The Virginian-Pilot
©
PORTSMOUTH
After the turmoil of two successive firings of commanding officers at Norfolk Naval Shipyard, the facility's next leader will be a familiar face.
Capt. Mark Bridenstine, who has worked at the yard for two years and is the production resources officer, will relieve Rear Adm. Joseph F. Campbell, according to Naval Sea Systems Command. A date for the change of command has not been announced.
Bridenstine's job has been to maintain a qualified, well-trained workforce with the proper mix of trade skills, shipyard spokesman Jeff Cunningham said.
Bridenstine is a native of Detroit who began his Navy career as a submarine officer, then switched to engineering duty officer. Since 2003, he has served in Norfolk in various posts at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center, Fleet Forces Command, and the staff of the Submarine Force commander.
Norfolk Naval is one of four NAVSEA shipyards specializing in repairing, overhauling and modernizing ships and submarines. It employs about 10,000, more than 8,000 of them civilians.
Campbell will return to NAVSEA headquarters in Washington and resume his job as deputy commander for maintenance, logistics and industrial operations. He has served as acting commander since May, when Capt. Greg Thomas was reassigned amid an investigation into the command environment at the yard. Thomas had been on the job for about nine months. In October, he was reprimanded for "conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman," including abusive language, and permanently relieved of command.
Thomas' predecessor was relieved of duty in June 2010 after a year on the job for failing to ensure that critical maintenance work was being performed according to procedure and for "loss of situational awareness" of submarine projects.
Meredith Kruse, (757) 446-2164, meredith.kruse@pilotonline.com
Delicious
Digg
Reddit
Facebook
Twitter
Google
Yahoo
Mental Models
Maybe if upper management at NNSY, the Navy, and DC had done their jobs for the past 20+ years, there would not be the mentality at the yard and outside of it that exists now. Now it's up to the new and young people, like myself, and the few old timers that actually care to shape this place up. It's hard to work with people with negative mental models in an ever changing and modernizing work place. I feel sorry for anyone with a management role in the yard now. They're going to need a lot of support, even from the outsiders that like to complain so much anout NNSY on this website. If the shipyard shut down, the local economy would take a massive hit. How long would the tolls have to stay in place if they lost all the shipyard traffic? ...
Dilute the unions
When On active duty I got called down by the unions for trying to keep a tight work schedule moving. I had a room full of strong, healthy sailors standing around while a civilian welder put in a work request for a shipyard rigger to lift a metal hatch and hold it in place so he could weld it. After waiting for 6 hours with the welder taking smoke and coke breaks I told my sailors to move the hatch and recall the welder. All H broke lose then. Union reps came out of th metal work stating I had violated union rules. Needless to say the job did not get done on schedule and the ship ultimately did not leave the yard on time. And one wonders why the unions grabbed so much power. Good luck Capt.
Lack of ownership and leadership
Part of the problem is the state of disrepair of the ships. "Mandatory" care and feeding (preventive maintenance)to be completed by the crew is now optional and usually not done. Ships 5 years old are in a state of disrepair that a 20 year old ship might have been in the past. Officers don't inspect the tech's work and if they do, they don't know what they're looking at. The COs don't spot check and are ill-informed by their officers. The tech schools are awful and technical mentorship is a thing of the past. Techs are promoted on how much community service and collateral duties they take on. An old-school Chief would have a stroke if he saw today's Navy from the inside. And he'd be fired for insensitivity like Capt. Thomas was.
Shipyard has not come to grips with multigenerational issues.
My Grandfather, born in 1919 and a Traditionalist, worked there 28 years. Now you have Babyboomers, Boomerangers, and Millenialists with 3 very different kinds of cultural influence, work-ethics, and what it means to "work" colliding with strict Navy discipline and Union "work to the rule" shiftlessness.
Got My Ticket Punched There...
Made WL in about three yrs, and moved up and out. it was not that bad really, but I was lost as to why other shops / codes could not work together to get the job done. One day I treid to help a welder pull about 250 FT lead around a corner and got slapped down by my foreman.
Which I found unusal because when I worked up in PA on the Ohio River on the assembly line building Sea going Tugs and Barges, was represented by the ASB Union we ALL worked together... Of course that was real production work. We got paid by piece-work every unit completed had hours attached to it. If you got it done sooner, you got bonus hours. Hence, everybody worked together. Unusual for a right to work state hey? Quality was good since we were inspected by USCG.
Time To Close Out The History of Gosport Naval Shipyards
Time to either clean-house and put the unions in check or shut-down the shipyard. As a career Surface Warfare Officer, I went through over 7 shipyards for major availabilities, two at Norfolk Naval Shipyard. Incompetence, lack of work ethics, and negligience are the hallmarks of NNSY. Everything they thouch is either done wrong, behind schedule, and ultimately has to be redone by ship's force or another activity. I can only recall too vividly the anger of my Sailors are working 12-18 hour days while in NNSY while the NNSY workers would come in and sleep in the engineering spaces, while the civilian shipyard leadership did nothing about it. At least with a private yard, you can fire the workers.
Blame it on the Union Mantra
Dr. Fredrick Taylor the father of Scientific management was it, that said that for work, people are mainly motivated by money. Make the yard do piece work - real insentive production and you'll see some butts and elbows get to the grind stone to get the job done!
Change is what the yard needs not more complaining. P.S. Contractor change orders don't help either!
Depot Work
Successful COs guided broad policy and left the myriad of details to SY execs. The complexity of shipyard work is beyond the grasp of an officer assigned there for two or three years. NNSY hardly has the base talent to accomplish assigned work, much less the capacity to execute multiple complex overhauls as they did in the 80s. BRAC dismantled trainee and apprentice programs that ultimately fed the best and brightest into executive positions in yard leadership. Retired officers with 5 yrs depot experience took over positions once held by men with 40 yrs of depot experience. Inadequate succession plans for leadership and craftsmen are about to decimate what competence they have left. Sincerely, good luck Cap'n; you've got your work cut out!
We have the cart pulling the horse...
...if the new CO doesn't suck-up to the Unions/Govt Service employees, he'll be out too!! Just like the last two CO's. What ever happened to the Norfolk NAVAL Shipyard?? The military seems only a figurehead now - with zero control.