Life Cycle Support Cost Reduction for ANZAC Frigates

The challenge: The maintenance of highly sophisticated naval assets requires a substantial level of land-based in-house and contracted out resources and world-best configuration management processes, all of which are very expensive. As part of the Navy's drive to spend money effectively, The Asset Partnership was engaged to facilitate a Reliability-centred Maintenance (RCM2) review of 20% of the platform systems aboard the ANZAC Class frigates. The objective was to identify opportunities to improve system availability whilst at the same time actively reducing life cycle costs.

The approach: The Asset Partnership adopted the role of RCM Project Manager for the ANZAC system support office. Following a review of reliability and cost data accumulated over several ship-years of activity, several key systems were chosen as quick-win candidates for RCM2 application. Life cycle maintenance support cost reductions for these systems were in excess of $30M with significantly reduced levels of maintenance effort required from shore based in-house and contractor resources. Over a two year period, several other platform systems were evaluated using in-house, fully trained analysis teams facilitated by The Asset Partnership. As a key part of the process, The Asset Partnership guided all changes through the Navy's configuration management process.

The outcome: To date, life cycle cost savings totalling over $140M have been identified and implemented through the Configuration Management system. Future phases of the project will use the RCM database as an aid to rationalising the upkeep cycle for the warship and for predicting the level of shore-based maintenance resources needed for a range of mission profiles.