Admiral: Safety, Retention, and Efficiency Are Navy’s Top Priorities for Shipyard Workers

Rear Adm. Scott Brown visited Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard and Intermediate Maintenance Facility (PHNSY & IMF) in May to review shipyard operations in his new role as the deputy commander for industrial operations, Naval Sea Systems Command. U.S. NAVY / Marc Ayalin

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. — Retaining shipyard workers and increasing their efficiency are the top priorities — aside from ensuring their safety — for the Navy’s deputy commander of industrial operations, he said at an American Society of Naval Engineers Conference in Virginia Beach on Sept. 20.

Rear Adm. Scott Brown, deputy commander of logistics, maintenance and industrial operations at Naval Sea Systems Command, said the Navy is doing all it can to maximize its workforce’s capabilities while also growing it to meet maintenance challenges.

The Navy has been battling a submarine maintenance backlog for years, causing the service to even resort to sending some attack submarines to private yards and hiring more personnel. A Congressional Budget Office report predicted the Navy is likely to see labor supply shortages for the next few decades.

Brown said his top three priorities were safety, production capacity, and throughput and efficiency.

On the subject of safety, he stated there were 37,000 shipyard workers and their safety remains his top priority. After that, he is focused on production capacity as retention proves difficult in a hot economy where there is a high demand for workers. His office is trying to deal with that by focusing on retention so there are fewer gaps the Navy must fill through hiring, he said.

The final priority is throughput in efficiency, as Brown stated he wanted to make the workforce they have now as productive as they can possibly be.

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