Navy admiral seeks ‘one enterprise’ of public, private shipyards

The Navy's shipyards and private sector ship overhaul facilities need to work more closely than ever to meet the demands of an increasingly agile fleet, according to a senior naval officer.

Vice Adm. Phillip Balisle, head of Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), says the Navy's four shipyards at Portsmouth, N.H., Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Bremerton, Wash., and Portsmouth, Va., along with its two largest commercial shipyards, General Dynamics' Electric Boat division in Groton, Conn., and Northrop Grumman's Newport News, Va., unit, should operate as one national shipyard.

"If you want to be as responsive as you can be, as agile as you can be, [then] you treat the enterprise as one business enterprise for all practical purposes. If you can flow people around it, balance workloads, respond to surges, and make adjustments using the synergy of the larger industry, then you've gained responsiveness and efficiency in a significant way," Balisle told Government Executive in a recent interview from his corner office overlooking the Anacostia River at the Washington Navy Yard.

Balisle, who as commander of NAVSEA oversees the service's shipyards, says the changes are necessary because the Navy is evolving into a rapid-response force. In the past, Navy ships have followed rigid schedules in which they operated at sea, then went to port for several months of scheduled maintenance work. That has changed however, as the military has faced more frequent deployments against unlikely threats.

For example, in late 2001, aircraft carriers were unexpectedly called to launch attacks 700 miles inland in Afghanistan because of a lack of land bases in the region. More recently, the Navy deployed 70 percent of its surface ships and 50 percent of its submarines at the height of the war against Iraq. As a result, the ships have returned for maintenance work on more irregular schedules and in larger numbers.

Balisle says greater coordination among the shipyards would also help avoid layoffs during downturns in work at individual shipyards by shifting employees to other shipyards. "If I am working them as an independent entity, then they almost are forced to lay off workers because they have more people than their work requires. But if I can compensate for that by taking excess people from one yard and flowing them to a place I need more workers, I can stabilize my workforce," he says.

Balisle admits the concept is not entirely new. The Portsmouth shipyard, for example, already shares workers with Electric Boat. But, he says, cooperating can be done on a larger scale by, for example, sharing software programs that schedule work and using common repair equipment at all of the yards so employees can work wherever they are needed.

Additionally, Balisle says, shipyard workers will increasingly find themselves working outside the fences of shipyards. For example, workers from both public and private yards were recently brought to Jacksonville, Fla., to make repairs to the USS John F. Kennedy aircraft carrier at its home port there because it was easier than moving the ship and its entire crew to one of the shipyards.

Balise is concerned about the aging workforce at the shipyards. Many workers are at or near retirement age, and downsizing in recent years has meant few younger workers have been hired. The Navy, he says, needs to sell young people on shipbuilding as an exciting, technology-driven industry. "This is not just bending steel," he says.

Balisle says closer cooperation with private yards should not be seen as a signal that the Navy wants to privatize its repair work. "In the public yard, we can make adjustments on short notice in a lot more user-friendly way than in a private facility, which has to worry about the profits and the shareholder impacts," he says.