Page 53: of Maritime Reporter Magazine (May 2015)

The current dry dock that we have, the “Pride of San Diego,” has a 26,000 ton lift capacity.

The new one we’re having built is 55,000 ton—that’s twice the lift capacity.

Bob Koerber, GM

BAE Systems Ship Repair, San Diego nities of San Diego. If ships have to go We have not seen the new con- If during an availability you open up the government contracting of? cer, a elsewhere for maintenance and repair, tract vehicle for San Diego, however, we a void and ? nd something that some- contract modi? cation is issued, priced, the Sailors go, too, and that represents a don’t believe that the U.S. Navy will task thing that needs to be done, but wasn’t and negotiated prior to work commenc- big loss to the local economy. Bottom a small business with the requirement to part of the planned work in the pack- ing. line; these investments helps us to better dock a ship age, wasn’t budgeted or scheduled for, support the Navy and keep jobs within but it has to be done before you can this port - it helps the City of San Diego. So it’s not just the physical infrastruc- get to that next piece of work, and you ture. And these are not trivial. can’t wish it away. So what happens

We understand the multi-ship/multi- No, they’re not. They’re major to that?

(Continued on page 55) option repair and modernization con- investments. If the work is authorized by tracts will not be continued. How will that impact your yard? And how will we achieve the stability and predict- ability of the deployment, mainte- nance and training schedule? Rather than knowing what ships we’ll be getting, and planning ac- cordingly, we will have to bid on each and every availability. This complicated the decision about the new dry dock.

But at the same time, it might make you more competitive.

That’s correct.

We understand that there will be an emphasis on giving small contrac- tors an opportunity to prime some of these jobs that have traditionally been awarded to the master ship repair fa- cilities. If one of those small compa- nies needed to include a dry dock in their bid, they would have to come to you or NASSCO, which would make you a sub to them. They would not have include the cost of that infra- structure, such as piers, dry docks, and cranes, in every bid, but you have to pay for it whether the Navy puts a ship in it or not.

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