Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center (MARMC) Waterfront Operations (Code 300) began its second year of specialized training for project managers (PMs), assistant project managers (APMs) and shipbuilding specialists (SBSs) in January.

The 30-week course is structured from the Joint Fleet Maintenance Manual (JFMM), and teaches the critical path method (CPM), a project management technique for process planning that defines critical and non-critical tasks with the goal of preventing delays in project completion.

"Critical path is a project management philosophy based on the work, series of activities within any given task, and how much flexibility in the schedule you have," said Waterfront Operations Manager Chuck Baker. "The critical path is the job that has the least amount of schedule flexibility - typically one job, maybe two. We're trying to train everyone to understand to identify the critical path and also how to lay out those critical paths to mitigate those undesirable schedule durations that show up in our schedules."

The goal of the critical path training is to transfer the detailed knowledge of the critical path method, to help PMs recognize hazards earlier in the process, and to provide a more thorough mastery of their schedule and planning efforts.

For an hour and a half every Thursday, Waterfront Operations PMs meet to exchange ideas and experiences and to discuss better ways to manage availabilities by working more effectively with various contractors.

"When I was hired as a PM here at MARMC, my training consisted of shadowing a senior PM for about three months, and attending the week-long PM class," said MARMC Project Manager Rick Benson. "The training that was mandated last year started us all at the basic level. That consisted of JFMM paragraphs spelling out our responsibilities, and then retraining us with definitions of commonly used terms. These terms are not just definitions, but they also define the ways how they apply in our contractual setting with our shipyard counterparts."

Understanding the details of a project's master integrated schedule starts with the PMs ability to evaluate schedules effectively, and according to Baker, is the primary focus in the CPM training. He believes this will offer the PMs a broader perspective of their availabilities, starting even before the contract is awarded. Conventional wisdom indicates that prior experiences on multiple classes of ships should allow PMs to project what their availability should look like. From there, it is just a matter of applying that knowledge.

More than 40 PMs participated in the training last year. This year there were approximately 60, including APMs and SBSs, all of whom attended the hour and a half training sessions every Thursday.

"We're using the current availabilities as scenarios, and having the project managers from the availabilities share with the group - and we're talking about it. We focus on what is working well, what the problems are, how can we fix them," said Benson.
During the next 30 weeks of training, MARMC's aim is to put a new perspective on the ways in which PMs and their roles are viewed in the shipbuilding industry - a role that shapes the path toward availability completion.

"I think MARMC is leading the way for government management of maintenance and modernization availabilities," said Baker. "We're not sitting back and watching. We have project managers not project monitors. Our job is to help the industrial base succeed by managing their availability, and our folks are doing that and that's a good thing."


For more information, visit www.navy.mil, www.facebook.com/usnavy, or www.twitter.com/usnavy.

For more news from Mid-Atlantic Regional Maintenance Center, visit www.navy.mil/.