VSRA Member Jo-Kell Is Prepared for Disaster - Are You?
March 12, 2007
By TOM SHEAN, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 11, 2007
Almost a year ago, the CEO of Jo-Kell Inc. in Chesapeake began wrestling with an issue that many small businesses had ignored. Suzy Kelly wondered how many of the company's 57 employees would show up for work if a flu pandemic struck Hampton Roads. Public health agencies had predicted that a global outbreak of a new, highly contagious strain of flu virus eventually would hit the United States. In addition to inflicting widespread illness and death, the pandemic, they warned, would disrupt business activity.
As much as 40 percent of the nation's work force might be absent during a pandemic because employees would be sick, frightened or caring for family members, the Labor Department's Occupational Safety and Health Administration has cautioned.
Kelly, whose company distributes electrical equipment for shipboard and industrial use, decided last spring that Jo-Kell employees had to take responsibility for their own welfare in that sort of crisis. She figured that they were more likely to come to work if their families weren't scrambling to find food, water and other necessities.
In an e-mail to employees in April, she recommended that they store at least two weeks of drinking water at home in case of an emergency. In another e-mail, she suggested types of food that they should stockpile. She also recommended that employees set aside medications, first-aid supplies and copies of important personal documents.
To date, the reaction from employees has been favorable, but Kelly wants to know whether they have acted on her advice. She said she plans to survey employees in April on the level of their participation in the preparedness effort.
Rather than dwell on the threat that a pandemic poses per se, Jo-Kell's chief executive officer cast her recommendations as steps to take for a hurricane or other emergency. "The concept of a pandemic," she conceded, "doesn't resonate with people. The reality of what could happen is too abstract."
Federal regulators have been monitoring industries considered essential to the economy and public safety, including banks, electric utilities and telecommunications providers, for their preparations.
Karen L. Cole, co-president of a Mechanicsville consulting firm that provides business-continuity and disaster-recovery advice, said large corporations have their own teams of planners working full-time on possible disruptions, including the threat of a pandemic. "They already have their plans in place," she said.
One of these is USAA, the financial services organization that has a call center and regional office in Norfolk. The organization, which provides auto and homeowners insurance to members of the military, their families and military retirees, started planning for a pandemic early last year, said Lynn McChristian, a spokeswoman. A team at USAA meets monthly to update the plan, she said.
Many smaller companies, however, have yet to address the impact that a pandemic could have on their employees and operations. In Hampton Roads, small businesses "are starting to get engaged, but it's slow," said Erin Sutton, an emergency planner at the Virginia Beach Department of Public Health. In February, a health department workshop on planning for disruptions from a pandemic attracted about 60 representatives from local businesses and nonprofit organizations. The $3,000 cost of the event was financed with money from the federal Department of Health and Human Services.
After several news reports in 2005 and 2006 about the threat of a flu pandemic, some business owners in the region expressed skepticism about the repeated warnings, Sutton said. They've insisted that "it's not going to happen this year."
The level of preparation that Kelly conducted at Jo-Kell is unusual. Among small business owners and managers in the region, "she's definitely in the minority," Sutton noted.
What prompted her to encourage preparations by employees, Kelly said, was concern about their welfare and a commitment to planning.
"We don't like things to creep up on us," she said at Jo-Kell's main office and warehouse in Greenbrier Industrial Park. The company also has facilities in Richmond and Jacksonville, Fla.
Kelly, who described her planning efforts at the Virginia Beach Department of Public Health workshop last month, urged business owners and managers to be financially prepared for a prolonged downturn in sales if a pandemic struck. But predicting the broad economic impact may be impossible, she said afterward.
"You can only do so much," Kelly said. "I don't know how you can plan for not having any commerce."
Because many companies could be hobbled by high rates of absenteeism, experts say managers must decide ahead of time which of their operations are essential and which can be shut down. Employers also must designate back up employees to make decisions in case managers are unavailable.
Some businesses will be especially vulnerable to a drop in sales because consumers probably won't risk exposure to the flu by congregating in public spaces or shopping for items that they don't need immediately.
"It's less likely that you'll buy that pair of jeans or get your hair done" during a pandemic, said consultant Cole, who previously worked on business continuity issues for the financial services company Capital One Financial Corp.
For small companies, preparation for a pandemic is crucial, said Cole, because they will have to work harder than their larger rivals. "A customer of a small business is likely to switch to a large company because they think that a larger one is better prepared to keep its doors open," she said.
Her message to business owners and managers is that they shouldn't concentrate on making money during a pandemic. Their focus, she said, has to be on keeping the doors open.
That could be a challenge for companies that maintain lean inventories and depend on frequent deliveries of raw materials or finished goods. Manufacturers, trucking companies and contractors will likely have their own problems with absent workers and be forced to scale back operations.
As part of its emergency plan, 30-year-old Jo-Kell distributed employees' home phone numbers, cell phone numbers and e-mail addresses as a way for them to stay in touch. Several employees, according to the company's disaster plan, would work from home via the Internet during a pandemic.
A surge in the number of people telecommuting during a pandemic, however, could strain parts of the nation's communications system. Schools, too, would turn to the Internet for instructing students at home, Sutton said. Whether the Internet would be overloaded by millions of additional people working from home "is an open, unanswered question," she said.
Cole, the consultant, said she was more optimistic about the capacity of the Internet. Any strains on the system, she said, probably would show up in metropolitan areas that have large concentrations of white-collar workers, who would be more likely to use computers for working at home.
However, businesses that expect their employees for the first time to work from home via the Internet can't assume that workers can learn to do it once an emergency strikes, Cole said. Employees, she said, have to be trained to do that well in advance.
Before Kelly began working on her employees' preparation for a pandemic, she sought support from Jo-Kell's managers. Without that backing, "I would have been spinning my wheels," the CEO said. And rather than dropping an entire emergency plan onto employees, she broke it into pieces that were distributed to them every two weeks.
Later this month the company will distribute to its workers a 14-page "Employee Disaster Preparedness Guide" that consolidates the advice in Kelly's messages.
Cole acknowledged that many small companies can gather the needed information on their own from government agency Web sites and other sources. However, small business owners sometimes feel overwhelmed when trying to plan for an emergency such as a pandemic.
"You've got to do it in manageable chunks," Cole suggested.
- Reach Tom Shean at (757) 446-2379 or tom.shean@pilotonline.com.
Auxillary System Proposes Use of Navy Training Courses
March 09, 2007
The following article was published in the latest Defense News.
Ship Repair Yards Want U.S. Navy Training
Civilian ship repair yards have traditionally hired a lot of former U.S. Navy sailors who worked in “the trades” — machinist’s mates, enginemen, hull maintenance technicians and others — while on active duty.
But the crop is thinning. The Navy is a lot smaller than it was 10 or 20 years ago. Fewer trades-type sailors have been needed since the Navy began outsourcing more of its maintenance work to civilian yards following implementation of its Fleet Response Plan.
It’s sort of a Catch-22: The hand that fed talent to the civilian yards has cut the flow — yet it’s asking more of those yards every day.
A small Norfolk, Va., repair contractor that maintains Navy ships has a novel idea: Share the trades-training correspondence courses the Navy owns with the civilian firms that make the Navy go.
Training isn’t a problem for the biggest repair firms. Giants like Northrop Grumman Newport News and BAE Systems have in-house or collaborative apprenticeship programs that generate highly skilled tradesmen, such as welders. BAE Norfolk Ship Repair has only recently done that, and that is because natural attrition is taking its toll.
“We’ve started an apprentice program because we’re concerned,” said Bill Clifford, president of BAE Norfolk Ship Repair, whose 900 production workers perform hull, mechanical and electrical work on Navy ships. “We have an aging work force. And so we need to worry about filling the ranks as the older folks retire.”
But firms with 50 workers can’t afford to take part in formal, scheduled training programs.
“Most smaller companies can’t send three people to training next week because you don’t know what’s coming next week,” said Buck Hodges, a project manager for Auxiliary Systems of Norfolk. “We’re a subcontractor for the larger companies. When they call, you’re expected to be able to perform.”
With access to Navy correspondence courses, “you have more flexibility” in training, he said.
Nonresident, unclassified Navy correspondence courses are in the public domain and are available from a variety of sources, said Ed Barker, spokesman for Naval Education and Training Command. But testing and grading services are only available to the Navy’s active-duty sailors, reservists, retirees and certain contractors.
Barker said it remains to be seen whether approval for testing and grading might be granted for civilians who work on Navy ships.
Hodges, a retired Army colonel, employs former sailors at the company, which works on marine water treatment systems and heat exchangers and provides machining, welding and fabrication services.
But the talent pool is shrinking. In the past five years alone, for example, the machinist’s mate rating has shrunk from 7,952 to 7,460. The Navy has about 300 fewer gas turbine system technician (mechanical) sailors, and 300 fewer electrical specialists in that rating.
Those numbers will continue to shrink as the new Littoral Combat Ship comes on line; their crews will include only eight “hybrid” sailors in the engineering ratings.
Those ratings continue to merge. Navy officials plan to merge the remaining nine ratings into three, diluting the amount of time sailors will spend on specific skills in those combined ratings.
“They don’t receive the in-depth training that we used to have,” said George Murray, the senior engineering technical representative for Auxiliary Systems and a retired master chief machinist’s mate. “Twenty years ago, they operated the pumps and they repaired the pumps. Nowadays, they operate the pumps and when the pumps break, they ship ‘em downtown or to the shipyard to be overhauled, brought back and reinstalled. A lot of that work’s being farmed out to us. I mean, I’m not complaining.”
Getting full access to Navy correspondence courses is not a be-all, end-all solution, but it will help, Hodges said.
“I just see it as another piece of the puzzle,” he said. But by doing that, “you’re using what’s already been developed. And you’re doing it the Navy way.” •
Lyon Shipyard to Buy Norfolk Shiprepair & Dyrdock
March 08, 2007
By JON W. GLASS, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 7, 2007 | Last updated 8:50 PM Mar. 6
NORFOLK - Looking for more space, Lyon Shipyard Inc. plans to buy out neighboring Norfolk Shiprepair & Drydock Co.
The two repair yards, side by side on the Elizabeth River's Eastern Branch, have signed a sales contract but have not yet closed on the deal, said Tom Ackiss, Lyon's vice president, on Tuesday.
The purchase, he said, is pending completion of a "due diligence" review of environmental, financial, legal and other aspects of the deal.
"It appears we're going to be able to reach a mutually agreeable conclusion," Ackiss said.
The deal involves Lyon buying out Norfolk Shiprepair's assets, he said, which include two marine railway docks, a pier, machinery and a cluster of buildings on the approximately 11-acre property. The two yards front the river near the foot of the Campostella Bridge on the northwest side.
"It's a good fit for us, and a logical thing," Ackiss said. "It gives us a little more elbow room to work and more room dockside."
Clay McNutt, a principal with Norfolk Shiprepair, was traveling Tuesday and could not be reached for comment. His father, Edmund "Buddy" McNutt, the company's founder, died in 2004.
Lyon, with about 115 employees, works mainly on commercial tugs and barges but also handles smaller Navy vessels, such as berthing barges.
Norfolk Shiprepair, which employs around 60 to 70, does similar work.
Employees at both yards have been informed of the pending sale, Ackiss said. During the past two to three weeks, Lyon has hired a "handful" of Norfolk Shiprepair's workers, and would "take as many as we can" once the deal is closed, he said.
Those workers include welders, machinists, painters and electricians.
"It's just hard getting good workers in these trades anymore," he said.
Ackiss declined to discuss the price of the deal. City real estate records assess the property at $3.74 million.
Norfolk Shiprepair purchased the property in 2000 for $3.09 million, according to city records.
The work load at Lyon has been "fairly stable," Ackiss said. The yard has two floating dry docks capable of lifting barges and oceangoing tugs.
The two yards have informally discussed a sale for around two years and began serious talks last fall, he said.
Reach Jon W. Glass at (757) 446-2318 or jon.glass@pilotonline.com.
Navy Agreement should avert layoffs at Metro Machine
March 08, 2007
By JON W. GLASS, The Virginian-Pilot
© March 8, 2007 | Last updated 10:32 PM Mar. 7
NORFOLK — A plan for mass layoffs announced three weeks ago by Metro Machine Corp. won’t happen after all, officials said Wednesday.
The company told workers last month that a dispute with the Navy over ship maintenance costs was expected to idle about two-thirds of the shipyard’s 450 employees for up to 18 months.
But on Wednesday, the Navy said a disagreement with Metro over the price of dry docking the guided-missile destroyer McFaul – the subject of the dispute – has been resolved. The Norfolk-based vessel will enter Metro’s yard for maintenance later this month.
The agreement also ensures that the yard will continue to receive work as a subcontractor under a five-year contract the Navy has with BAE Systems Norfolk Ship Repair to maintain a group of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
“From our perspective, this is a real win for everybody,” said Steve Hanson, deputy director of fleet maintenance for the Navy’s Fleet Forces Command in Norfolk. “We get the work we want done at a fair and reasonable price, and the company can stand tall to their employees and say they’ve been able to bring the work to them and keep them gainfully employed.”
Metro’s original price estimate to dry dock the McFaul was “substantially higher” than historic costs, Hanson said. While he declined to disclose the dollars involved, he said the negotiated agreement includes near- and long-term incentives that reduced the Navy’s cost.
“We can stand tall to the taxpayer and say it’s a good price,” Hanson said.
At an all-hands meeting last month, Metro executives told workers that the dispute with the Navy could result in layoffs lasting six to 18 months. A few days later, Metro filed a notice with the Virginia Employment Commission stating that the company expected to lay off around 275 workers by the end of March.
On Wednesday, John Strem Jr., Metro’s president and chief operating officer, said the resolution with the Navy would avert the large-scale layoffs.
“We’re glad to be able to avoid them, obviously,” Strem said. “We’re very pleased.”
Doug Norris, president of the yard’s International Brotherhood of Boilermakers Local 1999, said late Wednesday afternoon that company officials had not officially notified the union that the dispute had been resolved.
“I’m all kinds of happy if that’s the case, but I really don’t want to say anything until I know for sure,” Norris said. “I’ve been told we’ve had stuff before, and it turned out not to be the case.”
So far, Norris said, no workers have been furloughed since the company gave legal notice to the union that it intended to begin laying people off over five Mondays starting Feb. 26.
The destroyer contract, held by BAE Systems, is one of the Navy’s new multi-ship, multi-option contracts, in which one yard oversees maintenance of a class of ships over five years. Metro teamed with BAE on the $458 million destroyer contract as a subcontractor.
In a statement Wednesday, Bill Clifford, president and general manager of BAE Systems Norfolk, said: “We are encouraged by the Navy’s decision to dock McFaul at Metro, so we can continue to support our No. 1 customer.”
The partnering called for under the multi-ship contracts gave the Navy flexibility to work with BAE Systems and Metro to resolve the pricing disagreement, Hanson said.
While the Navy’s bottom line was to push down its costs, a motivating factor in the negotiations was the hope of avoiding mass layoffs, Hanson said.
“We want to help the private sector maintain a stable work load and a stable work force, because it’s in our best long-term interest,” he said. “That being said, we still have a responsibility to make sure that we are good stewards of taxpayer dollars. We’re doing our best to get value for the dollar.”
Reach Jon W. Glass at (757) 446-2318 or jon.glass@pilotonline.com.
Overtime May Not Incrase Risk
March 02, 2007
Study finds stronger link to prior health problems
A new study in the February issue of the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that while working very long hours is linked to an increased risk of certain types of health and safety problems for particular groups of industrial employees, other factors — such as previous health problems — have a much stronger effect on overall health, safety and productivity.
Using a database of information on a sample of nearly 2,800 workers representing a heavy manufacturer, researchers analyzed the effects of work hours on a broad range of health, safety and productivity outcomes.
No adverse effects were found until the 60-hour per week mark. And even then, the effects were limited to an increased risk of workers' compensation episodes for hourly female employees and to an increased risk of new musculoskeletal diagnoses for older workers.
Moreover, working overtime did not increase the risk of physical or mental health problems. Overtime also was unrelated to "presenteeism" — days the employee was at work but performing at less than full capacity.
What did matter were factors that preceded the number of hours worked: compensation type, demographics, and particularly prior diseases and health status.
MHI plans more dredge work for expansion
February 26, 2007
By JON W. GLASS, The Virginian-Pilot
© February 24, 2007
NORFOLK - Marine Hydraulics International Inc. plans more dredging to expand operations at its Lamberts Point shipyard.
The company has applied to dredge 119,000 cubic yards of Elizabeth River bottom at its Midtown yard near the West Ghent neighborhood, so it can bring in large Navy berthing barges. The barges are used to house Navy crews when ships are in for repair.
The work would be added to a dredging permit MHI received a year ago as part of plans to install a dry dock alongside a pier it built in 2004 to accommodate large-deck Navy ships and commercial vessels, said Gary Brandt, MHI's president and chief executive.
The Virginia Marine Resources Commission is scheduled to vote Tuesday on authorizing the work.
To date, the company has not purchased a dry dock and will not until all permits are in hand, Brandt said.
"Eventually, we will have a dry dock," he said. "I can't give you anything firm. The permitting process takes a long time, and I don't want to spend $30 million on a dock and not be able to get a permit."
The shipyard's move into West Ghent nearly three years ago generated complaints about noise and traffic. But no one has filed objections over MHI's latest dredging plans and the commission staff has recommended approval, said Wilford Kale, a spokesman for the Marine Resources Commission in Newport News.
Last February, when the commission approved a dredging permit to remove around 500,000 cubic yards for the dry dock, the neighborhood civic league and the W.H. Taylor Elementary School PTA sent letters of protest.
The company has not yet done that dredging, Brandt said.
Norfolk City Councilman Barclay Winn, who represents West Ghent, said Friday that MHI has worked with the city to address parking problems, but cut-through traffic to the yard remains an issue. Any expansion plans are "potentially" a concern, he added.
"It's a sensitive situation, and we're going to treat it as such," Winn said.
MHI's other shipyard is on the Elizabeth River's Eastern Branch near the Campostella Bridge, and the company now has around 400 workers. The company lacks a dry dock, which limits ship repair contracts to topside work, Brandt said.
Being able to lift vessels out of the water, Brandt said, would let the company work on ship hulls and further diversify its operations. In recent years, the company has expanded business beyond the Navy to include Military Sealift Command ships and commercial cargo vessels.
The Lamberts Point yard this week completed repairs on a German bulk carrier, and two Chinese cargo ships are expected soon, he said.
The proposal coming before the commission Tuesday calls for dredging a 633-foot by 140-foot basin to a depth 55 feet below mean low water. MHI would pay the state royalties of $60,460 for use of the state-owned bottom.
· Reach Jon W. Glass at (757) 446-2318 or jon.glass@pilotonline.com.
Coast Guard Chief Announces Plans to Overhaul the Service
February 22, 2007
By Eric Lipton
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 — Acknowledging that the Coast Guard has failed to keep up with changing times, its commandant, Adm. Thad Allen, unveiled a plan Tuesday to restructure its management radically and expand its surveillance efforts along the nation’s coasts.
The overhaul is intended to address mounting criticism of a $24 billion equipment program known as Deepwater, which is replacing or rebuilding most of the service’s large ships, planes and helicopters.
But it is much broader, including revamping the way the Coast Guard manages its response to natural disasters and terrorist attacks, supervises its Atlantic and Pacific fleets, maintains its aircraft and ships and handles its payroll and financial systems.
Some of Admiral Allen’s proposals could be felt by boat owners. He is advocating the mandatory use of devices like the automated identification beacons that are on large ships on smaller commercial fishing vessels and at least some pleasure boats.
The plan reflects changes that have already taken place at the service since 2001 when it assumed a broader antiterrorism mission and has had its budget grow by 50 percent, to $8.6 billion this year.
“We have been running some parts of the Coast Guard like a small business when we are a Fortune 500 company,” Admiral Allen said in a speech on Tuesday to several hundred Coast Guard officials. “We need to evolve with changing times.”
Instead of operating separate Pacific and Atlantic fleets, Admiral Allen said, all 35,000 active duty Coast Guard personnel on the service’s nearly 250 large ships, 1,700 smaller boats, 200 aircraft and 750 shore-side units will now report to a single commander.
A hundred-person operations group will coordinate how specially trained Coast Guard units respond to terror attacks, natural disasters, chemical or oil spills and its war-time assignments with the Department of Defense.
A new deputy commandant for mission support will oversee the design, acquisition and construction of new ships and aircraft and the maintenance of the fleet once they are built, functions that are now managed separately.
That will allow the Coast Guard to avoid giving so much authority for design and construction choices to contractors, like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, which renovated the first eight trouble-plagued ships in the Deepwater program.
The speech by Admiral Allen was in advance of the release of another scathing report by the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general on the Coast Guard’s management of its ship procurement program.
The newest report, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times, confirmed safety complaints that had been filed by a former Lockheed employee, who was so frustrated that his observations had gone unheeded that he posted a Web video to detail them.
The report says that as the former employee, Michael DeKort, had asserted, Coast Guard contractors installed hundreds of cables on 123-foot patrol boats that could cause toxic smoke if they caught fire. The ships are now out of service because of hull breaches. The contractors also installed electronics equipment that was prone to failure in open-sea conditions.
Since 2001, the Coast Guard has become much more of an extension of the military, instead of a service that primarily focuses on safety, with law enforcement playing a secondary role.
“This is not my father’s Coast Guard,” Admiral Allen said. “And my father is in the room.” Admiral Allen’s father, Clyde Allen, served in the Coast Guard and was in the hotel ballroom to hear his son’s speech.
It will be several years before all the changes are made, officials said, but the plan won early praise Tuesday. James L. Hested, the former commanding officer of the Coast Guard yard, said the service needed to go on a bureaucrat diet.
“You will have fewer fiefdoms,” Mr. Hested said.
Representative Elijah E. Cummings, Democrat of Maryland and chairman of the House panel that oversees Coast Guard operations, said he hoped that Admiral Allen had time to complete the work before his four-year tour of duty ended in 2010.
“He has laid out for himself a very tall order,” said Mr. Cummings, who attended the speech. “But I think he can do it.”
Earl Industries gets contract to decommission Kennedy
February 16, 2007
By JON W. GLASS , The Virginian-Pilot
© February 16, 2007
Portsmouth-based Earl Industries LLC's shipyard in Jacksonville, Fla., has won a $15.3 million Navy contract for work to decommission the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, homeported in Mayport.
The work, expected to start in late March and end in August, involves deactivating various installed machinery, cleaning tanks and draining fluids such as fuel oil and cooling water.
"It's a nice one for us," said Jerry Miller, Earl's president. "It'll be a good part of our Florida revenue for the year." Three companies bid for the job.
New! TCC Maritime Shipfitting Course
February 15, 2007
Members:
TCC has developed a new course which is designed to benefit those interested in the shipbuilding industry. Please view their course registration form, more details, and the TCC contact person in the link below. Registration has been extended to
Saturday, February 24, 2007. Don't let this opportunity pass you by! The announcement and registration form for the
TCC Maritime Shipfitting Course can be found at the link.
RADM Brooks Fleet Maintenance Brief Rescheduled
February 15, 2007
Emergent operational requirements have forced the postponement of the Fleet Maintenance Brief by RADM Jeff Brooks, Fleet Maintenance Officer, Commander Fleet Forces Command. Coordination with Nauticus and RADM Brooks office has resulted in the presentation being rescheduled for Thursday, February 15th. The briefing will take place at Nauticus beginning promptly at 8:15 AM. Registration will begin at 8:00 AM.