Industry Interview: Vigor Shipyards
CGF 2011 Volume: 3 Issue: 6 (December)
Kegley is executive in charge of Vigor’s Shipyards division, with responsibility for a range of government and multi-ship contracts including Vigor’s extensive portfolio of Coast Guard and Navy repair and modernization projects.
Q: Can you give us a little background on Vigor Industrial and Vigor Shipyards?
A: Vigor Shipyards is one of the largest providers of Coast Guard repair and modernization services in the nation, yet it’s a name many outside our Pacific Northwest region are just now starting to hear. But we’re really not a best-kept secret. Our companies and our yards have provided leading ship repair, shipbuilding and other maritime services throughout the Pacific Northwest for nearly a century.
We’re proud of our long history serving the Coast Guard and Navy through companies like Todd Pacific Shipyards, which we acquired in 2011, and the World War II-era Kaiser Shipyards. Today, we maintain a good portion of the red, white and black hull fleet for the Coast Guard. We work on up to three of the Navy’s 11 active aircraft carriers at any given time, plus destroyers and other vessels. We work in Seattle, Everett, Bremerton and Portland, executing both single-project and multi-ship/multi-option (MSMO) contracts. In fact, Vigor Shipyards is the Vigor Industrial subsidiary which specializes in Coast Guard and Navy work. We’re working to enhance homeland security, creating innovative designs and plans to build the offshore patrol cutter.
Q: How do Vigor companies leverage this experience to support the U.S. Coast Guard?
A: Our decades of Coast Guard collaboration mean that for complex sustainment programs, the government can rely on our expertise to help identify, plan, execute and document fleet maintenance. We work closely with the government to deliver the right maintenance at the right time, making best use of maintenance dollars to achieve readiness objectives. We do this through multi-year maintenance contracts for Polar class icebreakers, for the Coast Guard’s only operational icebreaker USCGC Healy and for the Navy’s CVNs, DDGs and FFGs.
Our Coast Guard-dedicated teams, on the piers and in our administrative ranks, know these large vessels inside and out. We’re executing $56 million in maintenance and modernization efforts aboard Polar Star to return it to service in 2013. We also meet routine and emergent maintenance requirements for the remainder of the USCG fleet, including national security cutters, the legacy high and medium endurance cutters, and the buoy tender fleet. From 1985 to 1992, our Seattle yard revitalized the WHEC 378 Hamilton class through a $55 million-pervessel overhaul that included engineering, habitability, electronics and combat system upgrades.
We are combining our Coast Guard expertise with our century of competitive shipbuilding to smartly plan for and, we believe, ultimately execute the largest acquisition program in Coast Guard history—the offshore patrol cutter design-build project.
Q: What projects are currently being worked on and for what customers?
A: Economic challenges notwithstanding, we believe this is a great time to be building ships and to be upgrading and improving them. In addition to renovating the heavy icebreaker Polar Star and work already done for Polar Sea, we stand ready to assist should a decision be made to return Sea to active service. We recently provided emergency repairs to the Alert. Additionally, we are teaming with other Coast Guard and maritime experts to design and build an innovative, cost-effective solution for the offshore patrol cutter program.
For the U.S. Navy, we continue to maintain our nation’s active aircraft carriers in Bremerton and in Everett. We’re one of only three firms in the country with MSMO contracts to be part of the team repairing these major national assets.
Although transportation by sea is already one of the most fuel-efficient ways to move goods, our companies are hard at work making efficiency, environmental and safety upgrades for a wide range of vessels, from fishing boats and trawlers to cargo ships to Arctic drilling platforms. We’re also working in alternative energy fields, building and getting ready to launch a prototype wave-energy platform and even fabricating methane-gas conversion skids that turn landfill waste gas into electricity. In short, for 2012, we’re looking at both cutting edge and cutting steel.
Q: What are some of the biggest lessons you have learned in military acquisitions and/or Coast Guard acquisitions?
A: We know that affordability is very important to the Coast Guard, particularly in the current budget climate. At the same time, we know the Coast Guard is a unique customer, with operational and support requirements that differ substantially from the U.S. Navy and foreign militaries.
Day in and day out, the Coast Guard gets the job done for the American people, under the most difficult conditions, on a very lean budget. We know that to support them, we have to perform at the same level. Our people know—and constantly remind me—that the Coast Guard is unique. The people there from operations to acquisition are practical. Real-world. Always on. Always working. We’ve learned that working with the Coast Guard takes the same kind of company.
We know it’s crucial that everyone from our execs to our estimators to our craftspeople know Coast Guard vessels inside and out. Long before I took on the job I have today, I did icebreaker maintenance and worked the WHEC 378 FRAM program, riding along for six months as a warranty engineer on USCGC Mellon. Vigor also has a number of former Coast Guard senior officers and senior enlisted sailors and engineers as advisers who translate real-world Coast Guard needs into every project we do.We know that precise documentation is as important as precision metalwork. In short, we’ve learned two words say it all when working with the Coast Guard, whether at sea or with the Acquisitions Directorate: experience matters. ♦