USA: Navy Uses New Underwater Support Model for Ship Hull Inspections

The Naval Sea System Command’s Supervisor of Salvage and Diving (SUPSALV) and Surface Maintenance Engineering Planning Program (SURFMEPP) recently implemented a new process that will help to streamline the recording and brokering of work orders for damage found by divers during Navy ship hull inspections.

The new, more efficient process called the Underwater Hull Support Model will be used in conjunction with the Corrosion Assessment Data Entry (CADET) database, which will store all assessments and reports electronically in a centralized location.

“By transitioning from the older process to CADET, the underwater hull maintenance community will be able to easily and quickly enter work requests into CADET’s electronic database if any damage or degradation is found during a ship’s underwater inspection,” said Mark Prioletti, SURFMEPP data manager. “Being able to instantly submit electronic work requests is beneficial to the ship and the fleet maintenance community because the crew will no longer have to provide an engineering assessment of reported damage or input the data, thus streamlining the process.”

Once the reports have been submitted to CADET, Navy port engineers, who broker work items for their ships, see the work orders in their database, assess the condition and then plan the best route for repair.

“By utilizing advancements in electronic transmission and web based databases the transition to CADET provides real time access to the information,” said Bill Reid, director of SUPSALV’s Underwater Ship Husbandry Division. “Having immediate access to this information will help the ship’s maintenance planners organize which repairs take priority and whether or not a ship needs to seek immediate repair or deferral of less critical repairs to dry-docking.”

The new process will also help to increase accountability.

“Once entered, a work item record is tracked through every step to completion so there’s accountability for the decisions being made at every step,” said Reid.

SUPSALV is responsible for all aspects of ocean engineering, including salvage, in-water ship repair, contracting, towing, diving safety, and equipment maintenance and procurement in the U.S. Navy. SURFMEPP provides centralized Surface Ship lifecycle maintenance engineering, class management and modernization planning, and management of maintenance strategies.

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Subsea World News Staff , April 27, 2012