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Vinson Cable Improvement Team Rips It Up, Saves 'Uncle Sam' Money

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS060721-15
Release Date: 7/21/2006 4:22:00 PM

From USS Carl Vinson Public Affairs

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (NNS) -- The Cableway Improvement Team aboard USS Carl Vinson (CVN 70) is at pace to remove up to 1 million feet of cable – a length nearly three times the diameter of planet Earth – from the ship’s steel guts during her current refueling complex overhaul (RCOH) at the Northrop Grumman Newport News Shipyard.

“Since July 7, we have removed more than 436,000 feet of cable, weighing more than 110,000 pounds,” said the Cableway Team’s Leading Petty Officer, Electronics Technician 1st Class (SW) Jason Hand. “The USS Nimitz (CVN 68) removed about 490,000 feet of cable in 36 months, and the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69) removed roughly 560,000 feet in 38 months. We’ve only been removing cables for 10 months. So, at the current pace, Carl Vinson will be on track to remove 800,000 to 1 million feet of ‘dead-end’ cable.”

Earning bragging rights over other supercarriers isn’t all the cableway team’s efforts have produced. They’ve also saved the Navy dollars – hundreds of thousands of them.

“The cableway ‘Inspection Reports (IR),’” explained Hand, “are de-scoped jobs that are considered ‘growth work’ – unexpected work discovered during the repair process. Instead of contracting the jobs out, they are handed to ship’s force for completion. The ship’s force cableway team has completed nine IRs, saving the Navy $650,000 in growth-work contractor costs.”

Vinson’s money-saving cable-clearing team consists of 27 Sailors temporarily assigned from the ship’s Combat Systems and Reactor departments.

They perform inspections on all compartments in 150 zones throughout the ship to determine cableway discrepancies.

Discrepancies are annotated on a three-part Northrop Grumman tag and are hung on the affected cable.

Discrepancies fall into three categories: immediate hazard (Category 1), potential hazard (Category 2), and non-hazardous (Category 3).

Once identified and tagged, all dead-end cables are frisked for live voltage prior to any work performed. If voltage is present, the source is tagged out using a Work Authorization Form (WAF) generated by Work Central Control (WCC). Once recognized as having a dead end – meaning no voltage – cables are removed entirely or until they disappear into an inaccessible compartment.

Based on all discrepancies discovered to date, Vinson has hung 6,343 cable tags, with 5,801 of them already corrected and cleared.

Carl Vinson is currently undergoing its scheduled refueling complex overhaul (RCOH) at Northrop Grumman Newport News shipyard. The RCOH is an extensive yard period that all Nimitz-class aircraft carriers go through near the mid-point of their 50-year life cycle.

During RCOH Carl Vinson’s nuclear fuel will be replenished and the ship’s services and infrastructure will be upgraded to make her the most state-of-the-art aircraft carrier in the fleet and prepare her for another 25 years or more of service.