WASHINGTON - NAVSEA’s workforce consists of more than 74,000 civilian and military members. The accumulation of small ideas for saving time, cost of products, or day-to-day business practices has a big impact at NAVSEA, according to the Culture of Affordability Executive Steering Committee.
“If everybody in the command is tasked with an hour-long administrative duty, and they reduce it by ten minutes, that is worth millions of dollars across the entire enterprise,” said executive steering committee co-lead Rear Adm. Lorin Selby, chief engineer and deputy commander for Ship Design, Integration and Naval Engineering (SEA 05).
“It’s not just about cutting costs, it’s about saving time,” Selby said. “No idea is too small to propose for culture of affordability. You may think of it as small for you, and your organization, but when you translate that to the entire enterprise, it could be big savings.”
“At the end of the day, this is about spending our money wisely,” Selby said. “This isn’t to imply that we don’t spend our money wisely now, only that we know we can do better.”
For the past year, a working group has met weekly to discuss how to advance and expand a culture of affordability at NAVSEA. Through a survey and case studies, the most common encountered barriers were communication, administrative processes and leadership support.
“I don’t think it’s an overt lack of leadership support,” Selby said. “I think it’s just that leadership is focused on the end state of getting a ship out on time or keeping cost under control. Those things are good. But as a result, people with ideas on how we can do business differently get dismayed, so they keep those ideas to themselves. I don’t want them to do that. I want them to put those ideas out there and get them up to the headquarters level.
“Let us see if they’re applicable, not just to that individual’s organization, but across the enterprise. If they’re applicable, we’ll help them spread those ideas. That’s our goal.”
Selby added that some of the ideas may not be applicable to the entire NAVSEA enterprise, but may be an idea may be applicable to all the shipyards, or all the warfare centers, or all headquarters staff. “Whatever is applicable, we’ll try to get those ideas out there to get the savings of time or money back to the command,” he said.
According to the executive steering group co-lead, William Carty, deputy commander for Corporate Operations (SEA 10), practicing culture of affordability is a top-down, bottom-up line of effort everyone should be implementing within their day-to-day practices at NAVSEA.
“It’s not the homerun, knock it out of the park, big ideas we’re looking for, although those are good,” Carty said. “But it’s a lot of the small ones, because small things add up to something big. It’s asking the continuous question ‘do we really need to be doing it this way?’ Over time, making small changes adds up.”
“Our warfare centers are very rate conscious,” Carty said. “Because they receive a set amount of funding to execute a set amount of work, this changes the organization’s behavior and its culture to think about how each person contributes to the overhead expense. We can learn a lot from our warfare centers and leverage their best practices.”
According to the Culture of Affordability Executive Steering Group, every NAVSEA employee should be motivated and empowered to think critically and take action toward reducing the cost of products, processes and day-to-day business.
Executive steering group co-lead Robert Shevock, deputy commander for Acquisition Commonality and Expeditionary Warfare (SEA 06) offered a more strategic view. “We need to provide the warfighters the best ships and systems that we can, but we don’t have unlimited resources. We owe it to the taxpayer and the warfighter to get as much capability as we can out of every dollar. A culture of affordability enables us to ‘Expand the Advantage,’” he said.
An example in action is the Enterprise Commonality program, which is a partnership between SEA 06, SEA 05, SEA 21 and the PEOs, designed to reduce unnecessary variances in equipment and material across our ships and submarines.
"The effort specifically selects the most cost effective components that will support all of the ships across the life cycle," Shevock said. "To date, this program has saved many millions of dollars that will be realized across the lifecycle of our ships, and the savings is growing each time we put another item on the virtual shelf."
“As NAVSEA Employees, we are all empowered to make a difference for a culture of affordability.”
The Culture of Affordability Executive Steering Group is co-chaired by Rear Adm. Lorin Selby, chief engineer and deputy commander for Ship Design, Integration and Naval Engineering (SEA 05); Robert Shevock, deputy commander for Acquisition Commonality and Expeditionary Warfare (SEA 06); and William Carty, deputy commander for Corporate Operations (SEA 10).