Dave McCall, Director of Test
June 28, 2018
Other than the upcoming alpha sea trials on the South Dakota (SSN 790), this is my favorite time in a ship’s construction. We are at the point where we as shipbuilders put a bow on our product, the Navy accepts her for in-service, and she is married to her crew. The staging is gone, the VPT house is off, and the South Dakota looks like a warship.
But the other thing that makes this one of my favorite periods in ship construction is observing how the waterfront team rallies for the end game. There is no problem that can’t be fixed “today,” material that can’t be “found,” or an individual shipbuilder not willing to give the extra time and effort required to make it happen. Why is this? It’s leadership up and down the hierarchy of the waterfront team. And what does it take to achieve this level of leadership in the end game? Ten minutes.
It is the ten extra minutes spent at turnover making sure everyone understands what’s being passed between shifts and what’s expected to be accomplished on the back shifts.
It is the ten extra minutes the first-line supervisor spends with his crew making sure they understand the jobs they are being assigned, and that they have all the correct material, paper and tooling to succeed.
It is the ten extra minutes the deck-plate shipbuilder spends providing feedback to his foreman, sharing his experience and making sure he understands the scope of his assignment.
It is the ten extra minutes Engineering spends with the shipbuilder to understand the problem so that the deck plates get the correct direction quickly.
It is the ten extra minutes spent to make sure the job gets done.
And finally, it is the ten extra minutes the team spends planning to make sure the chosen path ahead is the most efficient and that team buy in is achieved.
This is how Electric Boat Shipbuilders deliver ships. But what if we did this every day, not just in the end game? How many weeks could we take out of our schedules? How many critical jobs could go from seven days a week to five? And most importantly, how quickly can we get the warships to the Navy that the nation needs? The difference between average and exceptional leadership is only ten minutes. We are not average shipbuilders, we are the best in the world—we can afford the ten extra minutes to be even better.
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