Royal Canadian Navy Discussions and updates
- Thread starter stephen weist
- Start date
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Can’t help but think the skill level will vastly improve by the time the CSC program starts (assuming the government doesn’t screw with it).
Don't they have an assembly hall to assemble the whole ship under cover once they join the blocks together?
The facility is designed to hold under cover 2 ships in various stages of construction, which is what will occur for CSC. However, the schedule for AOPV (AOPS) was accelerated to accommodate 3 ships concurrently under construction. That means the basic construction blocks are built at the front end of the Assembly Hall, the MEGA blocks are assembled from those blocks in the tail end of the facility ("Ultra Hall"), and the MEGA blocks are then moved outside to be joined together, thus allowing the front end to start building the blocks for a third ship. So, at any one time, it looks like this: One ship landside for final assembly, a second ship's MEGA blocks being assembled in the Ultra Hall, and a third ship's basic blocks under construction at the front end of the Assembly Hall (which also contains a paint shop). Or, another way to describe the process: 1) start of block construction and assembly is in the Assembly Hall, 2) MEGA Block assembly is in the Ultra Hall, and 3) final assembly and fit up landside. The entire structure (Assembly Hall + Ultra Hall) is 408m in length.
The process in the video shows the move of 2 of the 3 completed MEGA blocks for AOPV 3 from the Ultra Hall to landside. With AOPV 3 now outside, the blocks for AOPV 4 can now move into the mostly vacated Ultra Hall for assembly into the larger MEGA blocks, which will allow for the steel to be cut on AOPV 5 at the beginning of the process.
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John Fedup
The Bunker Group
Not sure but I don’t think so.
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
This is a link to a podcast discussing modern war ship cost wrt the CSC. Rather long but there are a few interesting comments. My favourite line is the “cone of uncertainty”.
John Fedup
The Bunker Group
The Irving yard in Halifax has seen significant modernization. SeaSpan in Vancouver has also but I am not sure to what extent. Property in the lower Fraser Valley is very expensive.
Here's a pretty good video of how it is done at Irving (courtesy Irving Shipyards):
BAE was the lead consultant to Irving when they built the new facility, so it and the BAE Govan yard are identical from a process standpoint, and from what I have read, use most of the same cutting and bending equipment. This will be a benefit when the CSC construction starts. The UK T26 and CSC will be block built using the same processes and tools. Don't know about Hunter, but would have to assume the same, since it's a variant of the same basic design.
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Very interesting report from the Naval Association of Canada on the CSC, and the dangers of comparing costs with those from other nations (apples to oranges). Very good description of how Canadian costing is done.
John Newman
The Bunker Group
Here’s a CGI animation of the upgrade to the Osborne South shipyard (the infrastructure shown in the animation has recently been completed):
The new infrastructure, and upgrades to the existing, allows for complete ship build on site, flat steel plate at one end, complete ship at the other.
Cheers,
(PS, as a side note, north of the shiplift, the Osborne North shipyard infrastructure is in the process of being significantly enlarged and expanded for the building of the 12 Attack class submarines.)
Thanks for those, I had already seen the one regarding the Osborne Yard but comparing to the Halifax video was interesting. I thought the process for the Hunters was slightly different to the UK process and it seems its mainly just the way the mega blocks are handled.
Definitely seems the Osborne Shipyard has the luxury of space when designing it so they can do it all on the same site compared to the UK and Canadian Shipyards.
Will be interesting to see whether this slightly different process leads to any differences in quality or efficiencies between the different yards.
Definitely seems the Osborne Shipyard has the luxury of space when designing it so they can do it all on the same site compared to the UK and Canadian Shipyards.
Will be interesting to see whether this slightly different process leads to any differences in quality or efficiencies between the different yards.
John Newman
The Bunker Group
Efficiencies is certainly high on the list for the Australian Government.
When the three Hobart class DDGs were assembled at Osborne, the major blocks were manufactured at multiple sites around Oz, including Osborne and some in Spain too, there were issues with some blocks that required remedial work too.
This time around with the Hunter class FFGs it was decided that all block work was to be performed onsite, the $500+m infrastructure investment will allow that to happen.
One other point to mention is that the Osborne shipyard is ‘owned’ by the Federal Government, not the shipbuilders.
It is being leased to the shipbuilder for the period of the project, next project could be a different shipbuilder.
Cheers,
You say that as if it's a good thing. When has ownership by government ever been more efficient than private ownership? Private ownership virtually guarantees regular updates of equipment and processes in order to gain efficiencies. These efficiencies will help to reduce costs and increase the profit margin to the shipyard from a fixed-price contract. This should also limit project overruns. That incentive is simply not there with governments. I see more likelihood that a privately owned shipyard will control costs than a government owned shipyard. That does not seem like a terribly great decision to me. I'm genuinely curious as to what the motivation was for this approach?
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John Fedup
The Bunker Group
As I understand it, the site and infrastructure are owned by the government and ship builders winning a contract get to use the facility. Perhaps John Newman can clarify this and whether or not the government also updates the site. One advantage I see is a builder not having to pay for property along with applicable property tax.
I would argue differently because if you look at UK builds the cost and time overruns have all occurred in private shipyards. Canadian builds much the same. In Australia's case the Commonwealth of Australia has built the Osborne shipyard and future proofed as much as they can. They own the infrastructure and then the builders walk in build and walk out at the end of the contract. That way the Commonwealth are not beholden to one or two shipbuilders. They will be in the position of supplying both the yard and eventually the qualified and experienced workforce. Gotta be a win win. I believe the other thing that the Australians are doing with this build is having a full digital twin down to the last small screw. So when they come to build the physical ship, most if not all of the problems are sorted.
The government is meant to update the site. If you check the ANIs Statement of intent on page 14 it explains how it is meant to work:
It also includes a diagram outlining how it works:
Obviously however it ends up working out is different then how it is designed to and it seems the way Canada, UK and Australia have all gone for different set-ups which probably all have their pros and cons.
Australia seems to have designed theirs this way so that the government controls the yard and aren't stuck with one shipbuilder unlike UK and Canada. There have also been other lessons learnt from construction of Collins/AWD build programs that they have tried to build into the setup.
Not unique to Australia: CSC celebrates first Visualization Suite opening in Ottawa
Never seen a private company game contracts to squeeze more money out? Or do stupid things like getting rid of workers in fits of machismo, then have to hire freelancers or subcontract out work at higher cost? I recall one such case where a firm lost a big contract because in the process of cutting headcount to meet apparently arbitrary requirements it had got rid of people whose skills were needed to support it, & another where a friend of mine spent a day - what was supposed to be a one hour meeting taking six - managing to get a proposal which was about to be approved casually to be costed. The finance & legal people assumed that skilled technical staff were replaceable without significant cost, & they could switch technology more or less overnight for the cost of hardware & software licenses.
All private companies.
I've also seen government employees worrying about cost because they felt responsible to taxpayers.