by Newell Durnbrooke
WITH A KEY focus on critical mis- sions and operations, complex asset management, technology integration and specialist training, Babcock has supported their clients for over 14 years in Canada and over 125 years around the world. Babcock is trusted to improve the capability, reliability and availability of their clients’ most critical assets within the marine, land, aviation and nuclear sectors.
Operating in Canada since 2008, Babcock has experts who design, manage, operate, and maintain assets that are vital to the delivery of critical services.
Matthew Crawley, Babcock’s Vice President - Corporate Development and Strategy.
Esprit de Corps sat down with Matthew Crawley, Babcock Canada’s Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy, this month to give us an update on Babcock’s progams over the last few months and to share what’s in store for the organization this upcoming year.
Babcock certainly has an exciting year ahead! With people at the core of their business, Babcock was proud to have been selected as one of the top employers in the National Capital Region for the fourth consecutive year.
“Babcock remains committed to continuing to support our employees and ensuring that we create a safe and secure world, together,” says Matthew Crawley.
At the onset of the pandemic, Babcock was quick to imple- ment numerous proactive and precautionary steps to protect their frontline support teams. The company worked tirelessly to monitor the changing environment and ensure compliance with local public health guidance. Work was shifted to remote work while implementing safety measures at waterfront, aircraft maintenance, and operations and logisctics hubs across its Canadian operations.
BABCOCK CONTINUES TO BE A TRUSTED PARTNER OF THE ROYAL CANADIAN NAVY
Babcock is honoured to be a trusted industrial partner of the Royal Canadian Navy. The company is a leading provider of naval in-service support and has been providing platform design, integration, configuration, management services, and maintenance and waterfront sup- port, ensuring complete lifecycle engineering support for Canada’s fleet of Victoria Class submarines.
HMCS Corner Brook, one of Canada’s four Victoria-Class submarines.
“2022 is going to be an extremely busy year for Babcock with many concurrent activities underway,” says Matthew Crawley, “HMCS Corner Brook has successfully completed the docked portion of her Extended Docking Work Period (EDWP) as part of the Victoria Class In-Service Support Contract (VISSC), and will be returned to the Royal Canadian Navy later this year following sea trials. HMCS Chicoutimi is currently undergoing her Transition Docking Work Period and preparations are underway for the commencement of HMCS Victoria’s EDWP, and we are continuing to introduce process improvements in order to improve delivery efficiency for the Royal Canadian Navy.”
Babcock is continuing to improve their value-added services to help deliver efficiency to the Royal Canadian Navy.
“The essense of what we are delivering for Canada is a submarine capability that did not exist 15 years ago. We are completing major system upgrades and integrating today’s technology with existing systems. Leveraging our experience on the platform and data collected from the new technology, we are able to make informed decisions as a submarine enterprise,” says Crawley.
Babcock continues to find efficiencies and learning from experience from working on these complex platforms. They have recently adopted lean production practices to increase the dependability of execution against schedule and improve their waterfront maintenance delivery.
“We continue to collaborate with the Department of National Defence and have recently made recommendations to 154 maintenance routines in the interest of reducing both the potential for scope growth, and reducing the amount of time a submarine spends in maintenance,” says Matthew Crawley.
Babcock has also recently been awarded a contract to work with Seaspan Vancouver Shipyards Co. Ltd to deliver magazine ammunition storage solution for the Joint Support Ship (JSS) project for the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN).
The JSS project will procure two ships that are purpose-built to provide the RCN with a critical sustainment and re-supply capability. Additionally, the ships will provide a sealift capability, support helicopter maintenance and operations, and will be equipped with modern medical and dental care facilities, including an operating room.
INNOVATIVE TECHNOLOGY: AT THE CORE OF BABCOCK
Last fall, the Department of National Defence’s Innovation for Defence Excellence and Security (IDEaS) program issued a competitive project challenge titled, Wireless is Where It’s At: Secure and Seamless Wireless Network Onboard Ships.
HMCS Windsor, one of Canada’s four Victoria-Class submarines.
“Through this competitive process, Babcock’s proposal has successfully won the opportunity to develop and innovative solution to enable robust and secure digital communication with the large and increasing number of wireless sensors and systems throughout Royal Canadian Navy warships,” says Matthew Crawley, “this allows for assured tracking, monitor- ing, updating, automation and operation in a wide variety of operational scenarios.”
“We will leverage our global capability along with Canadian technology and talent to develop a solution to meet the RCN’s requirements,” Matthew Crawley continued. Babcock will begin developing this solution for the RCN in May 2022.
Babcock is also a founding contributor to the Centre for Ocean Applied Sustainable Technologies (COAST), an innovation of the South Island Prosperity Partnership to promote a more robust “blue economy” on Canada’s pacific coast.
Babcock is leading a consortium of organizations in a collaborative project to develop a means to quickly and accurately identify corrosion by applying artificial intelligence (AI) in the examination of undersea video surveillance from remotely operated vehicles.
“The consortium will involve stakeholders from across industry, academia, non-profit organizations, and indigenous communities over several phases of the project,” says Matthew Crawley.
Outcomes from this project are expected to enhance Babcock’s support to the RCN’s fleet of Victoria class submarines through AI-enabled corrosion detection.
“This first phase will include an opportunity for introductory training in the operation of remotely piloted vehicles for peoples of the T’Souke First Nation on Vancouver Island,” says Matthew. “This will provide an opportunity to begin capacity building in a technology area that has many applications on the west coast.”
LOOKING AHEAD
It’s evident that for Babcock, 2022 continues to be a busy and exciting year. With Babcock’s significant expertise in developing and applying new techniques and technologies in support of their clients, the company is looking forward to the year ahead, and is committed to continuing to provide innovative technological solutions for their clients across various sectors in Canada.