Per a Chief of Naval Operations directive, the commissioning answers the call to best meet facilities sustainment, restoration & modernization and military construction projects supporting production activities such maintenance and upgrades to ships, aircraft, and shore infrastructure.
“NAVFAC is provided the authority and technical expertise to deliver these projects in support of fleet readiness and increased lethality,” said Rear Adm. Lore Aguayo, commander, NAVFAC Atlantic and Fleet Civil Engineer, U.S. Fleet Forces Command.
Establishing an OICC provides robust on-site construction oversight and command-level accountability for resident engineering services, as well as coordination among crucial stakeholders. OICC PNSY will now move swiftly into executing numerous large contracts, applying innovative and efficient processes to improve critical existing drydock complexes as a part of Navy’s Shipyard Infrastructure Optimization Program (SIOP).
A Navywide effort to modernize infrastructure at the four public shipyards, SIOP is charged with performing critical dry dock repairs, restoring and optimally placing shipyard facilities and replacing aging and deteriorating capital equipment.
Originally designed and built in the 19th and 20th centuries to build sail- and conventionally-powered ships, the Navy's public shipyards must adapt to maintain and modernize nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines.
“A huge milestone of this program included the award of the P-381 project, which will construct a multi-mission drydock here at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard,” said Aguayo. “This $1.7 billion dollar effort will span seven years and increase the shipyard's capacity to maintain, modernize, and repair the Navy's submarines and return them to the fleet on time, ready and agile for the strategic competition fight.”
According to the new commanding officer of OICC PNSY, Capt. Frank Carroll, the significance of the new OICC is a critical element of national defense.
“It is not just a lot of concrete and a hole in the water,” said Carroll. “What we are doing is in direct support of near-peer conflicts with China and the Russians. What we do today will have profound impacts on that outcome. Our nation needs us to win here so we can be ready.”