Page 38 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2021

38 FEATURE
OCTOBER 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
Furthermore, we’ve established a research and technol- ogy function at Tonsley Park in Adelaide at Flinders Uni- versity’s Line Zero Factory of the Future facility. It’s not in the shipyard because it’s really a sand pit where we can work with SMEs, academia and Defence scientists to fully
It ultimately meant we would be forced into a sub-optimal build process.
We normally build a naval ship in a number of blocks start- ing at the bottom in the middle and then working aft, then to the fore end and back up through the middle of the ship to the mast. Some of these blocks are in design zones that have been heavily impacted by the extent of significant combat system changes but nothing outside a normal First of Class program. The impact of the UK COVID-19 situation on the sister Type 26 program in the UK has also created challeng- es. A shift of the cut steel date will allow us to achieve the optimal design maturity in those high-change design zones of the ship, to ensure we can build the ship efficiently and ef- fectively, reducing program risk. This gives us a much higher level of certainty on the delivery of the ships and more po- tential to compress the schedule over Batch One. A way of thinking about it is “going a bit slower to go fast”.
We’re still getting supplier information day by day, week by week, on the Australian-mandated changes and that in- forms where we exit SDR and what level of maturity we take in the design.
ADM: Was the delay option driven by the UK or by Aus- tralia, or has the complexity of the program simply been underestimated?
LOCKHART: We’ve been pretty honest about the challenges in terms of maintaining ship margins and weight, as we’ve sought to understand the key changes. Some equipment on the UK’s first-of-class HMS Glasgow was heavier than pre- dicted and that weight and complexity carries through to the reference ship design. Likewise, we’re having to take into
“WE’RE NOW WORKING CLOSELY WITH OUR CUSTOMER TO DETERMINE THE REQUIREMENTS FOR BATCH ONE AND THE NEXT CONTRACTING PHASE”
explore, test, rationalise and consoli- date future technologies that we might want to bring in as part of our con- nected worker, connected yard, con- nected supply chain and connected ship ethos.
ADM: What was behind the June an- nouncement on the delay to the start of Future Frigate construction? LOCKHART: We’d had discussions with the Commonwealth about the design effort and the Systems Definition Re-
view (SDR), a major milestone that establishes the func- tional baseline of the ship. SDR commenced in March and it’s scheduled to be completed in November, allowing work to move on from functional baseline to system and detailed design. Through the SDR we assess design maturity against the capability and whole of ship performance requirements, including the integration of the Australian Government mandated changes such as combat systems. One of the complexities was the maturity of the First of Class design as we moved towards manufacture, particularly as we also un- packed the Australian combat system, including the radar. The impact of the UK COVID-19 situation on the Type 26 program in the UK has also created significant challenges.
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