• Thanks for stopping by. Logging in to a registered account will remove all generic ads. Please reach out with any questions or concerns.

New Canadian Shipbuilding Strategy

  • Thread starter Thread starter GAP
  • Start date Start date
E.R. Campbell said:
The NSS is ten years old; it's time for another 'tiger team' of very senior civil servants to review it and, perhaps, make adjustments IF they are needed and warranted ... and, after ten years most programmes do need some fine-tuning, at least.

I think that way back when, ten years ago  :whistle:, Davie was on the verge of bankruptcy, mostly due to bad management that was allowed, even encouraged to thrive under the rules of 'Quebec Inc,' and the policy decision to exclude it from the NSS made good sense. I suspect that Davie is, now, a much better company and might deserve to be part of the NSS.

I also wonder if there might be some merit in looking at small vessels ~ < 1,000 tons? <2,500 tone? ~ as a separate issue which would allow for a similar (to the NSS) programme to help rebuild some of the inland (Great Lakes), St Lawrence basin and smaller coastal yards. (I'm reminded that, in 1939, Canada could not build a warship at all ... not one of our yards was capable. But the corvettes, based on a North Atlantic whale-hunter of < 1,000 tons, were able to be built by several Canadian yards and Canada produced well over 100 of them before the war ended. Each took about a year to build and required a few months of sea trials and training before entering combat service.) Minor combatants might be important again and there is, I think, a worldwide market for them.

Anyway ... it's about time to revisit the NSS and, maybe, to incorporate at least one more yard.

That has been ongoing for a while; it's been referenced in the media a few times as the 'NSS refresh'.  Also, with the oversight committees that includes ADM and DM level meetings, its's constantly being monitored and reviewed for progress and to see if adjustments are required.

Also, it's a misconception that Davie was excluded from the NSS; they completed the prequalification process and submitted a bid, but were not successful in winning either of the two bundles (combat and non-combat).
 
Would it mean that a third package should be in place for Davie to enter the NSS? Then the package might be or seems to be the "ice-breakers" pack.

In such a case ... who would be in charge of the MCDVs replacement? If considered as combatants, then Irving would be the one, but they won't have capacity until begining of the 2040s, right? Too late, I believe.

Anyone has any idea of who and when will the MCDVs start to be replaced?
Thanks.
 
JMCanada said:
Would it mean that a third package should be in place for Davie to enter the NSS? Then the package might be or seems to be the "ice-breakers" pack.

In such a case ... who would be in charge of the MCDVs replacement? If considered as combatants, then Irving would be the one, but they won't have capacity until begining of the 2040s, right? Too late, I believe.

Anyone has any idea of who and when will the MCDVs start to be replaced?
Thanks.

Irving could be in charge of the design and be the prime contractor for the MCDV, but contract the work out.  Of course, some fairness rules/audit would have to be in place to make sure that if Davie won the contract they would actually win the contract.

Call me optimistic.
 
That's what happened to the CCG 47' Lifeboats, I think but not sure SNC Lavilan got the initial contract and then sub contracted to a "yard" in Kingston to build them. The first boat was so bad that PWGC yanked the contract from them and eventually gave it to Nanimo shipyards. I was in Kingston a year or so later, saw bits of the 47' lying in the yard, talked to the manager and he admitted they had never built a proper boat prior to that contract, only aluminium docks, ramps and few pontoon boats.
 
JMCanada said:
Would it mean that a third package should be in place for Davie to enter the NSS? Then the package might be or seems to be the "ice-breakers" pack.

In such a case ... who would be in charge of the MCDVs replacement? If considered as combatants, then Irving would be the one, but they won't have capacity until begining of the 2040s, right? Too late, I believe.

Anyone has any idea of who and when will the MCDVs start to be replaced?
Thanks.

Considering they are developing new payloads for them to carry I would would say they'll be around for at least another 10 years. They are in pretty good shape.
 
JMCanada said:
Would it mean that a third package should be in place for Davie to enter the NSS? Then the package might be or seems to be the "ice-breakers" pack.

In such a case ... who would be in charge of the MCDVs replacement? If considered as combatants, then Irving would be the one, but they won't have capacity until begining of the 2040s, right? Too late, I believe.

Anyone has any idea of who and when will the MCDVs start to be replaced?
Thanks.

Depends on the tonnage for the replacement; the NSS yards are excluded from anything beneath 1000 tonnes, so the MCDVs could be a standalone project if below the threshold.  Basically anything paid for by the GoC that floats is getting lumped into the NSS umbrella when they put out the annual reports, but there were a wider variety of small shipyards so that chunk was intentionally cut out to spread some of the love around. 

The MCDVs are grouped with non-combatants at the moment, so unless their replacements had significantly different would probably be the same.  AOPs is as well, but was intentionally put in the combat package to give the shipyard time to build up the experience before jumping into CSC.  Ideally they would have done the same with the non-combat package, as the three OFSVs aren't really enough, and the rest of the one offs of bespoke ships make it impossible for any yard to get efficient at it. Carving out the polar icebreaker and dropping in a long run of ships should help seaspan get over all the efficiency drop offs that happen every time you build a new class and actually make some profit.
 
Would we want glass fiber reinforced plastic hulls?  I see some European countries do build countermine ships like that.  Would fiberglass fall out of the national shipbuilding scope?
 
Spencer100 said:
Would we want glass fiber reinforced plastic hulls?  I see some European countries do build countermine ships like that.  Would fiberglass fall out of the national shipbuilding scope?

Fibreglass hulls a specialized skill set that neither yard has experience in.  Probably would be best to farm it out to someone that already knew what they were doing if we went that route.  Aside from the tonnage, the dollar value for an MCDV replacement would still push it into the major project side with similar oversight. Sure it would still get rolled up into the NSS annual report, which also includes all the smaller CCG, DND and other boat/ship projects.

(see here for the annual reports; https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/app-acq/amd-dp/mer-sea/sncn-nss/rapport-report-eng.html )
 
Spencer100 said:
Would we want glass fiber reinforced plastic hulls?  I see some European countries do build countermine ships like that.  Would fiberglass fall out of the national shipbuilding scope?

Which ones.  I don't personally have a lot of faith that some of the alternative material ships would survive the kind of oceanic punishment that exists right outside of Halifax Hbr, or outside the Straits of Juan de Fuca.  Baltic, Black Sea and coastal patrols only for many of those types.  Our "mine warfare vessels" regularly sail to the arctic, the Grand Banks and Africa.
 
Our shipbuilding mess continues, CCGS Hudson section:

Lead paint to delay refit of Canada’s oldest coast guard vessel by 6 months

A $10-million refit of Canada’s oldest coast guard vessel will be delayed by up to six months to remove lead paint found inside the ocean science ship Hudson.
-Advertisement-

Repair work on the storied 56-year old ship was expected to last until this fall at the NewDock shipyard in St. John’s.

But NewDock told the coast guard this week that safely dealing with lead paint discovered inside CCGS Hudson will delay the refit.

“Six months is the worst-case scenario that we have from the shipyard,” said Gary Ivany, the coast guard’s assistant commissioner, in an interview from Ottawa.

Hudson arrived at NewDock in February and was taken out of the water to replace steel and various areas of the vessel’s decks and tanks.

How the lead paint was found

The coast guard is trying to keep the ship at sea until 2024, which is when a replacement is scheduled to be in service [emphasis added, see below].

In late April, suspected lead paint buried under newer paint layers was discovered when coatings were removed.

Sixteen unionized coast guard crew and officers were given blood tests after it was confirmed the paint contained lead.

The test results are pending.

Shipyard workers and their family doctors were also informed, the coast guard said.

Area sealed off

The area was sealed off and work has yet to resume in those spaces, but work continues in areas that have been cleared and identified as safe for workers, such as the bridge deck, boat deck, engine room and motor room.

The Public Service Alliance of Canada, which is the union representing 10 coast guard crewmen, says the paint was detected in a water tank inside the ship and workers will not go back until they know the area is safe.

In the meantime, the coast guard wants to move up work that was planned for after the refit and carry it out while the ship is still out of the water in St. John’s.

That work, which includes engine maintenance and installing science equipment like winches, was supposed to take place dockside when the Hudson returned to her home base in Dartmouth, N.S., in the fall.

The coast guard still intends to have the Hudson back in service by April 2020 [emphasis added] and available for at-sea science missions.

Ivany said Public Services and Procurement Canada will tell the coast guard in the coming weeks what this means for the project’s budget.

The NewDock contract was for $10 million, while a contract for alongside work planned for Dartmouth has not been awarded.

“Extending the ship there longer will have an impact on cost, but we’re hoping that it’s well within the contingencies of the work they were planning to do,” said Ivany.

The refit at NewDock is Phase 2 of a life extension for CCGS Hudson.

Troubled repair history

Phase 1 was carried out in 2017 by Heddle Marine in Hamilton.

The $4-million refit was five months behind schedule and still unfinished when the government towed the Hudson out of the shipyard rather than risk having it trapped for months by the winter closure of the St. Lawrence Seaway.

The delay forced DFO to spend $2.5 million chartering vessels to carry out science missions on the East Coast of Canada because Hudson was unavailable.

The ship has a storied past. In 1970, it became the first ship to sail around North and South America.
Hudson was supposed to be replaced 5 years ago

Hudson was supposed to be replaced 5 years ago

The Hudson was supposed to be replaced as early as 2014 as part of the national shipbuilding strategy, but the project to build a new offshore oceanographic science vessel at Vancouver’s Seaspan shipyard is behind schedule as the yard works on two navy supply ships.

Earlier this year, Global News reported that the Davie Shipyard in Quebec told the federal government it would not bid on the latest life extension refit job, saying the Hudson was beyond repair [emphasis added].
http://easternontarionetwork.com/2019/06/22/lead-paint-to-delay-refit-of-canadas-oldest-coast-guard-vessel-by-6-months/

It was announced in Feb. this year that the (one only) new CCG offshore oceanographic science vessel will now be built by Seaspan after first RCN JSS, not before as had been planned:
https://www.nsnews.com/news/joint-support-ship-next-for-seaspan-shipyard-1.23627335

Now do these dates on gov't website make sense? OOSV one year after first JSS and second JSS one year after that?

...
Offshore Oceanographic Science Vessel
...
Project budget:
    Under review [STILL CAN'T GIVE A FIGURE! After all the years]
Estimated delivery:
    2024
...
Joint Support Ships
...
Estimated delivery:
    JSS 1: 2023
    JSS 2: 2025
...
https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/app-acq/amd-dp/mer-sea/sncn-nss/projets-projects-eng.html#s9

Bets on all those dates being met?

Mark
Ottawa
 
JSS 1 is moving along, I suspect they have it launched by sometime in 2023, but will take more time before acceptance.
 
Good thing they aren't trying to build an aircraft carrier, you might see it in 2050.
 
I remind you that Seaspan cannot build the JSS, or any other government vessel for that matter, without a contract being in place. Seaspan has actually managed to get permission from said government to begin pre-building some of the sections of JSS 1 before the contract is actually let out. That is amazing in itself and will save time down the line - but I blame the government for not having managed to negotiate the contract for JSS 1 yet - after all these years and so long after selecting the winning design.

I don't blame Seaspan at all for delays in this matter.
 
Oldgateboatdriver said:
I remind you that Seaspan cannot build the JSS, or any other government vessel for that matter, without a contract being in place. Seaspan has actually managed to get permission from said government to begin pre-building some of the sections of JSS 1 before the contract is actually let out. That is amazing in itself and will save time down the line - but I blame the government for not having managed to negotiate the contract for JSS 1 yet - after all these years and so long after selecting the winning design.

I don't blame Seaspan at all for delays in this matter.
On completion of the work, a vessel design ready for full production and construction will be delivered.
https://www.tpsgc-pwgsc.gc.ca/app-acq/amd-dp/mer-sea/sncn-nss/rapport-report-2018-8-eng.html#a5

No contract, because the design is not ready.
 
Interesting, PWGC shows the Polar Icebreaker to be built at Seaspan, but Seaspan has wiped their webpage of it.
 
Seaspan a hive of shipbuilding activity on heels of first delivery to Canadian Coast Guard

After growing pains, the North Vancouver shipyard has been buoyed by the award of 16 new vessels under the National Shipbuilding Program.

Seaspan Shipyards will deliver its first ship under the multibillion-dollar National Shipbuilding Program to the Canadian Coast Guard on June 27, two years behind its initial schedule after production problems and the growing pains of rebuilding an industry.

“We haven’t arrived at this alone,” Seaspan CEO Mark Lamarre was careful to point out, talking about the growing pains that the yard has had ramping up a rebuild of the West Coast’s shipbuilding industry in just a few years.

Lamarre argued that the federal government has had to relearn just as much about how to specify what it wants in new ships and order them as Seaspan has had to about building them and it is all “a work in progress.”

“(However) I couldn’t be more pleased with what we’ve demonstrated with the (following) ships,” Lamarre said.

As Seaspan hands over the first vessel, the 64-metre CCGS Sir John Franklin in Victoria, there is no rest at the company’s North Vancouver shipyard. There, some 1,200 shipfitters, welders, machinists and other trades are busily assembling modules of the third coast guard ship being built under the contract (the second, another fisheries research vessel, was launched June 5 to undergo completion work and sea trials).

And they’re now deep into building components for the fourth ship, the first of two joint-support vessels for the Royal Canadian Navy, the construction of which was accelerated under the program.

In 2011, Seaspan won what was then an $8-billion contract to build ships for the coast guard and non-combatant supply vessels for the Navy under the program.

A bigger contract to build combat vessels for the Navy went to Irving Shipbuilding in Nova Scotia.

However, budgets for the program have ballooned and timelines extended, which Lamarre, a third-generation shipbuilder with 35-years’ experience in the industry, said isn’t unexpected.

“Original schedules and budgets are almost all the time wrong and optimistic,” Lamarre said, when a government embarks on an ambitious plan to commission new naval and coast guard ships after decades of inactivity in the sector. Critics have questioned why Canada would spend increasing amounts of tax dollars to rejuvenate domestic shipbuilding when they could save money by buying ships virtually off-the-shelf from allies overseas.

In 2017, for instance, an Italian-French consortium offered an unsolicited bid to build 15 new naval frigates for Canada at a fixed cost of $30 billion, versus a now-anticipated $60 billion cost for the program in Canada. Lamarre, however, argued that Seaspan is trying to position itself to be cost-competitive enough to enter the export market itself while building a “sovereign capability” for Canada.

The CEO is a relative newcomer to the program having arrived at Seaspan just under a year ago with a team of experienced senior managers with between 30 and 40 ship completions under their belts to shepherd the program through its next phase.

Lamarre himself has 24 years at a shipbuilding subsidiary of U.S. defence contractor General Dynamics. And he led the Australian firm ASC through a similar program.

“The similarities to Australia here are so stark,” Lamarre said. “We’re using basically the same game plan.”

Seaspan has an “enthusiastic, young, highly skilled workforce,” Lamarre said, but “you only get three-ships worth of experience after you build three ships.”

And while Seaspan is trying to set international benchmarks for ship construction, “the people who are going to get there the fastest are the people who have seen 30 to 40 ships.”

Economically speaking, besides the thousand or so jobs that the program has created, which now makes Seaspan B.C.’s biggest manufacturer, Lamarre said Canada is starting to experience a boost within the supply chain the shipyard has established to feed its operations. Steel for the Navy’s joint-support vessels now regularly rolls into North Van from Algoma Steel in Sault Ste Marie, Ont.

In total, Lamarre said Seaspan has spent $935 million with some 630 different suppliers across Canada, with $405 million staying with 472 companies in B.C.

Earlier this month, The Canadian Press reported that the federal government had removed construction of a heavy icebreaker for the coast guard, the CCGS John G. Diefenbaker from Seaspan’s contract. Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson was quoted as saying that government was “exploring other options to ensure the (icebreaker) is built in the most efficient manner,” though no decisions have been made.

On Wednesday, Lamarre said Seaspan is still in discussions over the ship, but looks to another decision to award Seaspan an additional 16 multipurpose vessels for the coast guard as a vote of confidence in the program.
https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/seaspan-a-hive-of-shipbuilding-activity-on-heels-of-first-delivery-to-canadian-coast-guard
 
FSTO said:
The latest lean from Liberal Operatives on Twitter is now to bring out the "circumvention of procurement process rules" as a reason why Norman was charged. This loops back to the idea from some in government that procurement rules are sacrosanct and came down from the mount etched in stone. That is complete baloney, rules and procedures are constantly in flux because nothing is perfect and an entity that is married to dogma is doomed to failure.

Also there is no bloody way in hell that Vance (nor Lawson before him) was in the dark about CRCN dealing directly with Davie (allegedly) under orders from the PM. If Ottawa is as leaky as everyone says it is (and it is!) then he would have heard about it. But the process of acquiring the iAOR would have been part of the briefing package the CDS routinely reviews.

I agree that rules nad procedures and constantly in flux, but changes to those rules must be done transparently with a clear understanding by everyone (including the public) as to why the rules are being ignored.  They are there to prevent fraud and corruption.  Clearly in this case, ignoring the rules was not done transparently, and thus there was a risk of fraud and corruption.  Should it not have been investigated by an incoming government?

Is there any proof that CDS knew about it, or was briefed on it, or just a "gut feel"?  The question I have is:  If everyone in the CF Chain of Command was well aware of it, then why would the successor government be going after Norman?  Surely if the Liberals knew that the previous government had ordered Norman to deal directly with Davie (allegedly), they would have gone after the Conservatives for circumventing procurement rules, not an Admiral.  It makes no sense at all to go after Norman if "everybody would have known" that he was under orders.

The way this played out suggests that the Liberals did not know that the Conservative government had given Norman that direction (allegedly)
 
Back
Top