NORFOLK NAVAL SHIPYARD, Portsmouth, Va. –
When SurgeMain mobilized in early July to support Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s (NNSY) workforce during the pandemic, its Sailors were able to help in a variety of shops and codes. Two of these reservists have been able to provide skillsets that were previously unavailable to the SurgeMain team - Chief Select Richard Palmer and Petty Officer Corey Jones, who have experience with equipment programming. Both learned this skill in their civilian jobs. In their roles as SurgeMain Sailors, they have lent their knowledge to NNSY and have been able to get a number of needed machines around the shipyard up and running.
Palmer is an industrial electrician who works on manufacturing equipment in Jacksonville, Florida. Jones, on the other hand, is a lead electronic technician for FedEx in Memphis, Tennessee. When their chain of command realized that the two had these skills, they knew exactly how to utilize them. Together, they have been responsible for re-entering values in the control panel of the equipment. “A lot of things you see in the shop is run by programmable controllers and that’s what we were called over to fix,” Palmer explained.
For instance, one of the industrial ovens used to make parts for the ships kept malfunctioning, and is being aided by Palmer and Jones’s knowledge to bring it back to full-functioning capacity. “Its purpose is to get up to the required temperature, hold, and then shut off,” Jones said. “Unfortunately, when we were called down here, they told us that they couldn’t get the heater banks to come on at all. Thus, we are currently in the process of reading the prints of the machine, going through the different parameters on the controller to see if we can get it to do what it is supposed to do.”
“A lot of the work is following the indications that we get from the panel of the equipment, talking with the employees who normally operate it, and then discussing how to fix it,” Palmer added. “If we need to, we call the manufacturers and other groups to get additional information on its operation.” Aside from the oven, other equipment that he and Jones have assisted include the water pump test stand, the 1,200 ton press and the 1,800 ton press.
While others may not see the effort Paul and Jones put in to ensuring that NNSY has functioning equipment, their work has not gone unnoticed. “Since their assignment to our Industrial Engineering Department (Code 983) and Production Facilities and Equipment's (Code 900F.12) teams, they have provided us with the ability to not only impact electronic corrective maintenance but also to begin evaluation of the electronic maintenance training program and a long-term industrial plant equipment monitoring network,” Chief Warrant Officer Michael Mendez said. “This is exactly what we needed and I am very proud of these shipmates!”
Although these two reservists may be the ones reprogramming, they firmly established that they would not be able to accomplish what they have without the NNSY shops and codes they have worked with thus far. “We have to work with the codes that work with the equipment to see what the normal operating process is so we can figure out where the issue is and a solution for it,” Palmer elaborated. “There are people from Code 983 that we have received much needed information from and Code 900.12 technicians that we work with. It really depends on the equipment that we’re working with and what’s needed, but many shops and codes that have helped us and we could not have done it without them.”
Before their time at NNSY is up, each of them have goals they want to accomplish before leaving. “We’re here to help the workforce improve production, so I would like to help them with as much equipment as possible, get it running or give suggestions to get it running before we leave,” Jones said. Palmer also hopes to help in terms of more preventative methods and identifying issues earlier than before there is a bigger problem. “There’s a lot of smaller issues that build up to bring things down,” he explains, “so we’re going to try and identify some of these issues and hopefully prevent problems further down the road.”
“The equipment we’re working on is not normally thought about,” Palmer explained, “but without it, a lot of production work will either take a lot longer or will not get done, so it is important to maintain it.” It is thanks in part to Jones and Palmer that more equipment will be available for the workforce, enabling NNSY personnel to fix ships and support the mission.