Hi everyone, it’s Kevin. It’s Thursday, November 5. If you get the chance over the next day or so, it’s Carol Blackburn’s birthday, so send her well wishes. Today, the Navy announced that they exercised previously established options awarding EB $9.5 billion worth of contracts for the construction of the first two ships of the Columbia class. This is really an exciting day for every one of us. We just participated in a press conference with James “Hondo” Geurts, Undersecretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisitions, and other Navy officials to announce this award with the press. The Columbia program is our nation’s #1 strategic defense priority and has received bipartisan support from Congress to ensure its success. We are certainly thankful for all of the support we’ve gotten.
Joining me on today’s call with Secretary Geurts and on the podcast today is Beth Rafferty, our Vice President of the Columbia Program. Beth, welcome to the podcast, and congratulations to you and the team.
Thanks, Kevin.
So we’ve had a lot of people who’ve joined our team in recent years, and maybe not everyone knows you so why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’d be happy to; first, thanks for having me today. It’s my very first podcast ever, and it’s pretty exciting to do it on a day like today of all days. As you mentioned in the press conference earlier today, this is really a once-in-a-generational event for shipbuilders. I’m really excited to be a part of it.
I joined EB in 1994 after graduating from New York Polytechnic University on Long Island; that’s actually not far from where you went to school at SUNY Maritime, I understand. My first job at EB was as a structural engineer in Solids Mechanics. Back then I was supporting the Virginia program, just getting started. Since then, I’ve held a number of different roles in the organization. I spent some time in Quality and Ship Certification; I spent some time as a procurement manager when we were just starting up Columbia procurement of major components. I was the director of Naval Architecture and Structural Engineering and Design, and the director of Integrated Power Systems before being named VP of Columbia last year.
So Columbia is not new for you; you’ve been around this program for a long time. Let’s talk a little bit about what today’s announcement means for the Columbia team.
Today’s announcement awards EB $9.5 billion for the construction of what our team calls ‘Build 1’ – which includes the lead ship, Columbia, and the second ship, which was very recently named Wisconsin. Essentially, this award provides funding that will allow us to move from the advanced construction phase to full construction, and the team is already working hard at that.
All of your team and a lot of the organization moved really quickly to secure this funding. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about it?
That’s right – our experiences told us that similar negotiations to arrive at an agreement that would secure funding would have taken about 18 months in the past. But, given the importance of delivering the Columbia class to the Navy, we worked very closely with the Navy team and the EB team on an expedited negotiation that took only eight months. This required a lot of dedication on both sides but what it means now is that all the energy we would normally be putting into the negotiations process is behind us, and we can get to the work on full construction with the right kind of focus.
That is a heck of an accomplishment for a program this big. The maturity of the Columbia program is really impressive – let’s talk about the status of the Columbia design and how it provides an advantage to the program.
Absolutely—the maturity of this program is a great point of pride for those of us working on the program, particularly the engineering and design community. One thing that distinguishes the lead ship Columbia from all lead ships in the past is the unprecedented level of design maturity at construction start. Today, we are 100% complete with arrangements and 81% complete with disclosures. Compare that progress to the Virginia-class at the same point of construction; they were 76% with arrangements and 43% with disclosures. If you look even further back, on the Ohio program, we had only 10% of disclosures complete at the same point in the program.
Not only is the design of this ship more mature than any lead ship in our history, we accomplished all this while transitioning to our IPDE tool set and to a model-based design, an entirely new way of thinking about design for EB. If the design maturity wasn’t impressive enough on its face value, when I consider that we’ve done that while we were transitioning to an entirely new set of tools and systems, I think this achievement is that much more impressive.
I agree; very impressive. On the press conference the Navy talked about Columbia being the number one strategic priority for our entire country. So these ships must be of the highest quality and we’ve got to deliver them on time. Tell us a little bit about the timeline and what it’s going to look like going forward.
October was a big month for the Columbia program. It marked the point where we moved into official construction start and transitioned from advanced construction into our ramp up to full-rate production. In fact, by the end of the year, we’ll be at about 70% of our planned peak staffing at Quonset Point, so we’re ramping up fast. Columbia modules must arrive in Groton at the new South Yard Assembly Building in 2024 to enable delivery of lead ship Columbia to the Navy in 2027. It’s an 84-month schedule, which may sound like a long time, but we really have to execute flawlessly to meet that timeline and deliver the ship when the Navy needs it in service. Our aggressive design maturity will certainly help, but we’ll need support from almost every other part of the organization to make sure we achieve that goal. That means Design and Engineering, our new Facilities and Real Estate Team, Human Resources, Materials, Quality, all have to pull together and help our Operations team be successful. It’s an aggressive schedule, but I think what we’ve talked about today shows that our team is committed to meeting it.
I know the team is committed to meeting it. What I want everybody listening to recall is where you were on November 5, 2020. This doesn’t happen very often that we have set ourselves up for an incredible program that is going to make long careers for many of our newest shipbuilders. That is hugely important and should provide a sense of great pride for what we’re going to do in the coming years.
The entry into full construction on this is truly a once-in-a-generation event. For the first time in almost 20 years, Electric Boat will be constructing two classes of submarines. It’s the culmination of years of preparation and team work by everybody, and it’s going to take all of us to deliver— the Navy, our suppliers and all 17,000 of us. Now, it’s on all of us to deliver the best lead ship in our company’s history. I’m proud to be part of the team that’s going to get that done.
Thanks, Beth, for being here today, and thanks to all of you for listening. We’ll talk again soon.
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