During a House Armed Services Committee hearing prior to the congressional recess, Rep. Jared Golden (D-ME) questioned witnesses about strategies to retain knowledge amongst Navy shipbuilding workers.
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NewsTranscript
00:00I now recognize the gentleman from Maine,
00:02an important member of this subcommittee, Mr. Golden.
00:05Thank you, sir.
00:07Mr. O'Rourke, in your testimony,
00:09or written testimony anyway,
00:10you talked about a shipbuilding lessons learned process
00:13at GDBIW, one and two yards, building destroyers.
00:17So up in BIW for years, a lot of the workers
00:22carried around their own version of lessons learned
00:24in a little notebook that they use out on the job.
00:29So I'm curious if you could elaborate
00:30on how you envision these lessons learned centers operating.
00:35Is this a place where shipbuilders can go
00:38to learn the lessons from the perspective of the Navy,
00:42or is it the other way around?
00:44Is it both?
00:45And if I could just tip my hat a little bit
00:48in one direction, what other ways could the Navy
00:51not just utilize the skills of shipbuilders,
00:54but also their wisdom and knowledge
00:56of how to go about doing it?
00:59Yeah, as I indicated in my statement,
01:01although the term that is often used as lessons learned,
01:04I've observed many occasions over the years
01:08where the Navy appears to not really have learned the lesson
01:12but simply note it and then eventually forget it,
01:15only to have it be rediscovered the hard way years later
01:20by practitioners that come after them.
01:26And so as a consequence of making that observation,
01:30one option that can arise would be
01:32to create a Navy Shipbuilding Lessons Learned Center.
01:35And I first presented that option
01:38before this committee 10 or 11 years ago in testimony,
01:42so this is nothing new.
01:44That Lessons Learned Center can be as simple
01:47as a physical, meaning a shelf collection
01:50of past experiences that have been written down
01:53from prior programs, or it could be the electronic version
01:57of that sort of thing today, computer files.
01:59It could be both.
02:00It can be made available to practitioners within the Navy.
02:04It could be made available to people within the industry.
02:07I don't see why you couldn't make it available to anybody
02:10or everybody who might stand to benefit from it.
02:13I don't see the option as being that complicated.
02:16It's just a matter of deciding that you wanna do that.
02:19We have Lessons Learned Centers for battlefield lessons
02:22and how to fight wars.
02:24This would be an analog within the production sphere.
02:28Shifting gears a little bit, Ms. Oakley,
02:30the Marine Corps is unable to maintain
02:32their USC Title 10 requirements
02:34because of the amphib ship availability,
02:36which isn't at full capacity,
02:38mostly due to maintenance restraints.
02:40I say this because you've talked about this quite a bit
02:42in recent months on a podcast
02:45and your reports and in written testimony.
02:47So how do we go about fixing this issue,
02:50or is the problem simply that 31 minimum amphib ships
02:54isn't gonna be enough?
02:56Yeah, I think our report on the amphibious ships
02:59really highlights a key challenge
03:01in some of these major modernization
03:02and maintenance periods that go on
03:04that do directly affect the availability
03:06and readiness of the fleet,
03:08and the amphibs are no difference.
03:10With half of the amphib fleet
03:12being in unsatisfactory condition,
03:14it makes it very difficult to imagine
03:16that the Marine Corps' requirements
03:18are going to be able to be met in the coming years
03:20because it also relies on increasing the pace of acquisition
03:25of the amphibs, which given the challenges
03:27that we're talking about today
03:29with regard to the industrial base
03:30and being able to support that,
03:32I'm not certain is very realistic.
03:36I think I wanna point out, too,
03:39that for years the signal from the Navy
03:41to destroyer yards was get to three ships per year.
03:45Then they suddenly came out
03:46with just a nine plus one multi-year procurement.
03:49I think we're kind of on pace maybe to go beyond that,
03:53which will drive up costs.
03:55What do you have to say about that, Mr. O'Rourke,
03:57and what other platforms might benefit
04:01from a multi-year procurement
04:02that currently doesn't have one?
04:04Yeah, the Navy's used multi-year procurement
04:07with the destroyers since the mid-'90s, if I recall right,
04:11and almost all of the Virginia-class submarines,
04:16not all, but three of them have been done
04:17under multi-year contracting of one form or another.
04:22It is an optional element of what I refer to
04:25in my testimony as the broader effort
04:27toward continuous production.
04:29It's the one that is most well-recognized,
04:31people are most familiar with,
04:32because we have been doing it for such a long time.
04:37And it is something that can be applied
04:40to other shipbuilding programs,
04:42if policymakers agree that that would be cost-effective.
04:46This committee and the Congress as a whole
04:48has a long history of providing approvals
04:50for various shipbuilding programs
04:53to use these contracting forms over the years.
04:56It is a way of providing stability
04:59and continuity to the industry.
05:01And as such, as I mentioned a moment ago,
05:05it can form a part of the broader option that I discussed
05:09that I refer to as continuous production.
05:12Thank you, Mr. Chair.