Hi everyone; it’s Kevin. Today is Thursday, June 24th. It’s been just over two months since we lost Smitty—Robb Smith—at Quonset Point on April 20th. In our safety stand-down following the tragedy, I asked you to re-commit to safety, and to be better tomorrow than we are today. Our goal for safety is zero injuries, and each of us needs to make this personal.
We’ve recently seen some positive trends with regard to safety. Our Recordable Injury Rate at Quonset Point is down 27%. Also, the number of fire incidents, electrical shocks, falling objects and controlled space violations at both QP and Groton are at an all-time low. While this trend is encouraging, it’s by no means a signal for complacency. We need to continue to adopt a total safety culture. That is, we individually do what we know is right from a perspective of being safe because we want to, not because we’re told to and because we’re looking out for one another – what I refer to as peer-to-peer accountability. We must get better at learning from safety incidents because the lessons we take away will allow us to continuously improve how we work. Expect to hear more about EB as a learning organization, particularly with regard to safety, in the coming weeks.
I’m also taking today’s podcast as an opportunity to tell you about our achievements across EB. On June 10th, SSN 791/Delaware floated off, a key milestone in completing her PSA. SSN 793/Oregon was approved to go in-service—that means the Navy crew is taking over in day-to-day operations on board— and SSN 795/Rickover is in shift work for initiation of Land Based Steaming, which we expect to start later this week.
The SSN 799/Idaho initial fill path continues to make progress with Controlled Pipe Joints at 13 remaining as the RT pass rate continues at 100%. We will achieve our milestone for initial fill on 799 well ahead of initial fill on the previous hull 798. That is something the EB team should be proud of because it is clear evidence of how better first-time quality enables better overall performance.
Down in King’s Bay, Georgia, we are completing the installation of a large vertical array on USS Tennessee. Our customer was concerned about ensuring we met the schedule for this installation because they needed to clear their dry dock to conduct repairs on it. I am pleased to report our team achieved the installation 10 days ahead of schedule using many of the same crew and lessons learned from the LVA installation on USS South Dakota right here in Groton.
At Quonset Point, Columbia’s Quad Pack 2 went to blast and paint with all hot work complete in support of the Integrated Tube and Hull build strategy. QP also accomplished the pairing of Columbia’s Quad 1 missile tubes 1, 2, 3 & 4 to the pressure hull inside the “F” Fixture.
For Block V, the hull 802 6/7 section was delivered to outfitting at 99% complete compared with 85% complete on the previous 801 hull, so some great progress being made hull to hull at Quonset.
On the South Yard Assembly Building, steel erection is moving quickly, and you can see changes in the EB skyline every day. For the latest aerial photos of the construction in progress, check out the Homeport photo library at the link we’ll provide in this transcript.
On Tuesday morning we marked the ceremonial start of construction for Building 604 in the Groton shipyard. When complete late next year, this 70,000 square-foot facility will house EB’s Radiological Emergency Response team, locally based Naval Reactors personnel, the Nuclear Test team and test training space, as well as the Emergency Command Center. These organizations are now located in several different facilities around our Groton site—co-location of these groups will increase efficiency and collaboration, and our new ECC will provide more modern working spaces for the multi-disciplinary team who would respond to any emergency in the shipyard.
While there are lots of opportunities to improve, I am proud to see this team work together to deliver the advantage that protects our sailors, our families and our Freedom.
Thanks for everything you do, and we’ll talk soon.
