Overhaul8: Navy Maintenance Problems2

Introduction

This is another post in my series devoted to ship overhaul. In the previous post, Overhaul7: Navy Maintenance Problems1, I began looking at Navy ship maintenance performance through the lens a Government Accountability Office (GAO) document that was itself based on several GAO reports. I received comments that were insightful and worthy of follow-up so I do that here. Following that, I continue my review of the reasons for delays in completing shipyard (SY) maintenance periods.

Two Reader Comments

I received interesting comments on my prior post regarding the GAO statement NAVY MAINTENANCE-Persistent and Substantial Ship and Submarine Maintenance Delays, GAO-20-257T (Dec 2019).

Comment 1: “Some GAO reports … are mixed and without … deep expertise the conclusions lack the right specificity for the right activity.”

Comment 1 refers to the possible impact of not having experts in Navy maintenance on GAO assessment teams. Unless you have worn a hardhat, walked under a ship in drydock, and understand what “it’s done, but not done done” means, you are going to struggle to understand SY overhaul. That’s why I am writing these posts.

The requirements for and execution of Navy ship maintenance are very complex. My experience is that outsiders who haven’t tried to get something done in shipyards (tours don’t count) struggle to understand what they observe. Unlike RAND reports, the GAO reports I reviewed do not identify the authors. You might learn who they are by listening to podcasts based on the report (see GAO-20-2 on the GAO website). Report readers and podcast listeners still have no way to know the experience of the investigators, which might have an affect on the quality of their recommendations and the Navy’s ability to implement them.

One characteristic of GAO recommendations is that they tend to be very general, thus lacking “the right specificity” for the activity responsible for making the change. For example, GAO report GAO-20-588 (2020) recommended that the “Naval Sea Systems Command develop and implement goals, action plans, milestones, and a monitoring process for its Shipyard Performance to Plan initiative to address the main factors contributing to maintenance delays.” It is hard to argue with a recommendation phrased that way. On the GAO’s website, the recommendation, although concurred with by the Navy in December 2020, was judged “partially implemented” as of February 2023. Although NAVSEA had metrics, the GAO concluded that they needed to "fully develop action plans to address the main factors contributing to maintenance delays." The reader is on their own to understand what a fully developed action plan is.

Comment 2: “GAO reviews are not part of an actionable cycle so are not very useful.”

Comment 2 is a peek behind the curtain of GAO interactions with the Department of Defense (DoD). The only thing I would add is “not very useful for driving behavior change.” The GAO gets tasking from a member of Congress or an act of legislation to investigate an aspect of DoD performance or compliance. GAO investigators talk to many people, look at records, identify problems, and publish a report with recommendations for action that “could increase the overall availability of aircraft carriers and submarines to perform needed training and operations” (GAO-20-588). Sure.

If the Navy concurred with the findings and recommendations of the report (they did), one might think they would be enthusiastic to implement recommendations that could improve the availability of of aircraft carriers and submarines to perform their missions. Their senior leaders testify to Congress about their motivation to improve maintenance performance (House Seapower and Projection Forces Subcommittee, Department of the Navy fiscal year 2024 budget request, 2023, available at https://armedservices.house.gov/hearings/full-committee-hearing-department-navy-fiscal-year-2024-budget-request). And yet, three years after the recommendation was published, the GAO judged that it was only partially implemented. Why this might be so is FAR more interesting than the recommendation itself.

I don’t have any insight into why the GAO judged the implementation of their recommendation as incomplete. What I can assert is that if no one in the Navy, DoD, or Congress follows up on GAO recommendations, there is no actionable cycle of reviews that holds the organization accountable. Assessments that DO have actionable cycles of accountability include various types of command inspections. These inspections for compliance can include self-assessment letters from the organization about to be inspected and always feature written reports of findings with action items. There are requirements for formal correspondence documenting progress on higher priority action items until the activity that did the inspection agrees to close the action based on objective evidence. As Commenter #2 noted, GAO reports don’t work that way.

The lack of an actionable cycle of accountability can lead to GAO reports with titles like “Navy Maintenance: Navy Report Did Not Fully Address Causes of Delays or Results-Oriented Elements” (GAO-21-66, Oct 29, 2020). By “fully address the causes,” the GAO stated that the Navy did not consider maintenance delays caused by the acquisition process or operational decisions. No wonder. While worthy of future blog posts, those issues are beyond the control of NAVSEA, which makes them undiscussables in the management of ship lifecycles. “Results-oriented elements” in the report’s title appears to mean establishing “achievable goals, metrics to measure progress, and [identifying] resources [i.e., money and people with money the dominant resource] and risks.” The GAO and senior Navy officials seem to have different understandings of what it means to take action. Based on being on many inspection teams, assessments conducted within the Navy are different.

More Causes for Shipyard Maintenance Delays

As I wrote in the Overaul7 post, the GAO statement I studied attributed shipyard maintenance delays to three factors: insufficient shipyard capacity, shortage of skilled personnel, and deferred maintenance during operational deployments (GAO-20-257T Highlights). Additional delay factors noted by the GAO in subsequent reports:

• shipyard underperformance (GAO-21-66, Oct 2020)

• new work  (GAO calls this “unplanned work”) (GAO-21-66, Oct 2020)

• not following Navy planning and work identification processes (GAO-21-66, Oct 2020)

• lack of parts and materials (GAO-21-66, Oct 2020)

• ship’s force performance (GAO-20-588, Aug 2020)

• condition of shipyard facilities, including IT systems (GAO-21-66, Oct 2020)

• a range of factors associated with decisions made during acquisition, most notably “optimistic sustainment assumptions” (GAO-21-66, Oct 2020)

In compliance with congressional direction, the Navy submitted a comprehensive analysis of the underlying causes of ship maintenance delays to defense committees in Congress and the GAO in July 2020. GAO-21-66 is a review of the Navy’s analysis, also directed by Congress. According to the GAO, the Navy, more precisely the Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), reported that the primary cause of maintenance delays in public shipyards was insufficient shipyard capacity relative to growing maintenance requirements. The GAO didn’t investigate why the gap exists or why it is growing. The gap won’t close quickly. Shipyards are enormous industrial facilities employing thousands of skilled personnel doing some of the most complex work imaginable.

As the GAO noted, there are many organizations involved in “setting maintenance policies [and technical requirements], planning, scheduling, [funding], and executing ship maintenance” (GAO-21-66, Oct 2020). Those functions suggest that the difficulties the Navy is having with completing shipyard work on time are complex and defy simple prescriptions. Indeed. The GAO has noted that efforts to improve Navy maintenance performance are in the early stages, improving SY facilities to reach industry standards will take decades, and changes will require “funding above current levels” (GAO-20-257T, Dec 2019, Highlights).

I’m not interested in critiquing the performance of Naval shipyards, the GAO, or anyone else involved in shipyard maintenance. I think the GAO reports, despite not being part of a cycle of action and review, are still interesting for what they reveal about shipyard maintenance and Navy policies.

Among the causes I have listed, the only ones that can be influenced by NAVSEA, the parent organization of public shipyards, and the shipyards themselves are shipyard capacity (personnel and facilities), shipyard performance, and, to a lesser extent, new work. I will explore these three causes in detail in my next post.