Navy has conducted a market survey of available/potential dry docks and is developing a long-range plan to increase the number of certified dry docks to reduce this shortfall.
Navy continually optimizes regional port loading by adjusting ship schedules in order to develop executable availabilities and best use available capacity. The Regional Maintenance Centers develop plans that address ship and submarine maintenance programming, budgeting, and execution.
These plans forecast private sector workload and show projected capacity of the industrial base, based on input provided by each of the industry participants.
The Navy is continuously reviewing ship maintenance and modernization requirements and private sector port loading, and works to provide a predictable and stable workload to industry.
We’re also looking hard at the contract vehicles. The contract strategy of the future is probably not one contract of one type to one supplier, but a number of contracts. A prime contractor build, a price challenge to look at new technology, a Digital Twin to evaluate it — all of those things will play into allowing us to get more credibility in our delivery programs out of the gate.
The Navy had previously awarded ship maintenance availabilities under a Multi-Ship Multi-Option MSMO construct that prioritized a predictable workload for industry, and then began moving towards a Multiple Award Contract/Multi-Order MAC-MO firm fixed price setup that prioritized cost control.
“We’ve moved out of the MSMO construct over the last couple years into more of this firm fixed price environment, and so as we have watched this, we were in kind of an era with MSMO where schedule was the number-one driver and we didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to cost, and we go into this new firm fixed price environment today where we’ve really put a premium on cost control and the industry out there has really responded.”
“The pendulum has probably swung too far the other direction, there’s probably a happy medium in between. So we’ve had the chance to try this MAC-MO out and some of the new things in the past couple years, and when we look at, now that we’ve learned how this works and we know the lessons learned from MSMO, is there a hybrid model out there that may provide the same level of cost control that we’re seeing today in the firm fixed price environment but that would also provide a little more predictability and stability for the private sector industry so they can go out and plan better?”
The move to MAC-MO’s firm fixed price contracts “is causing us to increase our planning, and most of those ships are delivering to schedule.” In fact 90 percent of the ships currently undergoing maintenance and modernization are on track for on-time delivery.
Navy is expecting a 135 percent at the time of this report of its recent surface ship maintenance workload in Fiscal Years 2018 through 2020, and that extra workload will force the Navy and industry to get creative.
“When you look at what that number was you look at the amount of upcoming docking availabilities, we need to do something differently, such as provide the opportunity to award multiple ships and multiple- or dual-docking wherever possible,”
There are some efficiencies associated with the same contractor working on two destroyers side-by-side, for example. Finding efficiencies – which will both keep maintenance work on schedule and keep cost down – will be important with the greater workload and could inform the new hybrid contracting model NAVSEA is looking at now.
We’re pushing to get “open and inspect” work done much earlier in the process, so solicitations can include a more precise work package instead of assuming a certain percentage of work growth. Today, the open and inspect process is only required to happen before 20 percent of the maintenance availability is executed.
“That’s not good enough.”
We need to get all the open and inspects done before the avail and put the results in the solicitation for you to do the work,” so the work package is accurate and the tank work doesn’t show up as “new work” later on, which impacts cost and schedule.
“By not getting it in the solicitation, it guarantees that you’re going to have growth and new work in the availability. You’ve got it scoped in to the solicitation to do the open and inspect, but not the results of it. What we do there is we have industry provide us hours on what they think may be needed. So it’s one of the additional parts or final parts of the avail that’s not defined.
“We can go do the open and inspect work. We do multiple assist visits to the ships for areas that doesn’t include things like hot work, cutting something open to look, or something that would cause a system to come down, because the ship’s not in the avail.
So in some of those cases we can do the majority of that and document the findings and put it in the request for proposals. And then other work a bit more complex that we truly need to get into the RFP, we may need some additional contracting with industry to go ahead and do those large open and inspects.”
Overall, the Navy already has teams that travel around the globe to support ships, so they could schedule the open and inspect earlier and work with fleet maintenance officers to ensure this early work would not affect the crew or operations.
The ability to define work packages earlier and reduce the potential for new work later on is inextricably linked to on-time delivery and the success of the current contracting model.
“As we pour through the data … to hit the schedule, to hit the budget, the data says regardless of who does the work, regardless of what the ship type, regardless of what the port is where it gets done, if you have changes after 60 percent of the scheduled duration, guaranteed loss of operational days.”
The current MAC-MO relies on well-defined work packages, and as the Navy develops a new “hybrid” contracting model, that model’s implementation could be aided by improvements in accurate work packages.
With firm fixed price we’ve shifted a lot of the execution risk to the primes and that they must now submit bids to enable them to somehow both win the contract and still make money. We get that.”
If we can get the yards a solid, timely package in accordance with the Joint Fleet Maintenance Manual milestones, they’ll deliver a good product in the end no matter what the contracting strategy.
The requirement to have a well-written package in advance of the availability start is even greater in the firm fixed price environment, and we’re working hard to ensure there’s discipline in the process on our end so that you can be confident the work package industry agrees to execute are in fact what they execute.”
Navy had previously planned for 20 percent – or sometimes as much as 40 percent – new work growth in the availabilities, so standardizing how to do the open and inspect work and ensuring it occurs before the RFPs go out would create more confidence going into the availability.
DoD report partially addressed the element to include a description of product support capacity required to support the force structure. Specifically, DoD report did not provide a complete picture for product support requirement levels. For example, product support at large aircraft installations was described by square yards of apron space, but did not include other requirements such as aircraft hangars and maintenance facilities.
According to DoD officials, specific department-wide guidance concerning DoD methods for selecting installations in its assessments does not exist. Moreover, without developing guidance, product support assessments may not be based on consistent methods across the department, resulting in inaccurate estimates. DoD/Congress does not currently have necessary information to make decisions concerning product support capacity across the Services.
DoD method for estimating excess capacity is not sufficient because its reported estimates cannot be generalised to describe excess capacity across the department. Furthermore, DoD sampling method is not always implemented effectively because some of the military departments adjusted the sampling approach.
According to generally accepted survey standards, methods/assessment are sufficient for accomplishing the objectives of the study. In addition, the assessment was executed consistently with the study plan or the described techniques. We found the basis for establishing product support availabilites performed by DoD in the assessment require additional work.
Here we present plans for meetings with maintenance contractors to identify actions aimed at improving performance measure results:
1. Send out a pre qualification questionnaire to likely suppliers in order to
2. Select a short list of appropriate potential suppliers
3. Receive tenders are sent in from the qualified suppliers
4. Schedule meetings to clarify supplier questions that suppliers may have
5. Evaluate tenders and award requirement to winning bidder
6. Negotiate terms and conditions with chosen supplier.
7. Update purchasing ledger and stock records
8. Approve budget identify stakeholders and form project team
9. Keep up-to-date with future procurement activities
10. Consult stakeholders to get a complete picture of the business need
11. Conduct market research to help clarify and inform requirements
12. Give stakeholders a clear picture of the market
13. Develop detailed scope of requirements from the business need
14. Ensure outcome fully satisfies the need
15. Clarify 'needs' vs. 'wants’
16. Identify timeline and key dates
17. Specify key quality or performance standards
18. Develop evaluation methodology to score the response to request
19. Ask questions to test the supplier, interviews, demos, site visits
20. Decide approach route to market
21. Develop evaluation methodology panel members
22. Assess and score responses against the evaluation criteria
23. Ensure suppliers are given a fair amount of time to respond
24. Check that you have the capacity and capability to deliver the contract.
25. Check that you meet all the pre-conditions
26. Show how your organisation can add value
27. Make available debriefs to both successful and unsuccessful respondents
28. Monitor work against the agreed deliverables, timescales and cost.
Find out more about our purchasing information
29. Manage the delivery of goods/services as per the contract
30. Ensure you have a purchase order, where appropriate
31. Submit complete and accurate invoices on time
32. Share feedback about the contract
33. Consult central procurement area for advice were appropriate
34. Research the market to understand capabilities and restraints
35. Determine whether the goods or services to be purchased are subject to coordinated procurement arrangements
36. Determine if the relevant entity already has a panel or multi-use list could be used
37. Consider whether there are opportunities for cooperative procurement
38. Treat procurements as if they are over the relevant threshold if unable to be valued
39. Seek procurement based on quotes directly from one or more suppliers
40. Include what was previously referred to as ‘sole source’ and ‘select’ or ‘restricted’ source procurements
41. Include essential information eg. closing time, evaluation criteria and methodology, process rules
42. Contact officer and the possibility of an industry briefing, site visit, and/or mid-term review
43. Enable suppliers to develop and lodge competitive and compliant submissions
44. Include a draft contract and statement of compliance in the request documentation
45. Use appropriate limitation of liability and standard contract clauses where available
46. Ensure clarifications or additional materials are made available to all potential suppliers in a timely and equitable manner
47. Do not materially change the evaluation plan after the opening of submissions.
48. Develop a contract management plan to assist the entity to understand and implement obligations under the contract
49. Assess contract extension options on a value for money basis in accordance with the terms of the contract
50. Consider any obligations that survive the contract end-date or termination of the contract
Navy continually optimizes regional port loading by adjusting ship schedules in order to develop executable availabilities and best use available capacity. The Regional Maintenance Centers develop plans that address ship and submarine maintenance programming, budgeting, and execution.
These plans forecast private sector workload and show projected capacity of the industrial base, based on input provided by each of the industry participants.
The Navy is continuously reviewing ship maintenance and modernization requirements and private sector port loading, and works to provide a predictable and stable workload to industry.
We’re also looking hard at the contract vehicles. The contract strategy of the future is probably not one contract of one type to one supplier, but a number of contracts. A prime contractor build, a price challenge to look at new technology, a Digital Twin to evaluate it — all of those things will play into allowing us to get more credibility in our delivery programs out of the gate.
The Navy had previously awarded ship maintenance availabilities under a Multi-Ship Multi-Option MSMO construct that prioritized a predictable workload for industry, and then began moving towards a Multiple Award Contract/Multi-Order MAC-MO firm fixed price setup that prioritized cost control.
“We’ve moved out of the MSMO construct over the last couple years into more of this firm fixed price environment, and so as we have watched this, we were in kind of an era with MSMO where schedule was the number-one driver and we didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to cost, and we go into this new firm fixed price environment today where we’ve really put a premium on cost control and the industry out there has really responded.”
“The pendulum has probably swung too far the other direction, there’s probably a happy medium in between. So we’ve had the chance to try this MAC-MO out and some of the new things in the past couple years, and when we look at, now that we’ve learned how this works and we know the lessons learned from MSMO, is there a hybrid model out there that may provide the same level of cost control that we’re seeing today in the firm fixed price environment but that would also provide a little more predictability and stability for the private sector industry so they can go out and plan better?”
The move to MAC-MO’s firm fixed price contracts “is causing us to increase our planning, and most of those ships are delivering to schedule.” In fact 90 percent of the ships currently undergoing maintenance and modernization are on track for on-time delivery.
Navy is expecting a 135 percent at the time of this report of its recent surface ship maintenance workload in Fiscal Years 2018 through 2020, and that extra workload will force the Navy and industry to get creative.
“When you look at what that number was you look at the amount of upcoming docking availabilities, we need to do something differently, such as provide the opportunity to award multiple ships and multiple- or dual-docking wherever possible,”
There are some efficiencies associated with the same contractor working on two destroyers side-by-side, for example. Finding efficiencies – which will both keep maintenance work on schedule and keep cost down – will be important with the greater workload and could inform the new hybrid contracting model NAVSEA is looking at now.
We’re pushing to get “open and inspect” work done much earlier in the process, so solicitations can include a more precise work package instead of assuming a certain percentage of work growth. Today, the open and inspect process is only required to happen before 20 percent of the maintenance availability is executed.
“That’s not good enough.”
We need to get all the open and inspects done before the avail and put the results in the solicitation for you to do the work,” so the work package is accurate and the tank work doesn’t show up as “new work” later on, which impacts cost and schedule.
“By not getting it in the solicitation, it guarantees that you’re going to have growth and new work in the availability. You’ve got it scoped in to the solicitation to do the open and inspect, but not the results of it. What we do there is we have industry provide us hours on what they think may be needed. So it’s one of the additional parts or final parts of the avail that’s not defined.
“We can go do the open and inspect work. We do multiple assist visits to the ships for areas that doesn’t include things like hot work, cutting something open to look, or something that would cause a system to come down, because the ship’s not in the avail.
So in some of those cases we can do the majority of that and document the findings and put it in the request for proposals. And then other work a bit more complex that we truly need to get into the RFP, we may need some additional contracting with industry to go ahead and do those large open and inspects.”
Overall, the Navy already has teams that travel around the globe to support ships, so they could schedule the open and inspect earlier and work with fleet maintenance officers to ensure this early work would not affect the crew or operations.
The ability to define work packages earlier and reduce the potential for new work later on is inextricably linked to on-time delivery and the success of the current contracting model.
“As we pour through the data … to hit the schedule, to hit the budget, the data says regardless of who does the work, regardless of what the ship type, regardless of what the port is where it gets done, if you have changes after 60 percent of the scheduled duration, guaranteed loss of operational days.”
The current MAC-MO relies on well-defined work packages, and as the Navy develops a new “hybrid” contracting model, that model’s implementation could be aided by improvements in accurate work packages.
With firm fixed price we’ve shifted a lot of the execution risk to the primes and that they must now submit bids to enable them to somehow both win the contract and still make money. We get that.”
If we can get the yards a solid, timely package in accordance with the Joint Fleet Maintenance Manual milestones, they’ll deliver a good product in the end no matter what the contracting strategy.
The requirement to have a well-written package in advance of the availability start is even greater in the firm fixed price environment, and we’re working hard to ensure there’s discipline in the process on our end so that you can be confident the work package industry agrees to execute are in fact what they execute.”
Navy had previously planned for 20 percent – or sometimes as much as 40 percent – new work growth in the availabilities, so standardizing how to do the open and inspect work and ensuring it occurs before the RFPs go out would create more confidence going into the availability.
DoD report partially addressed the element to include a description of product support capacity required to support the force structure. Specifically, DoD report did not provide a complete picture for product support requirement levels. For example, product support at large aircraft installations was described by square yards of apron space, but did not include other requirements such as aircraft hangars and maintenance facilities.
According to DoD officials, specific department-wide guidance concerning DoD methods for selecting installations in its assessments does not exist. Moreover, without developing guidance, product support assessments may not be based on consistent methods across the department, resulting in inaccurate estimates. DoD/Congress does not currently have necessary information to make decisions concerning product support capacity across the Services.
DoD method for estimating excess capacity is not sufficient because its reported estimates cannot be generalised to describe excess capacity across the department. Furthermore, DoD sampling method is not always implemented effectively because some of the military departments adjusted the sampling approach.
According to generally accepted survey standards, methods/assessment are sufficient for accomplishing the objectives of the study. In addition, the assessment was executed consistently with the study plan or the described techniques. We found the basis for establishing product support availabilites performed by DoD in the assessment require additional work.
Here we present plans for meetings with maintenance contractors to identify actions aimed at improving performance measure results:
1. Send out a pre qualification questionnaire to likely suppliers in order to
2. Select a short list of appropriate potential suppliers
3. Receive tenders are sent in from the qualified suppliers
4. Schedule meetings to clarify supplier questions that suppliers may have
5. Evaluate tenders and award requirement to winning bidder
6. Negotiate terms and conditions with chosen supplier.
7. Update purchasing ledger and stock records
8. Approve budget identify stakeholders and form project team
9. Keep up-to-date with future procurement activities
10. Consult stakeholders to get a complete picture of the business need
11. Conduct market research to help clarify and inform requirements
12. Give stakeholders a clear picture of the market
13. Develop detailed scope of requirements from the business need
14. Ensure outcome fully satisfies the need
15. Clarify 'needs' vs. 'wants’
16. Identify timeline and key dates
17. Specify key quality or performance standards
18. Develop evaluation methodology to score the response to request
19. Ask questions to test the supplier, interviews, demos, site visits
20. Decide approach route to market
21. Develop evaluation methodology panel members
22. Assess and score responses against the evaluation criteria
23. Ensure suppliers are given a fair amount of time to respond
24. Check that you have the capacity and capability to deliver the contract.
25. Check that you meet all the pre-conditions
26. Show how your organisation can add value
27. Make available debriefs to both successful and unsuccessful respondents
28. Monitor work against the agreed deliverables, timescales and cost.
Find out more about our purchasing information
29. Manage the delivery of goods/services as per the contract
30. Ensure you have a purchase order, where appropriate
31. Submit complete and accurate invoices on time
32. Share feedback about the contract
33. Consult central procurement area for advice were appropriate
34. Research the market to understand capabilities and restraints
35. Determine whether the goods or services to be purchased are subject to coordinated procurement arrangements
36. Determine if the relevant entity already has a panel or multi-use list could be used
37. Consider whether there are opportunities for cooperative procurement
38. Treat procurements as if they are over the relevant threshold if unable to be valued
39. Seek procurement based on quotes directly from one or more suppliers
40. Include what was previously referred to as ‘sole source’ and ‘select’ or ‘restricted’ source procurements
41. Include essential information eg. closing time, evaluation criteria and methodology, process rules
42. Contact officer and the possibility of an industry briefing, site visit, and/or mid-term review
43. Enable suppliers to develop and lodge competitive and compliant submissions
44. Include a draft contract and statement of compliance in the request documentation
45. Use appropriate limitation of liability and standard contract clauses where available
46. Ensure clarifications or additional materials are made available to all potential suppliers in a timely and equitable manner
47. Do not materially change the evaluation plan after the opening of submissions.
48. Develop a contract management plan to assist the entity to understand and implement obligations under the contract
49. Assess contract extension options on a value for money basis in accordance with the terms of the contract
50. Consider any obligations that survive the contract end-date or termination of the contract
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