NNSY'S CARRIER TEAM ONE

Past, Present, and Future: Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s Carrier Team One Leadership Aligns the Old with “Timeline Tour” at February Event

Carrier Team One (CT1) is a knowledge sharing and improvement program that connects people across the carrier (CVN) community to help solve and improve maintenance related issues. Whether looking for specific information and solutions, or to improve a process, CT1 has allowed people to ask questions, improve upon the current practices, and share proven practices back to the community.

Keeping everyone aligned on moving forward and reiterating the team’s purpose while learning from the past across the national expanse of the carrier maintenance professional community was a top priority for Norfolk Naval Shipyard’s (NNSY) CT1 leadership members Program Director Kelly Souders and Assistant Process Master Kendra Dildy. Thus, they developed a way to meet this priority with a CT1 “Timeline Tour” at February's Winter Event in celebration of 25 years of CT1 orchestrating the learning to improve carrier availabilities.

The Winter Community Event is an annual CT1 conference where representatives from our shipyards, engineering centers, contractors, ship’s force and outside experts come together for three days of keynotes by admirals, influential leaders, and knowledge management experts. With a typical attendance of 250 to 300 people, the event conducts different workshops and panels on how to meet Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) goals for on time

delivery of ships. Traditionally held on the West Coast, this year the program’s leadership decided to hold it in Maryland, allowing more participants from the Hampton Roads region, District of Columbia, and other East Coast locations to attend. This year’s convention title was “Building for Tomorrow: Linking Past, Present and Future for Continued CT1 Success.”

Souders, Dildy, and CT1 leaders strived to meet several goals when they planned this year’s convention. The goals were to strengthen CT1 strategy alignment to Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) priorities; expand the partnerships across the CVN Maintenance Community; leverage human creative capacity with digital tools to enhance innovation; brand the experience for those new to CT1; and recognize historic CT1 successes and methods in a way that excites both old and new. And, thus, the idea of the CT1 Timeline Tour museum was born.

The tour was intentionally scheduled after keynote addresses on day one of the event, and laid out the theme of the convention— the past, the present, and the future. As Souders explained it, the tour was designed to enable the attendees to connect CT1’s past and present with the initiatives of the future as they go through each session of the convention.

To add to the visuals of the historical installation, Dildy and Souders also obtained historical artifacts from the program’s past STORY BY HANNAH BONDOC • PUBLIC AFFAIRS SPECIALIST I PHOTOS BY GREG BOYD • NNSY VIDEOGRAPHER

LEFT: On average The Carrier Team One (CT1) Winter Community Event has 250 to 300 people in attendance. Carrier Team One (CT1) is a program that has been connecting people within the NNSY carrier community to discuss and assist on a variety of carrier related issues; ABOVE: Carrier Team One’s (CT1) Program Director Kelly Souders addresses attendees at the CT1 Winter Community Event; BELOW: With the help of NNSY Historian Marcus Robbins, the Timeline Tour showcasing the history of the group included Carrier Team One (CT1) artifacts and informational displays that attendees could read to learn more about CT1’s past.

with the help of NNSY Historian Marcus Robbins. Creatively producing a true multi-media approach, the tour was much more than a walk down memory lane. As Dildy said, “By keeping people captivated, they will not get tired and will learn something,”

“We felt like we had to revisit the past,” Souders added, “because we needed to not only prove our program’s validity and value to the new generations, but also show what it’s done for the maintenance community.”

Spanning over 70 years, the historical display provided an overview for where the program is presently and its goals for the future by tying them to real world events and the way the Navy impacts them. “This tour was meant to showcase the successes and failures of our predecessors,” Souders explained. “This made everything easier for people to remember.”

Most importantly, the “Timeline Tour” served as a documented testament of the many ways that CT1 has connected various organizations in a team approach to improving carrier availabilities. “The only reason why we’ve succeeded is because of senior leadership’s buy-in and the strength of our partnerships across the organization—not just at a senior leadership level, but also throughout the workforce,” said Souders. As this year is only the beta test of the tour, the team hopes to continue using it in the future to help train its current employees and future generations.