Managing Competence in Naval Asset Management: Professionalising Defence's Cadre of Asset Managers for Ships and Submarines

摘要

Defence's sustainment policy for naval vessels incorporates asset management principles and methods and recognises the need for experts who specialise in asset management as essential to delivering and maintaining maritime capability. For warships and submarines, asset managers constantly weigh technical challenges and costs of maintenance and modernisation against operational and functional benefits to meet the Operating and Support Intent, life cycle management objectives and Seaworthiness requirements. A naval asset management skills model has been developed that focusses on technical compliance, operational capability, and business-related goals intrinsic to Fleet Life Cycle Management. Naval enterprise sustainment efforts are a combined endeavour between Navy, Australian Public Service and defence industry contractors but has no identified or documented minimum asset management capabilities for life cycle management of either individual vessels or entire classes. While Defence acknowledges the need for asset management within the naval enterprise, it has not established criteria for codifying or formally recognising required competencies directly related to life cycle management of naval vessels. National recognition and professional certification formally credits the learning, development and experiential requirements each warship and submarine life cycle management professional should have as a means to become officially sanctioned asset management specialists within Defence's maritime sustainment community. Moreover, the nature of naval vessel asset management necessitates formal recognition within Capability and Acquisition Sustainment Group's Sustainment Management Career Pathway as well as accreditation through the Australian Quality Framework. The US Navy's Port Engineer Program provides a solid example on which Australia's naval enterprise can base its own scheme. This paper outlines a method to recognise naval asset management specialists by codifying experience, education, and training requirements for inclusion in Defence's Sustainment Management Profession-alisation and Certification Framework and provides recommendations for establishing a valid career path for Warship and Submarine Life Cycle Managers.