Today it is much simpler, though not necessarily easier, to get overhaul and repair work done in navy yards than it was during the more leisurely times of peace, but questions concerning how to get jobs done, who to see about jobs, the relationship the ship’s personnel to the navy yard personnel, and how to cope with the paper work incident to yard repair and overhaul are questions which trouble some older officers and envelop in a fog of confusion many inexperienced engineers and engineering division officers. Availabilities are so far apart and are so brief in time that only by responsible officers being well acquainted with the Navy yard methods and procedures can such availabilities give the maximum service to ships. To this end it might be helpful if we set down briefly a few explanatory remarks on how to make friends, influence people, and get work done in navy yards.
It should be apparent that the ship that will get off to the best start upon entering a Navy yard is that ship which has done as much of the preliminary work as possible Preparatory to entrance. The ship should enter the yard with a clear idea of how much time will be available to it, what yard services it will require, what work it wants none, what part of this work is clearly beyond the capabilities of the ship’s force, and the relative urgency of prospective job orders.
For the first item the ship is dependent upon information from higher authority and there isn’t much the ship can do about it, but no diligence should be spared to get this information as far in advance as possible. With it the planning can be much more definite and helpful. For the second item, the ship should know whether it will need steam, water, electricity, or air upon mooring. If it is certain of the services it will require, the yard officials can start the ball rolling to get them almost before the lines have been made fast. The failure to promptly procure necessary yard services frequently holds up the decommissioning of service machinery with a resulting delay in commencing repair work.
Probably the most important in the list of preparatory measures is to know precisely what work needs to be done. To care for this each ship should keep an up-to-date file of current ship’s maintenance projects, e.g., as machinery requires overhaul and repair, as Bureau of Ships letters come through authorizing or directing the accomplishment of alterations, etc., these jobs should be entered in a current file. Complete data should be assembled and this data compiled in the form of job orders. Sketches should be made wherever possible. A form for the compilation of such data is illustrated in Fig. 1. If this data sheet is complete it will form a ready reference for the ship’s officer of all pertinent data for any particular piece of work. He can go to the arrival conference with sufficient ready information to discuss the work intelligently with the yard planners, and he has for them the necessary information to enable them to expedite their work. Good information immediately available impresses the yard people with the competency of the ship’s officers and frequently procures their willingness to undertake work which under more doubtful conditions might be denied.
Knowing what work a ship needs to have done, it should be classified into two general groups, work which the ship is capable of doing alone or with some assistance from the navy yard and work which is clearly beyond the capabilities of the ship’s force. It is this latter which will have to be fought for at the arrival conference. Each of these two general classifications should be broken down into three others according to the relative urgency of the various jobs. It is suggested that the classification used in Navy Regulations be used with the insertion of one additional group, “Routine.” Thus the three available classifications will be, “Urgent,” “Routine,” and “Desirable.” Don’t let the word “Urgent” lose its meaning from over-exercise. A “Desirable” item for the manufacture of coffee lockers classified as “Urgent” along with items such as the renewal of all tubes in the first pass of the superheater of No. 1 Boiler certainly reflects on the judgment of the classifying officer. And don’t think that such an example as the above is farfetched! It is not, as any repair officer will gloomily tell you.
Assume then, that the ship arrives in the yard having accomplished the spade work suggested above. Shortly after the ship is moored the yard planners, estimators, and ship superintendents will come aboard for the arrival conference. The number of these people and the degree of formality of the conference will vary somewhat with the size of the ship, but basically there will be little difference.
The yard personnel will be a mixture of naval officers and civilians. They are usually experts in their line and as such are entitled to courtesy and respect. At this point it is well to remember that soft soap is a better lubricant than sand. Like all men, they are susceptible to evidence of co-operation and understanding, and it is well for the ship’s officers to make their intentions apparent early in the game.
Repair
........ 1 ............. Bu. Cog. | Index Subject | Index No. | Des. | Routine | Urgent | |
Location | Date Listed | Title | Ships Force | Repair Ship | Navy Yd. |
Work Required—Write as a Job Order (Amplifying Reasons May Be Given)
Status of Material | Applicable Blue Prints |
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Ships Request File No. Dated | | Ships Item No. | Forces Afloat | | Mat. Ins. | Qtr. | B&S# | |||
Date Start | % Comp. Date jj Entd. in Mach. History |
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Date Completed | Man Hours to Compl. || Inspected | —Head of Department |
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Authorizing Reference J Dated | Cost Est. By | Cost Estim. | Cost Act. | Job Order § |
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fig. 1
The ship’s officer should go to the conference equipped with his previously prepared data. It is a good idea also to have at hand copies of pertinent letters and blueprints and also a notebook in which to jot down names, telephone numbers, shop numbers, job assignments, etc. He should add to this information from time to time. He will find such information invaluable during his stay in the yard.
The arrival conference will talk over the ship’s proposed job orders and decide which ones it will accomplish and which ones it will reject. Some compromise will undoubtedly be necessary. If the yard refuses to undertake a job which the ships regards as really important, and a reasonable amount of argument fails to shake them, that job should be marked for appeal later to the ship’s officer’s immediate superior who will take the matter up with higher authority in the Planning Office ashore. In addition to accepting or rejecting a ships’ job orders the yard will at the arrival conference assign the various accepted jobs to shops and departments. The ship’s officer should note who is made responsible for these jobs and what shop or department will perform the work.
It may seem strange to recommend honesty and straight dealing at these conferences but sad experience has demonstrated that these virtues do not always obtain. Such defections stem from a natural desire on the part of the ship’s officer to get as much for his ship as possible and frequently lead to exaggeration concerning a job’s urgency, or necessity. Yards are busy places nowadays. Ships must not use vital machines and skilled labor for items which they can get along without. And they should definitely not make a practice of getting jobs done “cumshaw.” Such tactics make planning by the yard extremely difficult; not only may vital work on some other vessel be held up nut one of the subject ship’s really “Urgent” jobs may be neglected because the man or machine required for it is fiddling with one of its unnecessary or “cumshaw” jobs.
When the arrival conference has assessed the ship’s needs and estimated the time retired, the availability of materials, and the labor involved, a list of the accepted job orders is made up and the yard personnel retire to the beach to start the work. Some Jobs will probably be started at once without waiting for the issuance of written job orders, but most jobs as a rule will await a formal order. A job order as written up is a brief the work to be performed. Interested departments, shops, yard personnel, and the ship get copies. A sample job order is given in Fig. 2 and is fairly typical of those used in all yards.
U.S.S. BUNKER HILL
8 February, 1944
SAMPLE COPY OF NAVY YARD APPROVED JOB ORDER
3127-12-A-330-0463/3319 Op. 4805 (Hanson) BUNKER HILL Emergency Feed Pump Manifold, Suction Valves, X38, X31, X72, 02.
Remove Bonnets from (4) 4# emergency feed pump suction manifold. Valves to be del. to X31 for modification of stems and discs. X31 to machine existing stems and discs to modify valves from a stop valve to a stop check, valve. Upon completion X38 reinstall bonnets in valves. Auth: CV9 Class/S48-2(640-512) of 17 July 43.
(Typed on 8/13/43)
FIG. 2
The first series of letters and numbers are significant chiefly to the navy yard for purposes of correct filing, designation of original responsibility (e.g. contractors or government) and so on. Op. (operation) 4805 is the yard serial designation for the particular job briefed in the order. The ship should use this number as the identifying reference when discussing the job with the navy yard. (Hanson) is the name of the person responsible for the job. Then comes the name of the ship, the job title, and a series of letter number combinations representing the yard shops that will participate in the work. Commencing with the fifth line the work to be done is briefed. Finally, the authority for the work is listed.
Usually by the day following the arrival conference the ship will have received a copy of each job order and the various job bosses will start arriving at the ship to see the ship’s officers about the various items of work. They should be afforded every reasonable convenience in order that no time shall be wasted. Division officers should keep themselves readily available to show the location of work for which they are responsible. In addition, the job bosses should be made acquainted with the responsible station officers, C.P.O.’s, and leading P.O.’s and these latter should be instructed to follow the work closely and offer such assistance as they can. It is well to definitely assign a petty officer to each job if practicable. He can help as necessary and will get instruction that will benefit him and the ship later on. He will also be in a position to inform the responsible officer at once should there be any hang-up in the progress of the work. Sometimes the lack of a certain tool or the failure of a pipe fitter to arrive will hold up work for many hours before knowledge of the delay gets to the right party who can take care of the trouble. Such trouble as this very frequently occurs on the night shifts when supervision is generally somewhat inadequate. In this connection, observing officers soon notice that very often the amount of work accomplished by yard workmen is in direct proportion to the amount of time they are under observation.
During this starting period the ship’s officer should make sure that all properly authorized jobs get started. The time of starting work and the daily progress on each job should be noted on a progress chart and corrections made daily. Time is of the essence and things forgotten are things undone when the ship leaves the yard.
If the ship’s officer has a good idea of the working organization of the navy yard he will have little trouble in getting in touch with the right people to get work expedited and to rectify minor differences. Usually a gang of workers will have one of their number designated as being in immediate charge of a project. This man may be the only skilled man assigned to the job. A “snapper” will have one to several gangs working for him. It is his job to expedite the work. He sees that men are on the job, that special tools are there, that pipe fitters, ship fitters, and machinists are on the job when needed and that they arrive in the proper sequence. If the officer responsible for a job observes some minor trouble or hang-up, a diplomatic word to the “snapper” will usually get results. Over the “snappers” are yard “leading men.” These men undertake to allocate men and tools for certain kinds of jobs for which they have special skills. In a general way they guide the manner of doing the job. Their job is largely executive in nature with the planning and guiding being done close to the job because they are skilled men with “knowhow.” The ship’s officer should keep in touch with these men and know how to locate them quickly.
The leading men work under a ship superintendent. This man may be a civilian or a naval officer from C.P.O. to commander. He has charge of the work as a whole on the ship. If the ship is a large one he will spend most of his time with it. If it is a small one he may have several others to watch over. The ship superintendent is a liaison officer between the Navy ashore and the ship being over-hauled or repaired. Become his friend. Be liberal with your courtesy and your coffee. Not infrequently he will have to decide whether to do an important job on a ship or delay it in order to do a similar one somewhere else. In such a case the ship’s officer should be certain that his case will get the most generous consideration.
Assisting the yard supervisory personnel mentioned above will be certain others of more or less importance. Such a man is the “outside machinist,” an expert machinist whose job is to give assistance and advice on a particular job when his superiors so direct him.
This then is the organizational setup for the accomplishment of repair or overhaul or alteration jobs on ships assigned yard availabilities. Most of the yard supervisory personnel are desirous of helping the ship as much as they can. A few here, as anywhere else are crusty individuals who take special handling. They all have their worries about labor, materials, time, etc. Many of them work long hours beyond the point where overtime pay ceases to be an incentive, and it will not help their enthusiasm if they hear too many remarks about how easy life is for them compared with the ship’s officer’s rugged duty in the war zone.
In dealing with these supervisory personnel, officers should treat them as they would similar people among their ship’s company. Shipboard officers should not by-pass the ship superintendent or the leading men. And if it is something within their province they should try not to go over their heads. In general the ship’s officer should not try to deal directly with the yard workmen. He should work through their recognized bosses.