Naval Ship Assurance – A New Approach - BMT Defence Services

Paper on Naval Ship Assurance presented at Pacific 2008 in Sydney, Australia.Tailoring General Requirements to Ship SpecificationsWith reference to Figure 1 below, the framework consists of a central cone that makes thelink between the capability requested by the customer and the capability delivered in theplatform. At the top of the central cone is the customer requirement input - i.e.requirements from Director Equipment Capability (DEC). Working down the cone, this istranslated, through the procurement process of preparing general naval requirements andgeneral system specifications, to produce detailed system specifications that can becontracted against.Figure 1 - Naval Ship Assurance FrameworkThe process for developing the General Naval Requirements into a set of General SystemSpecifications and Detailed System Specifications is aided by the General NavalSpecification document (GNS).A key benefit of using the General Naval Specification as a template is the incorporation oflearning from experience and so avoiding costly mistakes that are a repeat of history.The General Naval Specification supports the layers of the specification process, soproviding the ability to exit at different levels appropriate to the procurement process andthe shipbuilding contractual arrangement.With reference to the central cone, for the 1st layer down from the customer the GeneralNaval Specification document provides a template for a project team to develop their owntailored and specific User Requirement and System Requirement documents. Use of thistemplate aids the project team to ensure that the output is comprehensive and coherent. Ifallied across a Navy it will provide consistency and provides a place to store lessonslearned from experience.January 2008 Page 3 of 9 © BMT Defence Services Ltd/Lloyd’s Register