Vanguard Magazine

S SHIPBUILDING www.vanguardcanada.com OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2017 31 pose Naval Support Ship. This ship was to serve as a supply ship for the RCN until the two new Queenston-class vessels be- come available. What is unique about this proposal is that the ship will be leased to the RCN for five years with the option for annual renewal for an additional five years. At any point during this time, the RCN has the option to purchase the vessel. To fulfill its Task Group Blue-Water ca- pability of being a maritime force, capable of sustaining operations far from home across open oceans, the RCN stated in 2005 that it required four supply ships. Fraser believes that this requirement is still relevant. "Canada needs four tankers," he said. "We are not trying to displace any ship- yard, we are here to provide more capabil- ity to Canadians at an affordable price." In June 2015, the Harper government amended the contracting regulations. The change gave Cabinet the authority to award a contract to a single company if there are urgent "operational reasons" and in filling an interim need. A short time later, the government began having pre- liminary discussions with Chantier Davie to see whether the shipyard could provide a stop-gap measure of an interim supply ship at a "cost, time and level of capability acceptable to the RCN." "It is key to note that Canada does not make a single payment to us until we de- liver the capability," said Fraser. "We de- cided that we will do things differently by bringing capability in faster and more eco- nomically." Through the support of Cana- dian financial backers, Tier 1 suppliers, and Canadian technologies from Hepburn, L3 Mapps, and OSI, Davie is working to ret- rofit the containerize ship at a lower cost, at a faster pace, and with modern capabili- ties to meet the needs of the RCN. Retrofitting a Containership During the discussion stage with gov- ernment, Davie acquired MV Asterix, a 183-meter containership obtained from Greece's Capital Ship Management to be converted into an AOR to serve the RCN. The simplest of ways to describe the con- version, according to Alain Garceau, VP Engineering of Federal Fleet Services, is that the ship was being carved out like a canoe and rebuilt by modules. From the time that work began on the ship, less than two years ago to present, 49 blocks were built and inserted into the vessel. The standard NATO supply ship can trace its origins back to the HMCS Pro- vider, which was built by Davie in the early 1960s. Through the MV Asterix conver- sion, Davie is replacing the legacy capa- bilities of the AOR Protecteur-class and adding improvements to it, according to Fraser. Program History • Opportunity identified after HMCS Protecteur fire in February 2014 • Davie provides unsolicited proposal in March 2014 for two ships • Canada initiates fast track industry solicitation process in December 2014 • Industry provides solutions to specific set of published requirements in January 2015 • Davie / FFS solution only compliant proposal and is down-selected for negotiation • Provision of Service Agreement agreed in December 2015 • Vessel to be delivered in Fall 2017, on schedule with no cost to Canada Source: Federal Fleet Services Inc. early 2020s, at the time of 2014, Canada was left with no naval supply ship. This created a significant hole in the Royal Ca- nadian Navy's (RCN) fleet and a gap that needs to be filled earlier than expected. At that time, Canada began negotiations with the Spanish Navy to deploy a replen- ishment ship with the Canadian fleet in the North Atlantic and renting the Chil- ean Almirante Montt to fill the temporary need for support vessels. Another option was presented by Chantier Davie to sup- ply a converted 'fast-track' supply ship to the RCN to fill the gap left by the HMCS Protecteur and HMCS Preserver. A few weeks after the catastrophic fire on HMCS Protecteur in February 2014, Davie moved quickly to submit an unso- licited proposal to provide a naval supply ship. By the fall that year, Canada initi- ated a fast-track industry solicitation pro- cess and the other two major shipyards in Canada, Irving and Seaspan followed suit and presented proposals to fill the gap of a supply ship. "Contrary to what was circulated, there was a competition and the others didn't meet the technical requirements," said Spencer Fraser, CEO of Federal Fleet Ser- vices. Federal Fleet Services and Chantier Davie are two separate companies under the Inocea Group umbrella, an overseas consortium that bought Davie about five years ago. A Different Approach The essence of Davie's proposal was to convert a 1,700 TEU (twenty-foot equiva- lent units) containership into a multipur-

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