Aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN 71) reached the halfway point of its Planned Incremental Availability (PIA) Sept. 13, pierside at Naval Air Station North Island.

PIA is a reoccurring part of a ship's life cycle, scheduled approximately every 36 months. It's intended to overhaul and rejuvenate the ship in almost every aspect, following the wear and tear that comes with deployment and time at sea.

Over 146,000 man hours have been spent on upgrading and repairing aircraft catapults, propulsion plants, tanks, voids, piping, insulation, berthings, aircraft elevators, fire main valves, decks and bulkheads around the ship during the maintenance period thus far.

Capt. Craig Clapperton, commanding officer of Theodore Roosevelt, is pleased with the work accomplished and acknowledged the adaptability and dedication of the crew and contractors involved.

"The entire 'TR Project Team' has done a fantastic job to this point in the availability," said Clapperton. "This availability is the largest work package ever attempted in San Diego in a six-month period, and we have experienced some significant additional growth work due to the scope and complexity of the work. However, due to great teamwork, innovative problem solving and the cooperation of the entire maintenance and engineering communities, we are still scheduled to finish the availability before the holiday curtailment and meet our timeline."

Completion of a project this size before the holidays is no small task. Every effort is being made to make this PIA successful and keep it on track.

"As we rolled into this availability we knew that we had a lot of work to do; since we're not sitting right next to a shipyard, a lot of the maintenance providers had to bring their personnel in to do all this work," said Cmdr. Jeff Shipman, Theodore Roosevelt's chief engineer. "Most of the work is on track. There are a few high-priority jobs that are running a little bit behind, but every day they're looking at ways to pick up lost time."

Even with a few setbacks, Theodore Roosevelt's crew remains ahead of the curve.

"We're over halfway done in terms of number of jobs and total man hours for the ship," said Shipman.

In addition to the vast amount of structural and mechanical maintenance being performed around the ship, over 1,000 computers, 200 printers and 3,000 user accounts have been issued as part of an upgrade to the ship's computer network from an Integrated Shipboard Network System (ISNS) to a Consolidated Afloat Network Enterprise System (CANES). Several terabytes of data have been migrated over to the new system under the supervision of the ship's Automated Data Processing Officer, Nathan Bell.

"Our ISNS was deteriorating pretty quickly and it was on its last leg," said Bell. "CANES gives us the ability to upgrade and install new software to expand our capabilities without having to get new hardware. It's pretty high-tech and requires our Sailors to get a lot more training in a short amount of time. The process has gone a lot smoother than expected and we're learning new things every day."

Rather than taking the success as a signal to slow down, the crew remains motivated and is turning their attention to the future.

"While a bit more than that 50 percent of the work is behind us, there still a significant volume of work remaining," said Clapperton. "Further, ship's force must now turn a significant portion of our efforts and focus to training and preparing for our work-up cycle. It is a challenging road ahead with a good deal of hard work still to go, but I am confident that this team can get there. As I tell our Sailors every chance I get, 'Our number one goal is to finish the availability before Christmas!' We intend to accomplish that goal."

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