Defence Business: Designed to minimise costs | ADM May 2010
That needs to change if effective and cost-efficient sustainment is to be established for future platforms.
Katherine Ziesing | Canberra
Delivery of capability and performance requirements at minimum cost have historically been the primary considerations at the concept design phase of a naval platform.
Issues such as improving platform availability and reducing through-life costs have too often not been considered in any depth until the platform is in-service.
Yet the cost of the through-life sustainment of a surface ship or submarine significantly outweighs the cost of design and procurement, and decisions taken early in the concept design phase will determine much of the through-life cost commitment.
"The earlier phase of the project, when the design remains fluid, represents by far the best opportunity to influence the whole life cost, including maintenance and support as well as manufacture," Ken Grove, Babcock Australia chairman told ADM.
"The ability to influence the key drivers in these areas diminishes very quickly as the design matures.
"Giving the support solutions equal consideration at the front end avoids subsequent in-service issues."
Such issues may include, for example, escalating infrastructure costs (requiring significant expenditure to ensure appropriate dock facilities, dockside support services, and tools and equipment), as well as maintainability problems around accessing systems for revalidation or repair, and long-term equipment supportability issues.
"The value of early engagement of in-service support expertise at concept stage has not always been recognised," Grove said.
"Indeed, government defence departments have traditionally been more likely to withdraw from industrial contact while they define requirements and develop a procurement strategy, with through-life sustainment partners only involved at a point where a substantial proportion of the down-stream costs have already been locked-in.
"But this is now changing."
Designed for Support
With this in mind, it is now becoming recognised as ‘best practice' for any new platform project to adopt an integrated Design for Support (DfS) concept, that begins with the design policy and the requirements.
The objective is to identify the impact of design decisions on supportability, so as to optimise the balance between performance, unit production cost (UPC), supportability, and thereby reduce whole life cost while retaining required levels of asset availability.
This concept is realised through a DfS process, which ensures that designers and design teams consider supportability as an integral part of the design process, and allows through-life sustainment experts to inject design advice and past lessons learned early into the design.
The current Collins sustainment issues provide ample evidence that Australia's SEA 1000 Future Submarine project will need to adopt a DfS process so that the true cost of support can be considered at the concept stage and solutions made which are consistent with future DMO support budgets.
An important aspect of the DfS process is to bring coherency to the selection of designs at platform, system and equipment level such that their support requirements reduce the support burden holistically for the overall design.
In the wider context, the process should also ensure standardisation of support requirements, people, and facilities across the submarine or surface ship enterprise - unless significant overall savings can be demonstrated by adopting class-specific solutions.
Grove points to the ability to access systems or equipment to carry out planned and unplanned support activities as one of the considerations.
"Planned maintenance requirements are of course known, so catering for access to or removal of items that will routinely have to be reached should not be difficult," he points out.
"But unplanned maintenance also needs to be taken into account, bringing a need to consider, for example, reliability data, as well as matters such as shipping routes if an item needs to be removed.
"Does the hull have to be cut, what other items have to be removed to gain access, and so on."
TLS costs
Similarly, consideration must also be given to the support community, and the people and processes required to provide the physical, technical, management and logistical support.
Suitably qualified and experienced personnel resources need to be planned for, along with consideration of aspects such as the supply chain and how robust or fragile it is, how any legacy issues will be overcome.
Facilities required to deliver the proposed support are a further factor, from docking facilities, cradles, and craneage, through to any special plant or equipment required to provide support to systems such as cooling or electrical systems.
All have the potential for significant on-cost if not considered at design stage.
While it will clearly be desirable for the design to be supportable within the existing facilities as far as possible, it is almost inevitable that some special facilities will be required, in which case the cost to provide these should be looked at and taken into account within the design decision process.
The materials required to sustain the system or equipment for the platform life must also be considered.
"For example, in making a system material design decision, due consideration should be given to factors ranging from how easily the material can be welded if cut, through to any fatigue issues, so that these can be accommodated," Grove highlights.
Finally, learning from previous experience gained through maintenance, waterfront or in-service problems and design improvements are crucial in optimising a new platform design.
This vital in-service support knowledge must be captured, stored, and be accessible to all relevant parties so that it can be fed in from concept stage onwards, which places considerable importance on the establishment of information and knowledge management systems.
While there are evident benefits from a DfS approach, these are inevitably weighed against potential concerns.
Inclusion of support considerations at the early design stage takes time, which can create tensions in the program schedule and the potential temptation to overlook some support issues.
Overall design co-ordination becomes more demanding in order to reconcile all the individual elements and their impact on each other.
Yet rigorous adherence to established processes and procedures is vital, as is regular overall design assessment, with robust challenge from the support community.
Though the concept of DfS is still relatively new, it is nevertheless increasingly taking hold; the UK's future submarine deterrent program being one example.
"The engagement of a dedicated support partner in a collaboratively delivered concept stage is a significant step forward," Grove emphasised.
Making life easier
By Katherine Ziesing | Canberra
UK based firm AVEVA has expanded its operations in Australia, with offices in Perth and Melbourne supporting business in the Defence, Mining, Oil and Gas and Marine sectors.
With a focus on support of engineering and designer services through modelling, the company has proved to be a winner for ASC in their task to support the Collins class submarines.
Tools from AVEVA helped the company transfer their legacy 3D models of the class into 3D CAD models to their AVEVA Marine solution, allowing the various systems to be modelled for upgrade and maintenance work.
Legacy pipe-work models could be modified and manipulated, since AVEVA provided a migration path for routed systems to be transferred while retaining their object-centricity and smart tags.
The pipe models were automatically transferred using routines written from first principles.
The system was also used to create and convert models from other systems and companies into a coherent whole for ASC, catering to their data sharing needs.
This was the first time that ASC could view the entire submarine and its systems in 3D with full engineering object data.
"ASC has successfully built and maintained the complex Collins Class submarines and have invested in AVEVA's technology, and we look forward to continuing our successful partnership with them," Richard Beck, AVEVA's vice president Australasia told ADM.
The project was driven by the STEP AP203 standard that offers an effective means of 3D design transfer between systems.
Combining a similar engineering modelling system and AVEVA's information management solution, AVEVA NET, Woodside Energy saved over $20 million over the lifecycle of the Angel gas-processing platform off the WA coast thanks to the quality of facility engineering and increased productivity from staff, winning the WA Engineering Excellence Award last year.