How a shortage of manpower was turned into a successful, efficient design and build process

The Walrus Class ocean going submarines were designed for Cold War missions. Their strategic, NATO based, operational area was the North Atlantic. Already during their building phase at the end of the Cold war the political scene altered. Fortunately, this diesel electric submarine proved easily adjustable to the new circumstances without major technical changes. The four Walrus boats have been active in many different areas and with new missions. To continue to perform several mission critical operational systems had to be updated and to ensure the operational performance until 2025-2030 fundamental improvements were considered necessary. For the Life Extension Program the Naval Staff carried out a study to establish the Operational Requirements as a basis for the LEP. MoD experienced shortage in a technical knowledge base in numbers and in capability. This was compensated by an industry initiative, based on existing working traditions in the Netherlands of collaboration between MoD, the research institutes and the industry, the so called “Triple Helix/Golden Ecosystem”. The Dutch Underwater Knowledge Center (DUKC) proposed to provide support for the LEP engineering phase. Subsequently five of its members formed a joint design team and presented a generic plan to DMO. The participating companies agreed to form an independent consulting engineering team. The essential ingredient for this collaborative process is the jointly felt responsibility for performance, cost control and delivery times. The contract was on a “price not to exceed” basis. This was an important condition for cost control because initially there were only limited and general technical requirements. The second novel aspect was the interaction with the various navy departments involved. WESP had direct interaction not only with the DMO project organization but also with the Naval Shipyard, the Joint IV Command, the Submarine Service and the Operational school. The DMO team gladly reciprocated, resulting in an effective communication scheme. The WESP team was an integral part within DMO project teams during the dialogue and selection phase with the contractors. The main responsibility or the WESP teams was the assessment of platform integration risks and mitigation measures during the different engineering phases. The LEP planning recognized three phases: an engineering study phase aimed at the selection of new components and defining new arrangements, a detailed design phase and an implementation phase. The Naval Dockyard would be responsible for the LEP related shipyard work. WESP proved that experienced professionals from (in this case four) industrial companies and a research institute, working as a team of independent consulting engineers interacting directly with DMO specialists has been the success factor for the engineering of the LEP. It shows that a shortage can be turned around into a programmatic success and it demonstrated that such a submarine ecosystem is mandatory for the upkeep of the submarine service.