Katherine Ziesing | Canberra
Sustainment of the 13 Armidale class patrol boats for the next five years plus rolling extensions is up for grabs.
Responses are due by July 8 with negotiation through until September with an announcement expected in December this year.
The expected contract delivery is from 1 July 2017, with the rolling extensions out to 2025, the end of life for the class.
The successful tenderer is to see the boats available for an average 250 materiel days per year, according the tender information pack.
Work is to be conducted in both Cairns and Darwin as home ports; the current arrangement sees much work being done in Singapore.
The Commonwealth is also desiring that the contractor “enters into a long-term commercial relationship with Austal (as the ACPB’s designer and builder), enters into a long-term supply chain/Subcontractor relationship with Penske Power Systems for the supply and support of the ACPB’s MTU Main Engines and associated auxiliaries (with Penske Power Systems to be a Material Subcontractor under the terms of the Contract)” and “the Contractor enters into long-term commercial relationships with its proposed shipyard(s) being, from a historical viewpoint, Norship Marine (Cairns) and Singapore Technologies (ST) Marine (Singapore), and Tropical Reef Shipyard (Cairns), BSE Maritime Solutions (Cairns) and Pearl Marine Engineering’s Darwin Ship Repair & Engineering (Darwin).”
ADM understands that incumbent Serco (who bought former contractor DMS, a joint venture of Serco and P&O) were struggling with the current sustainment arrangements. It is well known that the class have operated well beyond their initial design scope, having been heavily tasked during their life.
Serco has released a statement regarding how the current contract is, in a nutshell, just not working for them any more.
“Over a number of years, the sustainment of Armidale-class patrol boats has not allowed the fleet to meet the required levels of availability for this important capability,” a Defence spokesman said. “Therefore it has been mutually agreed that the contract will end in 2017.”
It is understood that the costs of refitting the first two patrol boats, HMAS Larrakia and HMAS Albany, has been more than $7 million a boat, double the expected cost of $3.5 million a boat. If that cost blowout is repeated across the 13-boat fleet, the refit budget will blow out by more than $45 million. The navy lost one of its patrol boats, HMAS Bundaberg, to fire as it was undergoing a refit in Brisbane last year.
To supplement the remaining Armidales while two boats are progressively in refit, the Australian Border Force has temporarily transferred two Cape-class offshore patrol vessels to the navy to enable it to meet its border security obligations.
The Cape Byron was handed to the navy on July 24 and the Cape Nelson on October 1. Shipbuilder Austal has won a $63 million contract to build two Cape-class patrol boats for Defence to be delivered mid-next year and chartered to Defence for at least three years.
Austal confirmed that they will be teaming with Babcock for the new sustainment contract.
“Austal are teamed with Babcock for the Armidale Class Patrol Boat (ACPB) In Service Support tender which was released last Friday,” according to a statement from Austal.
“The teaming will combine the strength of Austal’s position as designer, builder and OEM of the ACPB with the proven sustainment and through life support credentials of Babcock, creating a market leading asset management solution underpinned by a deep technical understanding of the Armidale Class and the associated supply chain.”
Edit - an earlier version of this article mistakenly reported that HMAS Bundaberg caught fire in Darwin. This has been updated to Brisbane thanks to a keen eyed ADM reader.