Page 45 - Australian Defence Magazine Sep 2021

SEPTEMBER 2021 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
SUSTAINMENT AND MRO 45
LEFT: OPV Arafura’s mast is lifted into place on top of the ship’s bridge.
curs today, and providing incentive to grow Australian Indus- try Capability (AIC), particularly in the regional centres.
“Sustainment is as important – if not more important – than shipbuilding itself and will certainly cost more over the longer term,” RADM Malcolm explains. “We believe that the development and delivery of a sovereign sustain- ment capability is critical to increasing Defence’s self-reli- ance, delivering on the promise of continuous shipbuilding and ensuring that Navy can deliver the intended capability whenever and wherever it needs to.”
CAPABILITY LIFECYCLE
With Capability Life Cycle Management (CLCM) at its heart, Galileo plans to incorporate knowledge, practices and lessons learned, stretching from the design and con- struction of each vessel through to customer feedback from operational use.
The first CLCM team has already been raised in Western Australia to support the OPV enterprise and is co-located with the OPV System Project Office (SPO), the Navy Capa- bility Manager and first ship’s crew at Henderson.
“They are playing a key role in ensuring the logistics support products, the artefacts, that are coming from the acquisition project are ready and fit for purpose to be brought into the sup- port system, so we can use them to support the ships as they are delivered,” RADM Malcolm explains. “They are embedded with the acquisition team, looking
at the greater logistics support and maintenance deliverables. That’s going well; we’re looking to release our next CLCM management Re- quest for Tenders (RFT), for the Hobart class destroyers, later this year and we’re also looking at doing the same for our new Evolved Cape class patrol boats.”
“SUSTAINMENT IS AS
IMPORTANT – IF NOT MORE IMPORTANT – THAN SHIPBUILDING ITSELF”
REGIONAL MAINTENANCE CENTRES
The four Regional Maintenance Centres are being estab- lished around the four major naval homeports or support facilities, in Cairns, Darwin, Henderson and in Sydney. The first RFTs, for the establishment of an RMC in Cairns, are currently under evaluation and the first RMC Director has also been recently appointed.
“The embracement of the concept and involvement from both local and national maintenance providers, to look