ESTABLISHING CONTINUED SUCCESS FOR THE ANZAC CLASS FRIGATE UPGRADE PROGRAM

SAMUEL FORDE FROM BAE SYSTEMS AUSTRALIA EXPLAINS HOW CAPTURING LESSONS LEARNT AND ESTABLISHING EXACTLY WHAT SUCCESS LOOKS LIKE PUT THE PROGRAM IN A GOOD POSITION TO SEE CONTINUED SUCCESS AND ACHIEVEMENT MOVING FORWARD.

The Anzac Mid-life Capability Assurance Program (AMCAP) is the major sustainment activity currently underway on the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) Anzac Class frigate fleet. The program is running under the Warship Asset Management Agreement (WAMA) alliance consisting of the Commonwealth and Industry participants BAE Systems, Naval Ship Management (NSM) and SAAB systems.

The program sees the upgrade of the 8 Anzac Class frigates over a period of 5 years, with the addition of major capability improvements. The package of work is inclusive of the implementation of an advanced long range air surveillance capability housed in a newly designed and manufactured aft mast, an updated communications suite, a number of platform system modernisations to address obsolescence and capacity issues and a significant maintenance package.

The program commenced in 2017 with the First of Class (FOC) ship HMAS Arunta completed and returned to operational service in Q3 2019. A FOC Post Activity Conference (PAC) was held to capture lessons learnt and de-brief the project team. During the PAC there was general acknowledgement that a significant amount of work had been achieved with the known technical and time based challenges associated with a FOC project.

Following the completion of the first ship, the project team knew that – as with any project – there was a unique opportunity to capture lessons learnt and ensure they were continually improving and striving for further excellence. It was clear that significant action was required to better understand what success looked like for the complete AMCAP program over the further 5 year period. Once understood it would take transformational change in the form of a delivery strategy to ensure that the programme would see increased performance, leading to enduring success and satisfaction moving forward.

AMCAP EXECUTION STRATEGY WORKSHOP

The AMCAP Execution strategy workshop was held in November 2019 with the key objective of developing an execution strategy that would set the program up for success. The workshop was a day event and involved 30 stakeholders from across the WAMA Alliance and enterprise. The underlying theme of the workshop was collaboration, creative thinking and removal of all perceived constraints. The stakeholders were split into five working groups and set a number of activities, including the analysis of project practises, which were subsequently summarised at workshop level.

Key themes were established around preplanning and scope control with suggestions made as to how we might increase performance in those areas. The key outcome of the workshop was the establishment of a roadmap for program execution, delivery and subsequent success. This took the form of 14 agreed critical milestones which would clearly represent the journey of the project and ensure progressive achievement. The Workshop was concluded with a summary of the agreed outcomes that were then developed into a briefing pack for presentation and endorsement from the Anzac enterprise executives.

TRANSFORMATIONAL CHANGE AND PROJECT SUCCESS

There is much deliberation between academics and practitioners on what constitutes project success. Many will lean on measures associated with the ‘iron triangle’ of cost, schedule and quality to determine success, however others will favour customer satisfaction or the delivery of business objectives.

HMAS Warramunga – on the BAE Systems, Henderson turn table prior to entering the ship lift.

(Source: BAE Systems Australia)

For AMCAP the execution workshop was critical in establishing exactly what success looked like and subsequently developing a strategy to facilitate achievement. With the implementation of the AMCAP execution strategy on the 3rd Ship in the program HMAS Warramunga the key success factors were achieved. HMAS Warramunga was undocked in an advanced material state with over 370,000 hours of work completed on the hardstand.

When compared to the previous AMCAP ships she realised a 15% increase in schedule performance and an increased level of system maturity. During the ships undocking evolution, the team were satisfied, and all agreed that the project team had been successful in achieving significant improvements.

This was echoed in the following weeks to come through customer, end user (Royal Australian Navy) and alliance leadership acknowledgements of success. The step change in project execution on HMAS Warramunga has set the baseline for project performance moving forward. With the AMCAP execution strategy in full swing the program is in a good position to see continued success and achievement moving forward.

Author: Samuel Forde has been a Project Manager with BAE Systems Australia for the past three years. Prior to this position Sam headed up the BAE Systems test and commissioning team, with a key focus of this role aligned to project delivery.