The Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a new report of interest to the life cycle logistics and product support manager communities on May 11, 2020 entitled “GAO-20-370 Navy Ship Maintenance: Evaluating Pilot Program Outcomes Could Inform Decisions to Address Persistent Schedule Challenges”

According to the GAO, “…the Navy changed how it contracts for ship repair in 2015, in an effort to get this work done on time and at lower cost. We found that the Navy has lowered costs from initial estimates for ship repair. But that work continues to run over schedule—due, in part, to the extra time it often takes to coordinate funding for additional repairs that may have been expected but could not be quantified when the contract began. The Navy is testing a potential solution via a pilot program, but doesn’t have plans to assess its impact.”

The GAO went on to recommend “that the Navy establish plans for evaluating lessons learned from this pilot program.”