SILVERDALE, Wash. –
At Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor, home to eight of the fourteen Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines operated by the U.S. Navy, there is an integrated force of Sailors and civilians dedicated to the task of maintaining the U.S. Navy’s submarine fleet.
These men and women work to ensure that our forces are ready to carry out strategic deterrence and support national security objectives, and use their world-class experience to improve upon and strengthen the maintenance process required by these eight titans of steel.
Jeffrey Hall, a rigging supervisor at Trident Refit Facility Bangor (TRFB), found a way to use his experience and technical expertise to improve upon this maintenance process.
Historically, TRFB has found and implemented ways to foster innovation and enable its workforce to develop upon the maintenance process. Finding ways to reduce maintenance availability durations and cost, while maintaining a commitment to safety, is a perennial focus across leadership, from the Secretary of the Navy down through tenant commands like TRFB.
Jeffrey Hall looked at and approached the mission of modernizing and overhauling incremental maintenance and led the way to adopting an improved and modernized version of the lifting and handling process.
The heaviest crane lift that happens at TRFB is lifting a trident submarine shaft. Before, setting up for the lift required the rigging gear to be setup perfectly, to ensure the rigging gear and the shaft wouldn’t be damaged.
Due to the location of the attachment points and how the team was involved in the setup, this specific evolution came with an elevated risk for injury to personnel.
Hall, recognizing the inherent drawbacks of this method, researched new lifting and handling gear and presented the idea of using a new rigging configuration.
This new configuration significantly helps to reduce the complexity of the rigging gear setup, and more importantly, greatly reduces the risk of injury to personnel.
Because of Hall’s initiative, the new rigging process is not only safer and lowers the risk of a crane accident, it is considerably more efficient, yielding immeasurable savings in both cost and man-hours. Utilizing this new method, the rigging team was able to complete this lengthy evolution in an unprecedented 15 minutes; unheard of using traditional methods.
“This innovative way of thinking, researching and executing is huge,” says John Peterson, Lifting and Handling Director at TRFB. “The way we have always done it and all the other yards do it is what we’ve always known. [Hall’s] great idea, and now new lifting gear for this lift has greatly improved safety, efficiency and quality. I anticipate sharing this with all Navy Yards and believe they will want to do the same. This is the new best way.”
The rigging team plans to use this new method on the Columbia-class submarines arriving at TRFB in the future, ensuring our strategic national security assets are maintained with maximized efficiency and quality, getting them back into the fight faster and further cementing the strength of the U.S. Navy’s submarine force.