Carrier Team One (CT1), the Navy's team of program staff and technical experts for aircraft carrier maintenance, has developed and implemented a new knowledge-sharing strategy to support consistent on-time delivery of aircraft carriers back to the fleet following maintenance availabilities.

"With roughly one third of our Navy ships and submarines undergoing maintenance at any given time, delivering them back to the Fleet on time is NAVSEA's number one priority for a reason," said Vice Adm. Tom Moore, commander, Naval Sea Systems Command, while addressing the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) fiscal year 2018 Docked Planned Incremental Availability project team earlier this year.

Moore stressed the importance of the team's efforts, saying, "Delays can mean extended deployments and unnecessary hardship for our young Sailors and their families. I encourage you to keep them in mind as you work hard and solve problems for them."

Established in 1997, with a focus on improving cross-organizational maintenance processes during Chief of Naval Operations' scheduled ship maintenance availabilities, CT1's efforts to support knowledge sharing at all levels and to keep focus and visibility on long-term issues, (encouraging innovation and improving processes), have had a positive impact on carrier availabilities.

However, in response to significant changes in the carrier maintenance landscape and a recent trend of maintenance availability delays, CT1 decided to review its knowledge sharing strategy and supporting tools to address those challenges.

That review made it clear that in today's environment, the team's focus only on sharing cross-organizational processes could not achieve the desired level of availability performance. Therefore, the CT1 charter was expanded to ensure that aircraft carrier maintenance project teams have the best available community knowledge, tools and support.

CT1 expanded its efforts to a project-centric knowledge sharing strategy that focuses the community's knowledge sharing activities, products and services on satisfying aircraft carrier project teams' needs, beginning much earlier in the planning phase.

"We created an 'in-the-flow' process in which CVN project teams, as the 'customer,' can readily engage the rest of the community in addressing their knowledge requirements in the Carrier Team One Knowledge Market," said Frank Burke, CT1 knowledge management system owner. "We are really excited about this new approach and hope to see measurable performance gains across several availabilities by this time next year."

In the Knowledge Market, which officially opened for business July 17, Burke and two knowledge exchange managers facilitate connections with other CVN maintenance community organizations, CVN project teams and existing knowledge sharing networks, which are invited to commit as "suppliers" for those requirements.

"When it comes to keeping our aircraft carriers 'fit to fight,' CVN project teams are where the rubber meets the road," said Capt. John Markowicz, program manager for In-Service Aircraft Carriers (PMS 312). "They are our supported customers, and we're establishing the Knowledge Market to meet their needs, first and foremost."

Markowicz explained that the Knowledge Market will provide project teams with easier and much broader access to process documentation, reports, sample strategies, lessons learned and subject matter experts from across all three CVN-capable shipyards.

"A prime example of the importance of these efforts is USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75), which just finished her latest maintenance period early," said Markowicz. "That successful planned incremental availability was achieved through a combination of the superb performance of Norfolk Naval Shipyard and the crew of CVN 75, enabled by the years of maintenance and modernization necessary to sustain the ship through its vigorous service life. The Knowledge Market will help us do that for all our other carrier work, ensuring that we do our best to get the carriers back to sea -- where they belong -- on time."

"The Knowledge Market is simply one important option for mitigating project and availability risk," said Burke. "It provides a structure in which there is a clear expectation for community engagement to support the project's efforts in managing availability risks and knowledge needs much earlier in the planning process."

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

For more news from Naval Sea Systems Command, visit http://navsea.navy.mil/.