NORFOLK NAVAL SHIPYARD, Portsmouth, Va. –
Norfolk Naval Shipyard (NNSY) welcomed the Los Angeles-class submarine USS Toledo (SSN 769) Jan. 21 for an Engineered Overhaul.
Approximately 437,000 workdays are required to replace, repair and overhaul components throughout the boat. This will mark NNSY’s third Engineering Overhaul and first in several years, following USS Newport News (SSN 750) and USS Albany (SSN 753).
To effectively prepare for the complex and extensive work ahead, Deputy Project Superintendent Chad Waldroup said the project team led a number of initiatives prior to the boat’s arrival. “With the COVID -19 pandemic, the project team worked through a plan to have a smaller team travel to the boat’s homeport in Groton, Connecticut and perform pre-arrival work to allow us to get into the major work quicker once the boat arrived,” he said. “We have also worked with [NNSY’s Process Improvement division] Code 100PI on a number of Strategic Planning Session initiatives that will allow us to be successful. These initiatives range from buying new brows that improve the routing of services to looking at existing requirements to see if they can be improved upon. We also set up a weekly meeting cadence with the ship to ensure they are well prepared on expectations and knowledge about the shipyard.”
In a first for one of NNSY’s Engineered Overhauls, the boat will be pierside for an extended period before heading into dry dock. The boat’s hosting dry dock is currently undergoing maintenance upgrading its caisson, flood wall and piping. NNSY’s submarine dry dock upgrades are part of the Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP), a 20-year, $21 billion program dedicated to completely refurbishing the nation’s four public shipyards by modernizing equipment, improving workflow and upgrading dry docks and facilities. “Due to the construction timeline on having Dry Dock 2 ready for us to dock, we decided to build a plan to get as much work finished as possible pierside
prior to docking,” said Waldroup.
To increase the project team’s ownership in ensuring a successful overhaul, team leadership determined during planning that the shipyard workforce could accomplish work that would normally be contracted out, both inside and outside the boat. “We have been working with the production codes and our sister shipyards to ensure we have a solid plan in place to be successful on all of these jobs,” said Waldroup.
He added the team’s motto was “Holy Toledo . . . Setting New Standards from Stern to Torpedo” to reflect the drive for NNSY’s best-ever performance for an Engineered Overhaul.
Shipyard Commander Captain Dianna Wolfson said, “America’s Shipyard extends a warm welcome to USS Toledo and a great job to the project team for working several important initiatives already to achieve a successful availability. We look forward to seeing all the great accomplishments ahead on Toledo as our team works with our contracting partners and Ship’s Force. One Mission, One Team!”