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Fifth installment of Undeniable Truths of Overhaul: Errors require corrective action, but don’t be stupid. Corrective actions are stupid when they ignore systemic sources of error, add additional controls, and are unreflective.
This is the fourth installment of Undeniable Truths of Overhaul. In it, I discuss two:
SY workers do care about the schedule
High performance is different in overhaul
This is the third installment of Undeniable Truths of warship overhaul. It is better to accept and act on them before the “piano of reality” drops on your head.
This is the explanation of Undeniable Truths of Overhaul 9-12: the crew needs to adapt quickly to the SY, senior leader visits disrupt work, the crew is the weakest link of overhaul, and supervision is the crew’s most limited resource.
This is the first of what will be several posts on the Undeniable Truths of ship overhaul. Ignore them if you will, but they won't ignore YOUl.
I close my series on Cost Estimating Theatre with a review of the Planning Fallacy, thoughts on whether accepting it is pragmatic or depressing, the reasonableness of expecting to “bend the cost curve,” and the implications for the U.S. Navy of predictably inaccurate estimates of cost and schedule for major projects.
The Planning Fallacy can be summed up with a paraphrase of Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your [acquisition plan]” (Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 5). This post describes the CBO’s cost estimating methodology.
The biggest resistance to a strategy to reduce the impact of the Planning Fallacy is likely to be denial of the selected reference class. This post describes my shield meltdown over references classes.
US weapons system are increasingly late to complete, and exceed projected costs. This post is an introduction to the Planning Fallacy.
The Navy’s schedule and cost estimates for new warships are “accuracy challenged.” This applies to almost all project estimates. This is the first post of a series that seeks to understand why.
This is another post on Navy ship maintenance realities. I restate the fundamentals of Navy ship maintenance (knowing, planning, doing, and testing) and do a deep dive on Class Maintenance Plans.
Navy ship depot maintenance is expensive. The only way to significantly lower repair costs is to do less of it. This isn’t good for long term ship material readiness or budgets. Neither is espousing rubbish about ship repair.
Achieving acceptable performance in Navy ship depot maintenance is hard. Diagnosing the key problems when things aren’t going well is even tougher since so many factors that contribute to delays aren’t under the control of any one Navy activity. Ship lifecycle management poor performance has many components. Depot maintenance is just one of them.
This is another post in my series devoted to ship overhaul. I continue examining Navy ship maintenance through GAO publications by responding to comments and digging deeper into causes of ship maintenance delays.
I examine Navy ship maintenance performance through the lens a GAO statement based on numerous GAO reports. Spoiler alert: after all those reports, things aren’t getting better.
The focus of this post is what can interfere with the support the ship’s crew should provide to the SY in an overhaul.
Providing work and test support in overhaul is challenging for the crew. This post defines good shipyard support.
Overhaul is hard for the crew because of the knowledge gap between ship’s force and shipyard managers about the work and schedule.
This is the first of a series of posts explaining why sailors don’t like ship overhaul. I use the analogy of getting a filling, routine teeth maintenance, as an illustration.
