THIRD
SUMMIT HELD APRIL 15 BY ANNA TAYLOR • PUBLIC AFFAIRS SPECIALIST PHOTOS BY SHAYNE HENSLEY • NNSY PHOTOGRAPHER
Robert Brinkac, Emergency Management Planning Division Head, gives a Code 1100 status update. Department leaders gathered at the Dry Dock Club April 15 for the third Core Competency Summit, a day-long conference built around one focus area of the shipyard’s performance improvement plan. The purpose of the summit was to continue the interdepartmental learning and sharing of best practices in order to facilitate accelerated employee development through the Core Competency Pipelines. According to Mike Zydron, Engineering and Planning Department Head (Code 200), the shipyard is hiring and onboarding new employees at the highest rate in 30 years. “We achieved our fiscal 2015 hiring goal and are on track to achieve our fiscal 2016 hiring goal, which will result in a total end strength of more than 10,600 employees,” said Zydron. “By the end of fiscal 2016, we will have hired more than 5,000 new employees during the last five years.” During the summit, the development of shipyard workers at all levels was the emphasis of each presentation. Representatives from shops and codes across the shipyard attended the summit and presented updates from their respective organizations. “Our leads in each area are focused on ensuring personnel are enrolled in, and progressing through, assigned core competency pipelines, and that expectations are clear,” said Zydron. “Measuring progress and closing the gaps between the available workforce at the full performance level and near-term workload demand is also crucial.” Another priority addressed during the summit was the importance of developing and executing production and support code supervision following the same Core Competency methodology.
Since the last summit in early December 2015, nearly all fiscal 2015 actions across each code have been completed. Fiscal 2016 performance improvement plan actions are on track, according to Zydron, and most should be complete before the target date. Ultimately, the goal is to achieve a 30 percent reduction in the gap between required workforce capacity and the current workload demand by the end of this fiscal year. “Employee development acceleration, in parallel with execution efficiency improvement, is the key to our success as America’s Shipyard,” said Zydron. “The sense of urgency is high because these Core Competencies and Pipelines are vital in order for us to be able to execute our unprecedented and highly complex workload.”
MAY 2016 • SERVICE TO THE FLEET • 7