CAPTURING THE COMMERCIAL COST BASE IN DELIVERING NAVAL AUXILIARIES

摘要

Many Navies and government Procurement Executives look enviously at the comparatively low initial cost of commercial tonnage being designed, built and delivered quickly and apparently offering a useful and immediate capability. Commercial ships are designed to known and established rules and standards and within known regulatory frameworks. Taking commercial ships from trade is one potential solution but this often leads to a minimum capability and considerable modification cost. Patching into the commercial supply chain to deliver fully capable Naval Auxiliaries seems initially attractive but once overlaid with the Naval procurement process, standards, rules and regulations it quickly becomes a bespoke procurement for the shipyard, incurring the usual high costs and risks of the unknown. This paper considers a third way of adapting suitable commercial ship designs at the design stage but maintaining their commercial constructability right up to the later stages of the programme after which a naval upgrade programme delivers the full capability from the modified ship. Managing the transition from one supply chain to the next and maintaining the benefits of each requires a ship designed for this transition. This paper describes such a design concept suitable for Naval Auxiliary duties.