Hi everyone, it’s Kevin. Today is Thursday, May 13th. On today’s podcast, I’d like to give you an update on our progress over the last several weeks.
First, thank you to everyone who has gotten vaccinated for COVID and registered their vaccination with our EB Wellness Team. In total we have registered about 7,500 shots. On Wednesday, April 28th, the Rhode Island Medical Reserve Corps administered close to 700 doses of COVID-19 vaccine to EB employees at the Quonset Point facility. Our Connecticut EB Pharmacy staff administered 120 doses of vaccine to employees in the Groton shipyard on Thursday, April 29th and the Groton EB Medical team hosted a vaccination clinic in the shipyard on Friday, April 30th, during which they administered 240 doses of vaccine. Today, May 13th, the Moderna vaccine will be available at the New London Health Services Clinic from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. for both first and second doses. There is a link to the scheduling website in the podcast transcript (this link can only be accessed if on the EB network). Also, vaccination clinics at Quonset Point and the Groton Shipyard are scheduled for the week of May 23rd.
At the EB Family Pharmacies in Connecticut and Rhode Island, employees, their spouses and dependents age 18 years and older can receive the COVID-19 vaccine by appointment. I suspect our current registry, that is how many of us have actually received the vaccine, may not reflect the most up-to-date vaccine status of our employees. We’re tracking behind the general population of Connecticut and Rhode Island. So please, if you haven’t done so yet, make an appointment to get vaccinated, and please register your vaccination through the Coronavirus page on Homeport so we can accurately plan future vaccination events.
In the Groton shipyard, we’ve made progress in several areas, including significant nuclear testing events on SSN-793 Oregon, SSN-795 Rickover and in the run-up to nuclear key events on SSN-790 South Dakota. This was the first time in the Virginia program that we have conducted major integrated reactor plant test phases concurrently in the 260 building and waterborne at the North Wing Wall. It takes the support of ship’s crews and the entire waterfront organization to keep these three-shift-a day, seven-day-week programs, moving.
The SSN-795 testing was scheduled to take 52 days and is currently on a path to complete in 45 days, including first-of-class testing on new instrumentation and control systems. This schedule gain will provide margin for upcoming land-based steaming tests ahead of the rollout to Graving Dock #3. Also of note on the 795, we’ve seen increased mechanization of pipe welding in the forward end and an improving radiographic acceptance rate—that’s X-rays of pipe joints. This is a significant improvement in our quality performance.
The South Dakota, SSN-790, recently floated off and is in the final preparations in completing waterborne propulsion plant testing ahead of sea trials. It will be great to see her get to sea; I know the fleet is eagerly waiting the capability we’ve installed in her.
End load is the final assembly of the hull over the reactor plant and is work that takes months of planning, training and verification that the ship and team are ready to execute. SSN-797 Iowa recently completed the hull-slide portion of the core end load. The team applied lessons learned from several of the recent end loads at both our yard and at Newport News and then hit their schedule marks over about the last six weeks, culminating in a successful hull slide two weeks ago.
At Quonset Point, the team working on the 801 Boat’s 6/7 module completed it and shipped it last week—five weeks earlier than the original ship date of June 11. The team built this unit in 27 weeks from module turn-down to ship-out with less than 400 hours of offload —a savings of 11 weeks on the schedule from the 38 weeks the model calls for. The unit shipped with all radiographed pipe joints complete and the auxiliary seawater system tested. This is significant because the 6/7 unit is the first step in the nuclear path for Groton and allows that team to begin work on time.
In our maintenance and modernization area, we’ve seen significant progress on USS Tennessee, SSBN-734, at Kings Bay, Georgia, with all Large Vertical Array (LVA) panels now installed. This is the first SSBN to have a complete LVA installed and is only the second submarine to have this system—USS South Dakota, SSN-790, is the first. This ship alteration process began back in March of 2018 to get this game-changing capability to the fleet as fast as possible. The LVA is being installed entirely in Kings Bay by the EB Kings Bay team augmented by experienced EB Groton Ops, non-metallics, and system engineering personnel. The team incorporated SSN-790 lessons-learned to improve efficiency and schedule execution. Getting this done safely, with first-time quality, while mitigating all the schedule risks involves a great effort across multiple teams and directorates across EB, NAVSEA’s Submarine Acoustic Systems Program Office and Kings Bay. At 76% complete, the work is projected to complete 10% under budget and two weeks ahead of schedule, in spite of multiple challenges including some COVID-related restrictions.
Thank you to these teams and every one of you for your continued focus on our mission throughout challenges posed over the last 14 months. One sign that we’re rounding a corner toward normalcy was an in-person visit we hosted last week for two U.S. cabinet secretaries: Gina Raimondo, Secretary of Commerce, and Marty Walsh, Secretary of Labor. The secretaries were joined by Governor Lamont, Senator Blumenthal, and Representatives Courtney, DeLauro and Larson. The contingent was on hand to learn more about our apprenticeship programs. While Secretary Raimondo was familiar with the programs based on her previous work with us as the Rhode Island Governor, it was a great opportunity for Secretary Walsh and Rep. DeLauro to visit the site and hear from several of our apprentices directly about how the program has changed their lives and made EB better. Check out the Homeport news story for photos from the event.
As always, I am proud to represent you, and it is even more rewarding to see the talent, ingenuity and excitement of our people as our visitors toured the Groton facility.
Thanks everyone; we’ll talk again soon.
