules — child care centers, barracks, or dorms — are prefabricated off-site for later assembly into the overall build. “In Europe about 45% of their construction is done that way; in the United States, it’s about 5%,” he said.
“We see potential for savings in cost and schedule of roughly 30%,” VanderLey added. “So, we’re aggressively going after those types of approaches.”
Commercial shipbuilding faces similar challenges to the Navy in needing to upgrade its similarly aging infrastructure, in part to recruit and retain workers.
“People need infrastructure too,” said Roger Camp, senior director for Business Development, Naval Programs, at Hanwha Defense USA, a subsidiary of South Korean defense giant Hanwha Group, which purchased the Philly Shipyard last year for $100 million.
He said his firm is exploring ideas to make the maritime facility more attractive to workers, by locating parking closer to the plant, outfitting training areas with virtual reality tools, and expanding — not replacing — production resources through use of AI and robotics.
“We have to have technical infrastructure,” Camp said. “Not just piers not just buildings, but the actual facilities to be able to augment the humans that build our ships.”
