During a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing held before the congressional recess, Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-HI) questioned Military Officials about infrastructure timelines.
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00:00Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
00:02Mr. Chairman, several reports highlight significant workforce shortages across the U.S. shipbuilding industrial base,
00:12particularly in skilled labor necessary for new ship construction.
00:17Without addressing this issue, we risk continued delays and increased costs in delivering much-needed vessels.
00:25So my question is, what specific action is the Navy taking to recruit, train, and retain a skilled workforce to support shipbuilding efforts?
00:41And by the way, what is causing the labor shortage issues that I just referred to?
00:47Thank you, ma'am.
00:48I'll actually hit the second question first because I think it frames out the overall answer.
00:53Over the last, if I go back 40 years to 1985, when we were producing ships at the rate, submarines specifically,
01:02and aircraft carriers at the rate that we need to now, we were about 30% manufacturing as a nation,
01:08our percentage of our workforce.
01:10Today, we're about 12.
01:12So in a more service-based economy, it makes competition for those, for people, for resources, really challenging.
01:21What we are doing is really a three-pronged approach, right?
01:25It is actually, you know, attracting a workforce.
01:30We've established a buildsubmarines.com campaign that has resulted in 2.7 million job applications
01:39with thousands and thousands of jobs on a website that we work with a nonprofit partner
01:46and gotten attention kind of across the industrial base.
01:50That's an attraction example.
01:52In training, we've worked both with the shipbuilders, now working with the public shipyards as well,
01:58starting relatively recently with the formation of the MIB program,
02:01and working with supply chains across six of our most intense regions
02:06to support partnerships between community colleges and those supply chain partners to do that.
02:13And then finally, you know, retention.
02:17We have additional work to do here, but our critical team that's building and maintaining our nuclear ships
02:25should be paid more than the service industry wage.
02:28And over time, that wage gap that we had for many years has gone away.
02:35And so, you know, we're interested in addressing that.
02:38But also, very critically, we have to train supervisors.
02:42Another thing that causes retention issues is inexperienced or poorly trained supervisors.
02:49And we have the least experienced supervisors that we've had at any point in our history that we can mine data for.
02:55And so we have to address that issue as well.
02:57I mean, clearly, without an adequate workforce and you have retirements, you have all of that,
03:04you have to be very focused.
03:06And are you focused on the areas that I talked about?
03:11It doesn't, you know, it doesn't happen.
03:13The workforce doesn't happen because it's a good thing.
03:16You have to be very intentional about getting the people you need and to retain them.
03:21So I conclude that that's what you're doing?
03:25Yes, ma'am.
03:26So one of the other issues is that there are always massive cost overruns.
03:34And so the estimates that we get for how much a ship will cost usually is way off.
03:41Is there a way that you can better tell us what the costs are so that we're not facing massive overruns due to basically an inability to estimate what the cost will be over time?
03:59Have you thought about using an independent entity to estimate the cost that might be involved?
04:07Yes, ma'am.
04:09Who wants to respond to that?
04:11I will do that, ma'am.
04:11Go ahead.
04:12You know, in general, in shipbuilding, you know, good cost estimates are key to informing the process.
04:18They're key to understand the business case.
04:20I know that's recognized as the best case in shipbuilding.
04:22I know that GAO has recognized that and the business case itself as best practices for shipbuilding.
04:28So we completely agree.
04:29Our process is set up so that when we are getting ready to procure a new class or new ships, we actually have independent cost estimates.
04:37There's a team that we work closely with but does their own cost estimates.
04:42Depending on the buy, we often have other sources of cost.
04:45We talk to CBO and others.
04:47And so we do take several inputs, all designed to increase the fidelity of those estimates and improve our budgets.
04:54We then obviously have to perform, the other half of your question is cost efficiency, and clearly that's part of the national efforts that Mr. Sherman talks about
05:04and that we're working at each of our shipbuilders to improve their cost performance.
05:10I can't tell if my time is, I think it is, so I will submit other questions for the record, Mr. Chairman.