By Moderator, 24 March 2025
In case you didn’t see them, there were two interesting articles about procurement published last week. One was written by Ian Mack and published by CGAI. The other was written by Colonel (Ret’d) Charles Davies, published by the CDA Institute. Here are a few tidbits selected from the articles. The full articles are available via the links provided.
Mack’s piece is entitled “Expediting Delivery of Warships” and, as the title suggests, focuses on how construction of the River-class destroyers could be sped up. He suggests that it would be worth considering collaboration with other shipyards to speed up the build. He also makes a number of suggestions about what the government can do to improve the schedule of construction, including, among other things: only allowing exceptions to the parent ship’s military-off-the-shelf design and systems if recommended by an Independent Review Panel for Ship Acquisition; provide a ‘fitted for but not with’ list; reuse procurement strategies employed in past crises to speed up contract award; recreate a commercial Naval Ship Design Agency capability and utilize approaches of our allies; and allow agility in decision-making delegated to the three core departments (DND, PSPC and ISED). If this is problematic for the River-class, then consider the steps for the MCDV replacement program. See Expediting Delivery of Warships - Canadian Global Affairs Institute
The second article by Colonel (Ret’d) Davies is entitled “Defence Procurement – Lies, Damned Lies and Total Program Cost Estimates.” In the article Davies discusses the government policy of including lifetime costs in the cost of defence purchases. This means price-tags are both huge and misleading. It is difficult to assess such costs when they involve future prices, future operations and many future unknowns. He suggests that we should not get ‘overly concerned’ with the big numbers of government estimates. See Defence Procurement - Lies, Damned Lies and Total Program Cost Estimates | CDA Institute
Image: A rendering of the Canadian Surface Combatant, now named River-class destroyer, as posted on LinkedIn by the RCN in summer 2024.
4 thoughts on “Articles About Procurement”
Yes Irving could build a satellite yard to provide module or mega block construction or full sized construction on site. I would suggest the former Saint John Shipbuilding site which is now an Irving wallboard plant. The graving dock is still there. The only issue I could see is one of qualified workers. If it was up to me build the yard while the first batch is being built, establishing a school there to train shipyard workers in the various trades and having the surge capacity if needed in the future and during lean times use it as a maintenance facility. Currently there are very few docking sites for AOPV’s and the RCD when built.
Yes I certainly agree that lifetime costs are misleading and further say that it lends to misinformation on a project actual costs and leads to erroneous articles.
I think Ted’s idea of bringing on line a second Irving yard would help a great deal.
However, there are several arguments against this sensible approach:
– No capacity available given the full order books at all three Canadian shipyards
– Irving has testified that using multiple yards is not very efficient
– Irving is dead set against the concept as its senior officials have made very clear in testimony before various parliamentary committees. (This enmity can be traced back at least to the Halifax-class construction program when Irving tried, unsuccessfully, to put MIL Davie out of business)
– Most critically, speeding up construction goes against a core principle of the NSS. (Carefully sequenced and deliberately paced load-levelling to protect the workforce at the shipyards)
– A second Irving yard, would be ideal, and is an approach the USN is actively considering for the Constellation-class. But, again this would leave Canada with excess (‘bust’) capacity after the RCD program is completed (Canada is already facing this issue with the third shipbuilder at Davie)
– When Saint John Shipbuilding Limited (SJSL) went bankrupt after the Halifax-class program, Ottawa offered the company $55 million to create jobs in New Brunswick without knowing how the money would be spent, or even where. Moreover, the company did not have to offer any of this money to the laid-off ship workers who were cited as justification for the federal spending.
In return for the funds, SJSL was required to meet three conditions: that it would match the federal money, that it would prepare a defunct shipyard site for redevelopment, and that it would not build any more ships in Saint John. [See, Kelly Toughill, “No questions asked; Ottawa offered Irving Shipbuilding Inc. $55 million without knowing how it would be spent”, Toronto Star, 14 March 2004] And before Ms Toughill is dismissed as yet another journalist with an anti-defence bias, I would note that she went on to have a distinguished academic career at King’s College, and won several journalism honours, including a National Newspaper Award.
Ok not sure what is meant by “no capacity” available in regards to bringing on another Irving shipyard and how it relates to operating more capacity. This is about expanding the yard capacity building the RCD. BAE opened another yard to increase capacity so it apparently works for them, perhaps that needs to be revisited given the change in geopolitics. Again Irving may be dead set against it, but given the tide of patriotism perhaps a future government can make them a deal they can’t refuse. It may be as simple as expand or we’re giving half the order to someone else. The NSS was to mete out programmed builds, that’s true. However at the end of the RCD project, that yard can be mothballed and declared a strategic asset to be used when we need it to be. When envisioning the NSS no doubt it wasn’t envisioned that we may have the imperative to build ships more quickly. After the RCD are completed, then there are their replacements which project should be ready to go when that project is finished, in a never ending cycle. We all know the story of the government paying Irving to dismantle Saint John shipbuilding, old news and really not germane to be honest. The imperative here is to build the ships faster because we need to, anything can be changed if we need it bad enough.
With all due respect to the article authors, many of the points mentioned fly directly in the face of the National Shipbuilding Strategy and the long term viability of Canadian shipyards. For something like the River class where hull quality is of the utmost importance due to the requirements for sound sanitation, we cannot just outsource module construction willy nilly to any random yard within Canada, or especially outside of it. If we are doing the latter as well, we are actively undermining the Canadian shipbuilding industry that we have spend over a decade and billions of dollars building.
There is a distinct want within many sides to speed up production but frankly, this is not going to be realistically accomplished. Leave the program alone, do not meddle and allow it to get to work. Implement changes to future programs elsewhere if required, but the River class should generally be permitted to continue as planned.