Availability-oriented contract management approach: A simplified view to a complex naval issue

Abstract

Navies around the world aspire to improve their fleet operational availability. Many navies struggle to achieve their targeted high operational availability even though they are certain that they have continuously implemented improved maintenance concepts and philosophies, allocated the necessary budget and implemented advanced human capital development plans. Nevertheless, the efforts may be futile when they could not be allocated precisely in tackling the issues concerning "human and equipment" related Downtime Influence Factors (DIFs) impacting ship operational availability. The extended exploratory research encapsulated all the efforts in discovering a simplified methodology in tackling this complex naval issue. The 13 objectives achieved in this paper covers the initial work in identifying the DIFs until the development of a Contract Management Control and Monitoring System (ConCaMS) that is able to assist policymakers and all stakeholders including Contract Managers in managing the ship maintenance contract efficiently and effectively. The ConCaMS is able to guide so that actions could be taken earlier enough for recovery to be possible, as opposed to traditional methods. Additionally, the ConCaMS could also be used by policymakers and Top Management of the private sectors as well as the governments as a proven method in comparing contract performance between various contracts, by using availability as the performance benchmark.