There is a fiction that BAE are the premier ship builder in Australia and thhat they consistently deliver to schedule and budget or better. It is mostly their own propaganda and the fact that the politicians with an axe to grind are either parochial in favour of BAE, rabidly anti ASC or both.
The truth is the team that was built up under Transfield and Tenix following the privatisation of Williamstown had dispersed by the time BAE began work on the AWD blocks and the result was entirely predictable and took years to fix. The AWD blocks were basically used to train and certify BAEs new workforce and awd also ended up paying for a new paint shop and upgraded facilities at Williamstown, as well ad substantial support from ASC and contracted marine surveyors, welding instructors, supervisors and engineers. Even with this leg up BAE continued to underperform until many of their senior personnel were replaced by people brought in straight off the Type 45 project.
Having seen first hand the amount of time, (tax payers) money and effort it took to bring BAE up to the minimum required standard, but still not as good as ASC or Forgacs, the opportunity cost of having to rebuild capability at a privately owned company that had been cut to make a buck for said privately owned company and the behavior of said company, backgrounding politicians and media against ASC just pisses me off.
