AWD Alliance should have given most hull blocks (400s and 500s) of Ship 1 to Navatia and have ASC build the 700s blocks only, and with Ship 2 and 3, ASC could then progressively take over some more of those blocks. This will allow them to learn how to read the design faster, or rectify the problems quicker (such as realising the lack of the 3D modelling CAD tool and overly reliance on 2D design on paper)...
Lesson learnt, one shouldn't start fabricating and building ships when the design is not near completion. One should also use a modern 3D CAD tool for such complex design work.
In the 90s I was using 2D CAD daily, a project I was responsible for was transferring 2D hard copy product drawings to CAD while all new and modified tooling was being done in 3D CAD/CAM. Early 2000s I was using 3D packages including a 3D printer for rapid prototyping, mid 2000s I was contracting out jigs, fixtures, tooling and gauges, all designed to manufacture components provided to us as 3D models, to a number of small, local tooling companies where they manufactured what we had designed from data files, no hard copy at all. I move across to defence and the Collins project in the late 2000s, where they are transitioning to a 3D model and using computer modelling more and more extensively.
2010 I move to AWD and to my complete disbelief engineering data is being received in poor organised, difficult to identify and interpret 2D pdf format drawings. In twenty years of engineering experience this was the most difficult to use, poorly organised and controlled technical data I have ever encountered. Why, because that is what the government contracted. As I understand it the decision was made, by non technical types, to reduce risk and cost by building to print. i.e. there was quite intentionally very little wriggle room provided to ASC, as the shipbuilder, to do anything other than build (or contract out) the2D pdf drawings they had been given to build to. Any problems had to be identified, fed back to Navantia to fix and then passed back to production (the contractors) to build. In the end to speed things up ASC was reviewing data before releasing it to production, finding errors, fixing the errors, passing the design solutions to Navantia for their approval before releasing the data to production. This was for the build to print parts, it was even worse for the all too frequent design changes that more often than not seemed to arrive, without notice, after fabrication to the original design had begun or even been completed.
Over and above the completely ferked build to print debacle, there were layers of completely risk adverse, technically illiterate, commercial, contracts, procurement and risk "professionals", who made things worse. They seemed to believe the ASC engineering and production people were, initially, obstructionist when they warned of the need to review data, vet suppliers and contractors and have the authority to make time critical engineering changes locally, then incompetent when the problems they warned of happened and the mitigation they suggested had been ignored. I personally witnessed a senior, experienced ASC technical person being told not to assist a critical subcontractor do their job as it exposed ASC if there were problems, it was better in their pathetic blinkered, bean counter, version of reality, to have a contractor ferk up than to work with them to make sure it was done right the first time.
Every time international experts are brought in to review AWD they find the same thing, the people doing the actual work are doing a great job, the issue is, due to previous black holes, the decision makers don't know what they are doing. Most of the decision makers are not technically competent and those who are competent have no authority. The politicians and bureaucrats calling the shots are giving all the power and authority to the wrong type of people and are then shocked when things don't go to plan and instead of identifying the root cause, choose to blame the very people who warned them what was going to happen.
