The Achieving Service Life Program

One of the most challenging aspects of fleet husbandry today for any Government ship owner is the proper assessment of where to spend limited maintenance resources to keep ships mission ready and safe for the personnel who sail them as well as for the environment in which they operate. Budgets are becoming more and more constrained, personnel have less time to spread their attention over all the systems that comprise the total ship system and operating tempos are increasing. As a result, it is attractive to identify and implement processes, which facilitate the ability to focus attention where it is most needed and where it will provide the best return on investment. The Naval Sea Systems Command and the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS) have recently partnered in a “Achieving Service Life Program” for the US Navy which will introduce a structured, third-party periodic condition assessment process for selected systems on a number of classes of Navy ships to aid the Navy in identifying where maintenance action is most needed on these classes and provide the means whereby the continuing health of these systems may be tracked and projections made for future planning of work. The intent of this paper is to describe the background, intent, structure, and preliminary results of this program.