Hi everyone, this is Kevin. Today is Tuesday, March 30th (date recorded). On today’s podcast, I’m joined by Larry Runkle, our Vice President for the Virginia program.
Before we get to the Virginia news, Larry, for those who may not know much about you, let’s tell our listeners about your background.
Sure Kevin, thanks. I’ve been here about 37 years. I joined Electric Boat in 1984 after graduating from Penn State University. Over the years, I’ve had the honor of managing several of EB’s most successful programs, including the Jimmy Carter, SSGN, VIRGINIA Design and Construction and Maintenance and Modernization, where I was responsible for submarine repair work, modernization and site operations. I had the honor of becoming Vice President of the Virginia Program in May of 2020.
You are a great add to the staff, Larry, I am proud to have you on the team. Let’s talk a little about Maintenance and Modernization first. We are in the process of planning the maintenance availability for USS Hartford. We are going to be negotiating the contract that actually gets into the execution. Maintenance and Modernization is a core capability from my perspective, we need to maintain that capability if we are going to be a full-service shipyard. Earlier in your career, you led the repair of the Hartford, the same ship that will be here in a couple of months. That was a real point of pride for Electric Boat and something that will go down in our history as a significant event for us. Let’s talk about what happened to Hartford and what we did as a team to fix her.
Sure. Back in 2009, the Hartford collided with an amphibious ship, the USS New Orleans, in the Strait of Hormuz near Iran. The hull, sail and bow plane were all very badly damaged on the Hartford, and EB was called to determine if the boat could be repaired. I’m happy to say that Electric Boat came up with a very innovative solution to repair the ship. We actually removed the sail and a piece of the pressure hull and replaced them with modules built at Quonset Point. This effort exercised Electric Boat’s strength, demonstrating EB’s engineering, modular outfitting and repair capabilities. I really look forward to seeing Hartford return to Electric Boat.
This is something that is really special and forms part of the legend that is Electric Boat from my perspective. We got good news about a week and a half ago with the award of an ‘option ship’ as it relates to the Block V Virginia-class program. Can you tell us a little bit about what that option ships means for program and for the company?
Yes, that was great news, announced Friday, March 19: The contract option to Block V, which awards the tenth of the Block V ships—a VPM fast-attack submarine. Under the modification awarded, Electric Boat will do the construction of the SSN-811. The modification also fully funds the 807, already under contract. The net increase to the contract is about $1.9 billion. The benefit of this award is that it helps maintain the two-ship per year production cadence, it provides continuity and development to our workforce, and promotes stability in our national supply base. This funding was secured through the advocacy of our congressional delegations, especially Joe Courtney, who led the charge to restore this funding.
I’ve often called Joe one of our not-so-secret weapons. He was instrumental in delivering that ship option to us; all good news for us and an opportunity to continue on that two ship per year cadence. Last week, our chairman, Phebe Novakovic, was here to be briefed on the state at EB. We took her through every program, operations, supply chain—all the elements of the business. We spent a lot of time talking about Virginia, and your report on program performance was very well received. So let’s talk a little about the program and give our listeners some of the highlights.
Yes, some of the efforts that we put in place last year, Kevin, are starting to pay great dividends. We’re accelerating our production cadence and our continuous improvement efforts and efforts to improve first-time quality are beginning to pay off. At Quonset Point, we recently completed welding the first two VPM missile tubes and those tubes were just moved over to our new fixture and getting ready to pair with the VPM hull section. Quonset Point is hitting their stride in putting Block V together and starting to retire a lot of the first-time risk associated with the new hull section constructions. Here in Groton, we’re gaining a lot of momentum on our early nuclear work—the Operations team is providing great support to accelerate our drive to get the early nuclear work completed quickly and take that work out of the critical path.
We are also spending a lot of time with our shipbuilding partner Newport News to help improve their performance. We are taking on some of the work that they are behind on. This strategic offload will help us sustain ship-over-ship improvements in delivery spans and help improve the cadence.
We’ve also seen some movement here in the Groton shipyard; in fact, just this morning, the 790 boat moved out of the dry dock. Can you update the team on some of the developments on the waterfront here?
Sure, as you said, Kevin, the South Dakota flooded up last week and moved to the South Wing Wall earlier today. We are continuing to advance forward toward sea trials later this spring and summer on South Dakota, Delaware and Oregon. It’s going to be a busy year for certifications and deliveries. We also reached a major milestone on the 797 boat recently—preparation and first-time quality focus resulted in record spans for the Main Omega Seal weld.
So really pleased to share that information with Phebe and with everybody listening. This is an effort from across the enterprise that is really starting to pay some dividends on our safety, quality, schedule, and of course, cost.
We’re also starting to plan for the christening of 795 Rickover—that will be a big day for the company and the Navy at the end of July. And I personally am hoping we are through COVID, and we can throw a typical christening celebration, instead of something a little less significant. And so we are all hopeful we can get back to a normal celebration. Thanks for this update, Larry.
Quickly on the COVID front, want to just give you and update—both states are continuing to expand eligibility for the vaccine. This week in CT, vaccinations became available for people 16 years old and above— that’s actually as of April 1, so another couple of days from today. For our employees who are also veterans, if you receive medical care from the VA, you are eligible to get your vaccine through that health system, and your spouse or caregiver may also be eligible.
When you get your vaccine, please remember to report it to EB Wellness. We are trying to make sure that we are keeping track of who has been vaccinated, so that in the event we get the vaccines to administer ourselves, we know how many to order, and we are not depriving anyone in the community of the vaccines we might otherwise might not be able to use.
Thanks for listening, everyone. We’ll talk again soon.
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