On January 30, I led an EB team who met with Naval Reactors (NR) to discuss the progress we’ve made on improving our discipline to standards in the execution of work. As you recall, following the NAVSEA Audit A-finding of last June, EB’s Core Values Project Team gathered feedback from a cross-section of employees to better understand the causes of our declining discipline to performance standards. The team worked with senior leadership to develop and articulate our Core Values: Value Each Other, Behave with Integrity and Purpose and Commit to Excellence. The team next identified six lines of effort – safety, operational excellence, risk assessment/critical thinking, facilities, workforce engagement and development and continuous learning – to put our values into action, guiding our behaviors and improving our performance.

The employees who traveled with me to NR represented a cross-section of our company, demonstrating that we are aligned from senior leadership through to our Operations supervisors and, more importantly, that our actions in the above six areas are having a positive effect. Our goal was to have an open and honest discussion, and we accomplished that. Overall, the meeting was positive. While we shared some of our successes with NR, we also shared our challenges and areas of focus.

Two areas I personally highlighted were our efforts on Safety and Operational Excellence. We are making progress in safety training and earlier this month began OSHA 30-hour training for all members of the Operations Management team. We also described our efforts to establish a peer-to-peer approach to safety across the entire EB team. Our efforts to increase work order attainment and changes put in place – such as our new Operations Work List (OWL) tool – give our production supervisors less of an administrative burden and more time to work with their crews.

While NR acknowledged our progress, they highlighted three areas where we need to do more: document and learn more from “near misses” related to safety, continue to solve issues related to radiography testing safety, and further apply the Navy Nuclear Propulsion Program Principles, aka the “Rickover Principles,” as our foundation for achieving discipline to standards across our workforce. While we have much more work to do, I was proud to represent all of you at NR and to show how we are working to get better every day.

Last month, I provided you with an update on SSN 792 PCU Vermont’s certification status and discussed how we all contribute to the certification of a ship. As of today, the 792 will be certified in the coming days, with fast cruise to follow and sea trials commencing soon after. This has been a difficult process for EB and NNS. We are spending considerable effort investigating our certification process and have self-reported several issues that we must improve on. Our certification process discipline and the formality we use to document any issues associated with the construction of the ship must be right every time. While none of the issues we uncovered impact the ability of the ship to safely conduct at-sea operations, we must all carry with us the importance of formally reporting any issues.

Overall, I’m encouraged by the progress we’re making as a team. With our Core Values guiding us, we will safely deliver the world’s most sophisticated ships to our Navy and continue our storied legacy well into this century.

Kevin Graney

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