“Reinvestment in the Canadian Armed Forces is among the largest and the most ambitious endeavours that Canada will undertake in the next 20 years,” retired Canadian vice-admiral Paul Maddison told the hundreds of defence officials and suppliers gathered for his keynote address at CANSEC May 29.
The government is planning to spend $33-billion over the next two to three decades to build Arctic patrol ships, frigates, destroyers, an icebreaker, two science vessels, and two joint support ships.
“We definitely do see some opportunity for Lockheed Martin Canada on the [shipbuilding] program,” Lockheed Martin's Don McClure, vice president of business development and government relations. Mr. McClure and a team from Lockheed Martin were on the trade show floor at CANSEC, held at the Ernst and Young Centre in south Ottawa, on May 29 and 30.
Lockheed is currently working on modernizing the Navy's 12 Halifax class frigates. The company is working to integrate all of the ships systems, making navigation, communications, radar, weapons, sonar and other parts work together.
The company has already been contracted by Irving Shipbuilding in Halifax to do similar work on the Arctic patrol vessels, said Mr. McClure. He said he believes the experience will give them an advantage when it comes to bidding work to replace those ships and Canada’s 40-year-old Iroquois destroyers.
“We intend to compete,” he said. He noted the company had already participated in industry information sessions held by the government.
More than 10,000 people from government and the Canadian defence industry, as well as foreign government delegations, are expected to attend CANSEC, which is put on yearly by the Canadian Association of Defence and Security Industries.
Over 200 exhibitors, mostly suppliers and producers of defence equipment, are showcasing their wares at CANSEC this year, including two dozen in the marine and naval industries.
French shipbuilding company DCNS has a booth at CANSEC this year.
“We are in Canada in order to find some partners in order to create a team, compete and to [win] this project,” said Olivier Casenave-Péré, representative for DCNS in Canada.
The company designs, builds, and does systems integration for ships. They build a range of vessels, from light patrol ships to nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, said Mr. Casenave-Péré.
“For Canada, for instance, what we could provide is design of [multi-mission frigates]. For the French Navy, we are presently building a series of 11 vessels in two variants. ... Exactly the same as for the Canadian surface combatants,” he said, referring to Canada’s destroyers and frigates.
He noted the last time DCNS bid on a major Canadian project was more than a decade ago when Canada was looking to buy submarines.
The federal government has been clear that it wants to rebuild not only the Canadian Navy but the national shipbuilding industry as well. The industry is prone to cyclical stretches of busy or lean years, depending on the needs of the Navy. This time around, with a decades-long delivery timeframe, government and industry want to break the cycle.
We “do not want to create a situation where it's boom and bust, where we hire a lot of people for a very short period of time, do a large volume of work, and then lay everybody off. That doesn't solve all the industry's problems, and it doesn't solve the long-term problems as far as supplying customers with future needs,” said John Shaw vice president of government relations and business development at Seaspan’s Vancouver Shipyards.
Seaspan and Halifax’s Irving Shipbuilding yard were chosen in October 2011 to build all the large vessels in the procurement package.
Lockheed’s Mr. McClure said long-term sustainability for the industry will come from servicing and revamping the ships through their decades-long lifespan.
Seaspan’s Mr. Shaw added the expertise the industry gets from working on the Canadian ships will help companies attract the international business needed to sustain them.
“The really shining light for us is that as we build these ships for the Canadian government, we improve our productivity, we’re improving our facilities and capabilities so that we're becoming competitive for highly-engineered, very complex, ships. So we should be able to sell that type of ship both locally and internationally. So in addition to building future ships for Canada, we should be able to compete on the international market,” he said.
Mr. Maddison noted three ship projects are now in the project definition phase, which includes final design work before the ships are actually built.
“This is really, really, good news,” he said.
The design for the joint support ships, which bring supplies to deployed Navy vessels and house more extensive medical support, was selected in late April, and will be announced by National Defence soon, Mr. Maddison said.
Assistant Deputy Minister of Materiel John Turner and Mr. Maddison came to the decision after internal and third-party evaluations of the two contending designs.
The two contenders for ship design are BMT Fleet Technology and ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems. BMT is designing a vessel from scratch, while TKMS would modify the design for its existing Berlin Class ships to meet Canadian specifications.
ThyssenKrupp has a booth at CANSEC, but none of its representatives were available for an interview yesterday.
To be replaced are HMCS Preserver and HMCS Protecteur, which are more than 40 years old.
“I’m not aware of which one’s been chosen,” said Mr. Shaw, adding his company would be happy building either.
Irving and Seaspan are investing hundreds in millions of dollars to ready their yards for building.
“The value of investing and building our ships here is that we'll not only re-equip the Navy and the Coast Guard, but remember that these shipyards are gearing up to take these contracts, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in the own infrastructure, at no cost to Canada,” Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose (Edmonton-Spruce Grove, Alta.) told reporters at CANSEC yesterday.
“We're investing approximately $200-million in new facilities and equipment. That includes four new buildings and a large crane at the Vancouver site. New equipment such as machines to cut steel and structural members, automated paneline to weld steel plate together. We're also building a new building in Victoria to support the outfit set to work on the test and trials of the future ships,” explained Mr. Shaw.
He added the company is also reaching out to potential suppliers of ship components and building material, as “a shipyard is only an assembly point.”
“We gather thousands and thousands of components to build a ship, all the way from steel plate and structural members to through to engines, gearboxes, linings, fittings, chairs, navigation equipment, electronics, communications equipment, to paint. Everything from top to bottom that you can imagine that you need,” he said.
For the past year, Seaspan has been searching for industry players who have something to contribute to the ships.
"[We're] laying out the timeframe of when we're going to be building ships and what the requirements are for that. We're also still working with the regional development agencies, identifying what our future needs are, and having them help us to set up business to business meetings,” Mr. Shaw said.
“We’re also doing much like this, trade shows, where we have a number of meetings set up with suppliers, and encouraging them to register on our website and make themselves known to us and what they can supply and what services they can offer,” he explained.
Ultra Electronics, a British company with more than two dozen divisions and a headquarters in Canada, is looking at the opportunities in Canada's shipbuilding, said Leo Gaessler, its vice president of sales and marketing for its Maritime Systems organization.
Ultra already supplies sonar arrays to the Canadian Navy, as well as Australia and the Netherlands, and it has developed a type of air to water communications device that can’t be blocked. Mr. Gaessler said it’s important that Canadian companies are in on procurement.
“The only concern I have is ... that we make sure that we have Canadian suppliers,” he said.
“We are world-class, and if we get the opportunity to support the Canadian defence industry, then that shows well for the rest of the world. One of the easiest ways to export is to make sure that you can actually do the business in Canada,” he added.
The next major crossroads for the shipbuilding program will be for the government to decide which gets built first, the icebreaker or the supply ships. Seaspan's Vancouver Shipyards can only do one project at a time.
“The Protecteur and the Preserver are 43 and 44 years of age, respectively. The Coast Guard’s major icebreaker is I think 44 years of age. We’re both kind of in the same ballpark with two government of Canada fleets which have an urgent operation requirement to be met,” said Mr. Maddison.
He said the scheduling situation has come to a head because of years of delays in the supply ship program. The replacement process has stopped and started for the past two decades. Under a previous attempt there the order was for three ships, with the first to be delivered in 2012. The number was reduced to two in 2009 to keep costs down. The new ships are now expected in 2018.
The Parliamentary Budget Office expects the ships will cost $3.28-billion to produce, and suggested setting aside a total of $4.13-billion. The government has budgeted $2.6-billion for the ships, and has said their specifications would conform to the cost.
“It’s because important decisions for whatever reasons have been deferred for way too long,” he said.
After being re-fit in 2012, the vessels are reaching the end of their lives.
“I’m not sure that it would be in the Canadian interest to re-fit those ships again. In my view, those ships will not be underway at the end of this decade. My desire, as the commander of the Navy, is to avoid it at all possible, or if necessary to minimize a capability gap,” said Mr. Maddison.
Alternating between building each type of vessel, as a sort of compromise, would not be efficient, he added. Seaspan's Mr. Shaw said it's up to the government to decide how to go ahead.
“The government will go through a decision process about which ship they need first, and we’ll happily accommodate that,” he said.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: JESSICA BRUNO
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