The Navy’s Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP) completed part one of its first-ever Industry Day June 5.
The event was broadcast to approximately 500 attendees and included a familiarization video on Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard (PHNS), a detailed description of the SIOP baseline plan for PHNS, and remarks from SIOP leaders on how SIOP is critical to the Navy’s mission, as well as the need for innovative ideas that break from the Department of Defense’s typical processes and ways of doing business.
“Industry Day provides our stakeholders a better understanding of the challenges SIOP is facing and the business opportunities that exist,” said SIOP Program Manager Capt. Luke Greene. “It’s important that we reach our partners in this effort -- the construction contractors, material vendors, trade unions, shipyard workforce, regulators, elected officials, and members of academia -- so we can do our best to do our part in getting our ships and submarines back to sea when and where our nation needs them.”
SIOP is a multi-decade effort with over $6 billion of construction underway. It is part of a reconceiving of infrastructure not only as “brick and mortar,” but as a critical driver of lethality, as functionally a weapons system.
The SIOP Program Executive Office mission is to deliver capabilities to protect and enable our nation’s strategic interests and economic prosperity. That includes planning and building megaprojects, recapitalizing century-old shipyard infrastructure, and optimizing the nation’s public shipyards to better maintain and upgrade the Navy’s current and future nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines.
With such an expansive mission, it is critical that the Navy solicit innovative ideas from industry and academia on how to deliver such projects faster, at a reduced cost, and with predictable performance.
“It is imperative that the Navy work with urgency to explore all avenues for improvement at our four naval shipyards,” said Nikolas Guertin, assistant secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition. “We have to look at our materials, our workforce, our processes, our fundamental ways of doing business and thinking. We have to be agile, and we cannot be afraid to think differently. This is necessary not only to improve our cost and schedule outcomes, but to stay apace with our adversaries and protect this nation.”
Guertin also noted that SIOP is evidence that the Navy is already innovating and embracing creative problem solving.
“Faced with an unprecedented challenge, we adjusted how we framed the problems and are embracing unprecedented solutions,” he said. At the second half of this event, scheduled for August, industry professionals with be invited to pitch their ideas to Navy subject matter experts. To be considered, innovative project ideas must be submitted in advance via the SAM.gov website at https://sam.gov/opp/15e7699e3ee94d7d9ce955eda5056fe3/view
The June 5 SIOP Industry Day video presentation is available at https://youtu.be/JFZJHoFTqXw