An enhanced support regime and improved teamwork are
allowing the RAN’s 14-strong fleet of Armidale-class patrol boats to again meet
designated availability requirements notwithstanding a punishing operational
tempo and continuing problems with cracking of their aluminium hulls and
superstructures.
The challenges arising from both issues are readily
acknowledged both by the Chief of Navy, Vice Admiral Ray Griggs, and by Greg
Hodge, CEO of DMS Maritime, which holds a 15-year support contract for each
boat, the first of which was commissioned in 2005 and the last, HMAS Glenelg,
in 2008.
But for both men the worth and viability of the Armidales
remain unquestioned, although VADM Griggs believes their life of type may be
closer to 15 than to 20 years should the current work rate continue.
Seven of the Armidales are allocated at any one time to
Border Protection Command (BPC) and Operation Resolute – the protection of
Australia’s borders and offshore maritime interests over an area constituting
about 10 per cent of the earth’s surface.
The rotation
This tasking takes place on a rotational basis, so all 14
boats contribute to Resolute which, according to VADM Griggs, accounts for 80 per
cent of the 3,500 annual sea day availability contracted for the Armidales by
DMS. An additional 600 days of “surge” availability is also contracted but
would involve tradeoffs in maintenance, he added.
The rotation also means that the entire fleet shares in
facing what VADM Griggs describes as the difficult environment encountered in
the northern and northwestern approaches.
“They’re not operating outside of their design environment
and that’s a bit of hysteria that has been overplayed, but they’re certainly
operating at the top end of what we’ve intended,” he comments. “One of the big
things you can’t avoid when you’re coming around from Christmas Island is that
for six or seven months of the year up north you’re bashing into the
southeasterly trades to get home and that’s going to have an impact.”
Some cracking of the Armidales’ conventional welded
aluminium alloy structure had been anticipated, since this was the RAN’s first
major foray into aluminium construction of a vessel that would experience
serious weather and operate at speed, the VADM said.
Repairs Although first-of-class HMAS Armidale had been temporarily
restricted to training duties after cracking had been discovered in the engine
room area, this had not affected the number of boats available for Resolute.
This was also true of the hull corrosion which obliged HMAS Bathurst to
undertake repairs in Singapore last August.
Such repairs could be as simple as welding the crack, others
might require more complex reinforcement work, but all involved approval by the
Det Norske Veritas certification agency, Hodge said.
Meanwhile a hull and structure working group was employing
advanced modelling to analyse stress and identify areas that would benefit from
strengthening in advance of any cracking. Two Armidales that had been fully
instrumented by DSTO were providing a mass of information linked to the ship
control system on G forces and other issues, VADM Griggs disclosed.
“Now we can say, you had a sea state of this, the waves were
40 deg on the bow, you were doing 20 knots. That’s been really useful; to start
educating our ship COs who, frankly, have all grown up driving steel boats.
Steel cracks too, but in a different way.”
A capability review initiated after a two-day trip in
Armidales to Ashmore Island in late 2011 had reinforced the need for positive
action to fix systemic issues in sustainment and maintenance, including
mythology surrounding the support contract on who did what. This resulted in a
decision to transfer an extra 330 operational availability days to maintenance
in 2012, a year which saw some 290 SIEV (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessels).
“You couldn’t have had a more challenging operational year
to put maintenance before operations but we did it. Our availability went from
3,500 days down to 3,100 on an annualised basis until 1 January, then we went
back up to 3,400 and we’ll stay there until July or August, when we’ll be back
at 3,500,” VADM Griggs said.
This was primarily to catch up on a backlog of maintenance
flowing from the last two Armidales being upgraded in 2011 to the Glenelg
product baseline in a so-called Post Availability Maintenance (PAM), a period
during which DMS continued to provide annualised availability of 3,500 days
through greater demands on the 12 other vessels.
As pointed out by Harley Tacey, DMS Maritime’s Chief
Operating Officer, the amount of work that can be completed within the normal
cycle of two week maintenance/six week operations is limited.
Last year’s temporary move to three weeks maintenance/five
weeks operations disposed of the backlog and the 2x6 cycle should be fully
reinstated by September by when DMS Maritime will have completed modifications
to the Armidales’ stern tubes (through which the propeller shafts are carried),
Tacey said. According to the Australian National Audit Office’s 2011-2012 Major
Projects Report, design failures in the stern tube bearings have severely
impacted vessel availability.
The problem, as detailed by Hodge, was a mixture of
corrosion in the tubes and excessive marine growth. Turning the shafts can
break the growth, dislodge it and block the cooling galleries, leading to
premature degeneration of the bearing.
Changes to the bearing material and improving the original
design of the seal will take the man out of the loop for day-to-day maintenance
of the tubes and reduce the need for the shafts to be turned.
Post-Rizzo The post-Rizzo period has seen the emergency of what is
clearly a significantly more cohesive support structure. A widespread
perception that there was no room for Navy in maintenance activities has been laid
to rest with eight members of the Fleet Support Unit (FSU) embedded in DMS
Maritime’s Armidale support team.
“We’re getting extra skills in a labour-strapped environment
and Navy are getting exposure to additional on-the-job technical experience.
It’s a win/win arrangement,” Hodge explained to ADM. “In Darwin and Cairns
we’re fishing in a small pool for appropriately-qualified people and getting
access to trained people in the FSU has been beneficial to all.
“We’ve had to repatriate some of the ILS (Integrated
Logistics Support) engineering tasks back to Sydney because there simply aren’t
people in Darwin to staff the degree-qualified positions.”
However, the most significant step in bolstering leadership
and practical cooperation occurred in mid-2012 with the creation at VADM
Griggs’ suggestion of Team Armidale.
“It’s taking the enterprise approach to the situation in the
way in which ASC, DMO and Navy are communicating in Team Submarine,” he
commented. “It doesn’t cut across any contractual things; it’s really an
extension of the partnership approach. My idea was to get DMO, DMS and Navy
leadership much more tightly orchestrated.
“On my trip to Ashmore Island I asked questions about really
basic support issues and I got wildly different answers about who could do
what. What I was keen to do was debunk mythology about the support contract and
create a joint leadership team, and that has worked very well.
“Tim Barrett (Fleet Commander), Peter Marshall (then-head of
Maritime Systems at DMO) and Greg Hodge talked to the COs of the boats, to the
more senior people with the DMO Systems Program Office (SPO), to DMS Maritime,
and also to the senior technical people in the boat and ashore – the people who
have got to make it work on a day-to-day basis.”
Two meetings last year involved all available DMO, DMS, SPO
and Navy people in one room, Hodge said.
“We went through a number of presentations to each other so
that people gained an appreciation of the issues we all face and it was a real
opening up of communications. We’re having another in June, it’s breaking down
stovepipes, it’s going beyond the contract, it’s a partnership and it’s great.”
VADM Griggs also identified the emergence of a much stronger
focus on obsolescence management and identifying the root cause of defects, a
path being pursued by a separate lower-level Team Armidale group looking at a
remediation plan that will incorporate all the issues affecting Armidale
operability and maintainability.
The limited maintenance capacity available at Darwin and
Cairns - the latter also the support base for the RAN’s hydrographic assets –
has been a long-term cause for concern. New ground is now being broken with
Aluminium Boats in Brisbane undertaking its first Armidale maintenance period.
Morale VADM Griggs describes crew morale as “far more robust than
people give it credit for”, helped in particular by the government’s decision
to award an operational service medal for border protection. This was a boost
for the many crew members who chose to spend the majority of their careers in
the patrol boat fleet.
Multi-crewing involves 21 crews, each 23-strong, rotating
through the 14 boats on a watch cycle of eight weeks on, four weeks off. For some time the model has involved three
crews across two boats, providing the crews with a sense of ownership.
“When you’re swapping crews between the ships you know
you’re giving it to someone you’re going to get it back from, so that makes the
three crews start thinking more as one,” VADM Griggs commented.
DMS Maritime’s contracted 15 years of Armidale support has a
five year option, and Hodge says the company has recently initiated a number of
engineering assessments to ensure the boats deliver 20 plus years of service.
VADM Griggs sees no reason why the fleet could not get
through to 20 years, but questions where the three-phase bathtub curve (early
reliability failures, random failures, wearout failures) will kick in.
“We were always planning at having seven boats in border
protection, but whether it was fisheries (protection) or people smuggling, that
obviously changes the profile a little bit. If they continue to work really
hard, I think it will probably be closer to 15 years than to 20.”
