IKE Double Pump

[exNavyOffRec]

I don't care about Bryan Clark's take. My point was based on my personal observations over the last 12 years. The repeated surge deployments and quick turn second deployments have led to a carrier force that is overstretched. We're clearly seeing the effects on the maintenance side (reference our inability to get carriers out of the yards on time).

Call me shortsighted, but I don't give a shit about future funding. The Navy needs to find a better balance now between meeting COCOM demands and the health of the force. This isn't a new problem, and it blows my mind that we keep repeating the same mistakes.

Your second point is spot on.

Having done multiple overhauls on nuclear carriers and being in the engineroom where most of the delays take place I can tell you I only made it out of the yards on time once, we were always late. None of the delays would have been on time if our underway schedule had been lighter, there was one specific piece of equipment that did fail that was due to overuse, but that was replaced in one day of actual work.

The issues with carriers being late coming out of the yards (where the engineroom is concerned) is piss poor planning. They would schedule a piece of equipment to be worked on that couldn't be put back together until another piece of equipment was replaced, but it wasn't schedule properly, or they would assign a team to do a job in X days but the shop guys would come down and laugh at the time estimate. In one case during a pre-overhaul briefing the supervisors of the engineroom overhaul told us "we are scheduled to do this work in 6 months, we have never done this amount of work in less than 9 months", that instills confidence in the department.

The worst pieces of equipment I can think of were not designed for warm water operations (the gulf) and as such they overheated all the time, then broke. They did eventually replace them with ones that were more durable.

 

[Max the Mad Russian]

The worst pieces of equipment I can think of were not designed for warm water operations (the gulf) and as such they overheated all the time, then broke.

The very same thing with nuke propulsion stuff on Russian Typhoon-class heavy SSBNs. Those behemoths were designed to wander under Arctic ice, firing through airholes made by huge hull when surfaced. And then forced to make a patrols on latitudes of central Atlantic, where the fails of crucial equipment due to improper cooling ceased the patrols at least twice, after which all six these superboomers were restricted to the summer borders of the polar icefields.

 

[Spekkio]

Having done multiple overhauls on nuclear carriers and being in the engineroom where most of the delays take place I can tell you I only made it out of the yards on time once, we were always late. None of the delays would have been on time if our underway schedule had been lighter, there was one specific piece of equipment that did fail that was due to overuse, but that was replaced in one day of actual work.

The issues with carriers being late coming out of the yards (where the engineroom is concerned) is piss poor planning.

There's more to peel back on this onion than poor planning. The yard management knows how long it takes to do depot maintenance packages on every class of ship by now.

Prepping to go in the yards, we were on deck after another boat finished. Some retests weren't going well. I knew from the description that meant delays were imminant. This was 4-6 months out. I could tell the project sup was withholding information when I asked him what the timeline looked like and he wouldn't give me a straight answer. I know he had to know exactly what the plan was to fix and retest that piece of equipment by that point to include time, manpower, and money, but he wasn't talking. Instead he stuck to the 'on paper' timeline until about a month out when surprise the boat was delayed and we had a schedule shift. Luckily we were smart enough to plan for reality.

There's some kind of political pressure going on where someone doesn't like hearing the truth. So the SY senior leaders tell the king what he wants to hear despite knowing it's a fairy tale.

The CNO ordered a comprehensive review to reveal the good, bad, and the ugly of the SWO community... It's time we do this with our shipyard processes.

 

[BigRed389]

There's more to peel back on this onion than poor planning. The yard management knows how long it takes to do depot maintenance packages on every class of ship by now.

Prepping to go in the yards, we were on deck after another boat finished. Some retests weren't going well. I knew from the description that meant delays were imminant. This was 4-6 months out. I could tell the project sup was withholding information when I asked him what the timeline looked like and he wouldn't give me a straight answer. I know he had to know exactly what the plan was to fix and retest that piece of equipment by that point to include time, manpower, and money, but he wasn't talking. Instead he stuck to the 'on paper' timeline until about a month out when surprise the boat was delayed and we had a schedule shift. Luckily we were smart enough to plan for reality.

There's some kind of political pressure going on where someone doesn't like hearing the truth. So the SY senior leaders tell the king what he wants to hear despite knowing it's a fairy tale.

The CNO ordered a comprehensive review to reveal the good, bad, and the ugly of the SWO community... It's time we do this with our shipyard processes.

I haven't worked on that side of the maintenance world (either on the ship maintenance project management or ship, but there is definitely some weirdness when it comes project management with private yards. Have seen similar issues all over CRUDES maintenance.
I suspect a big part of it on the private side is that there are cost penalties (either a hit or a bonus withheld) to the repair yard to resetting the schedule/missing milestones, so even a government supe is going to be really careful about making a delay official. Though the ones I worked with in the CRUDES world would generally level with crew leadership...destroys your relationship if you declare all is well when progress is obviously not on track.
But as far as passing info up the shipyard chain...suspect there are similar issues with having to carry the bad news to the Fleet that they won't get their ship or boat back on time, throwing off the deployment prep timeline.

But...relating to CVNs, that might also explain why the East Coast nuclear shipyard CO (NNSY) just got fired...

Navy fires Norfolk Naval Shipyard CO after repeated maintenance delays

Capt. Kai Torkelson's firing is tied to the shipyard's continuing inability to meet maintenance schedules,

www.navytimes.com

 

[DanMa1156]

if you want to get a glimpse into some of that, read the SDOBs on SIPR. Can give you a sense of what issues are being considered in these decisions. Sometimes the services get overridden, sometimes it’s the GCCs. Shoot me an email on SIPR if you’d like a link.

That's precisely what I was referencing, but actually don't know where to find them - only get passed them as they pertain to my job (typically "oh you are losing x number of y aircraft next quarter, and oh by the way, your requirements are staying the same because [GCC Z] demanded those x y's!"). Will send you a PM if you can send me a link. They are genuinely one of the most interesting things I read.

 

[taxi1]

knows how long it takes to do depot maintenance packages on every class of ship by now.

You would think.

But this reminds me of a conversation I had with a guy who was an expert on space mission costing. He said that these missions all overrun their estimates of cost, even when an anticipated overrun is built into the estimate of cost. And then he backed it up with data. At some point engineering hands the baton to psychology.

I think of this scene whenever I’m part of a group discussing repair times...

 

[Pags]

You would think.

But this reminds me of a conversation I had with a guy who was an expert on space mission costing. He said that these missions all overrun their estimates of cost, even when an anticipated overrun is built into the estimate of cost. And then he backed it up with data. At some point engineering hands the baton to psychology.

I think of this scene whenever I’m part of a group discussing repair times...

The problem is you never know what you're going to find when you crack something open. And then you never know what analysis is needed, what parts you might need to fix it and what their lead times are. Yeah, you can hazard a guess and pull piles of historical data but you never know if you're looking at routine maintenance or a unique failure until you get eyes on whatever you're working on. Then of course multiply this problem by however many pieces of equipment are in the work package.

Also good points on contracts and other factors that can impact stakeholders beyond the ship. At some point in PM you don't want to upset skeds based on a potential risk. You need to keep pushing and using the sked as a management tool to keep everyone motivated. For every time there's a slide there's another time where things work out. So, it's all a gamble.

 

[BigRed389]

The problem is you never know what you're going to find when you crack something open. And then you never know what analysis is needed, what parts you might need to fix it and what their lead times are. Yeah, you can hazard a guess and pull piles of historical data but you never know if you're looking at routine maintenance or a unique failure until you get eyes on whatever you're working on. Then of course multiply this problem by however many pieces of equipment are in the work package.

Also good points on contracts and other factors that can impact stakeholders beyond the ship. At some point in PM you don't want to upset skeds based on a potential risk. You need to keep pushing and using the sked as a management tool to keep everyone motivated. For every time there's a slide there's another time where things work out. So, it's all a gamble.

This. There are always a lot of potential/unknown growth factors.

The added problem with ships is the historical data is garbage due to how often maintenance is deferred, and corrosion is a bitch.
It's easy enough to think/plan ahead in terms of periodic overhaul periods for pumps and widgets.

What bites you is the corrosion in the tank that you fucked off from this maintenance period, so the corrosion went unattended for another 12-18 months. Or flushes in a piping system that were designed to prevent major problems that got deferred..and oh and that's why you had a pump or strainer go earlier than planned, and now a little job just became a big job...and that pump is out of stock so...yeah. Hope it wasn't too important.

 

[Pags]

This. There are always a lot of potential/unknown growth factors.

The added problem with ships is the historical data is garbage due to how often maintenance is deferred, and corrosion is a bitch.
It's easy enough to think/plan ahead in terms of periodic overhaul periods for pumps and widgets.

What bites you is the corrosion in the tank that you fucked off from this maintenance period, so the corrosion went unattended for another 12-18 months. Or flushes in a piping system that were designed to prevent major problems that got deferred..and oh and that's why you had a pump or strainer go earlier than planned, and now a little job just became a big job...and that pump is out of stock so...yeah. Hope it wasn't too important.

Corrosion will get you every time on airplanes or ships. Once you find it you need to call the engineers to assess it. Once the engineers get involved it will take much longer because they always need one more data point before they can make a decision. And then once they've all decided that it's bad then they need to figure out how to make it good again. Hopefully it's something you can R/R, God have mercy on your soul if it's structural.

 

[Max the Mad Russian]

Main mental tenet of each and every engineer in each and every country and time is "it is better to make no decision at all than to make wrong one". Unless they catch in the corner, they always try to evade the engineering decision with some responsibility to take. The problem is those who force them to decide, a leaders, are often way far from engineering at all...

 

[taxi1]

This. There are always a lot of potential/unknown growth factors.

But there's a many, many year history of the rate of potential unknowns and growth factors.

There should also be a massive history of initial estimates versus actuals.

 

[Jim123]

This thread is slowly confirming something I've suspected for a long time, every time I see one of those jalopies driving around Pensacola with a garbage bag where a window used to be, a wooden beam for a bumper, big crack in the windshield, red tape repair to taillight lens, mismatched body panels in various shades of primer red and gray (with rust accents), throaty roar of a V7 under the hood (that's a V8 with too much deferred maintenance that is now misfiring badly), temporary compact spare tire...

... and the driver is only vaguely aware of the rules of the road or how to handle the vehicle in heavy traffic (but that's the subject of another thread).


On a serious note, I appreciate the detailed first-hand insight in many of these posts, especially @BigRed389 .

 

[exNavyOffRec]

There's more to peel back on this onion than poor planning. The yard management knows how long it takes to do depot maintenance packages on every class of ship by now.

Prepping to go in the yards, we were on deck after another boat finished. Some retests weren't going well. I knew from the description that meant delays were imminant. This was 4-6 months out. I could tell the project sup was withholding information when I asked him what the timeline looked like and he wouldn't give me a straight answer. I know he had to know exactly what the plan was to fix and retest that piece of equipment by that point to include time, manpower, and money, but he wasn't talking. Instead he stuck to the 'on paper' timeline until about a month out when surprise the boat was delayed and we had a schedule shift. Luckily we were smart enough to plan for reality.

There's some kind of political pressure going on where someone doesn't like hearing the truth. So the SY senior leaders tell the king what he wants to hear despite knowing it's a fairy tale.

The CNO ordered a comprehensive review to reveal the good, bad, and the ugly of the SWO community... It's time we do this with our shipyard processes.

Maybe, but if so it is the same pressure that has been there for 50 years, when I was on my first ship and we were going in the yards the CPO's were all joking about how late we would be getting out of the yards and said it was very rare to leave the yards on time. It was the same thing all those years, management would talk about how long it would take to repair a piece of equipment and the workers would say that isn't realistic, the yards fix for this was to put more people on the job and that was ridiculous, I still remember 4 yard mechanics that were sent down to work on a turbine generator condensate pump, of course only 2 could actually fit to work on the pump with the others standing around handing them tools.

We had big charts showing every equipment repair or space rehab, we would look at it and go WTH, it just didn't make sense.

Now the small upkeeps we did where we planned our own work and repairs for the most part was just fine.

On my shore duty where I was at a sub repair facility I was impressed, my entire tour I only remember 2 boomers coming out of the yards late and 1 of those was delayed by less than a week. The mindset at those 2 facilities was completely different.

 

[Pags]

But there's a many, many year history of the rate of potential unknowns and growth factors.

There should also be a massive history of initial estimates versus actuals.

No one wants to know worst case, everyone plans to best or middle case and then reacts when worst case happens. At the end of the day it's far better to plan for 100% and achieve 90% then plan 80% and achieve 80%.

 

[ABMD]

No one wants to know worst case, everyone plans to best or middle case and then reacts when worst case happens. At the end of the day it's far better to plan for 100% and achieve 90% then plan 80% and achieve 80%.

That's terrible risk management.