NOB Norfolk, VA –
It is nearing midnight and you’re fast asleep at home when in the stillness of the evening your phone begins to buzz. You brush it off at first, but then realize that it’s a call coming in. You answer and your supervisors voice is on the other end informing you that you’ll be boarding a plane early that morning to head half way around the world to troubleshoot a faulty critical system on board a U.S. Navy vessel. You pull yourself out of bed, pack your clothes and make sure you have your travel documents in order. Before heading to the airport you make a quick detour to Mid- Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center (MARMC) to pick up your all important test equipment.
If you’re a MARMC technician, this scenario probably sounds familiar to you. It is part of the excitement of the job, the opportunity to provide mission essential support to those ships forward deployed or those being readied to head out in harm’s way. But, what happens when the tools you rely on to support the fleet are out of calibration specification and no longer performing correctly? That’s where MARMC’s Lab Certification and Monitoring Branch comes into play.
The branch, which is responsible for tracking all of MARMC Engineering and Waterfront Operations Department’s test equipment ensuring the pieces are lab calibrated before use, exceeded the 85% standard set forth by Naval Sea Systems Command Instructions for nearly three years now. This small team of two has worked tirelessly to track, transport and ensure MARMC’s nearly 2,200 pieces of equipment have all been lab tested and certified. Currently, 95% of MARMC’s equipment is meeting the calibration standard.
“Any of MARMC’s many technicians, when troubleshooting or verifying systems on a ship, needs to have equipment that they can rely on to give them accurate readings,” said Janira
Cabansag, who has recently taken over as MARMC’s Engineering Department Calibration Coordinator. “Whether it’s a multimeter or oscilloscope, it is our job to ensure our technicians and engineers have lab calibrated tools to do their job.”
Cabansag spends time each week tracking and compiling a catalogue of equipment that will soon be due for calibration and sends a detailed listing to each engineering branch’s calibration custodian to bring those pieces to her. Once the pieces are obtained, she brings the majority of the equipment to the Mid- Atlantic Regional Calibration Center for calibration.
“We’re basically the calibration liaison for MARMC,” said Jeff Truett, who works alongside Cabansag in the 2M and MetCal Certification Branch and also helped create the baseline for the current tracking system in use.
Since there are multiple people and organizations involved in getting the equipment where it needs to go for calibration, ensuring a trackable chain of custody has also been a key focus.
“We are very meticulous when transferring custody of our equipment. We always maintain signed receipts and we’ve never lost a piece in the three years that we’ve been doing this job,” added Truett.
In the early stages of auditing the command, it was found that some of the equipment being used had no periodical calibration cycle to ensure it was still performing within standards. At that point, Truett worked with the engineering department’s branches to have all equipment sent off for calibration.
“I’ll give you a prime example. We had about 90 AN/77 multimeters here at the command. Originally, there was no calibration requirement on those meters. During the testing phase, 30 out of 90 were rejected. So, we implemented a life cycle of 62 months for those meters. After which, they are taken out of use by our engineers and technicians and we obtain new equipment for them. At the same time, we take the old equipment and make sure it goes through the DRMO [Defense Reutilization and Marketing Office] process,” said Truett.
There are still many older systems being used on the ships in the fleet, and this means that MARMC technicians may need older test equipment to perform their job – some of which may be considered obsolete or obsolescent. Working with the Surface Force Atlantic Type Commander (TYCOM), MARMC Calibration Coordinators are able to obtain parts needed to bring prime equipment into standards or acquire a new piece of test equipment that will meet current testing standard requirements.
“We are always working very closely with the different branches. We help them initiate the process of requesting new equipment and continue to interact with TYCOM to retrieve equipment they are able to give our command. Being that we are a shore command, we don’t always get the latest and greatest, but they will try and take care of us the best they can,” said Cabansag.
Earlier this year, MARMC’s Vertical Launch Systems and Combat Systems Alignment Branch needed several theodolites calibrated in order to perform alignments on board USS Truxtun (DDG 103).
“The calibration requirement could not be supported in time by the Navy, nor could any local outside commercial calibration activity meet the requirement in a timely fashion,” said Wendy Urrutia, who is also a member of the Lab Certification and Monitoring Branch. “Being as tenacious as she is, our calibration coordinator refused to give up and began to conduct a nationwide search for an activity that could perform this calibration requirement.”
Cabansag was able to locate a commercial calibration activity on the west coast that could meet the requirement and arranged shipping, payment and even tracking of the theodolites to ensure Truxtun’s repairs were performed on-time.
The coordinators continue to handle roughly 80 pieces of equipment per week and do their best to have items calibrated and returned to the proper branch within a two-week time frame. It is an exhaustive effort that seems to be paying off big for MARMC.
“The amount of cooperation we have now with the branches is really great. It is making my job a lot easier and it’s good to know that we are working together in order to make sure the ships are being fixed properly to meet their mission,” said Cabansag.