BAE Systems Ship Repair to cease Pearl Harbor operations in 2021

BAE Hawaii Ship Repair performs its work at Drydock No. 4 and at Bravo Piers on the Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard facility.

BAE Systems Ship Repair is to cease operations at its BAE Systems Hawaii Ship Repair site located on Pearl Harbor Naval Base in first quarter 2021. The closure is expected to be permanent and will affect all 290 employees currently employed at that location.

According to BAE Systems, its Hawaii Ship Repair operation is the largest private sector ship repair facility in the state.

CHANGE IN NAVY CONTRACTING STRATEGY

In a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice filed with the State of Hawaii October 16, BAE systems says the “decision to cease business operations is due to the Navy’s decision to change its contracting strategy from a MSMO [Multi Ship Multi Option] based contract to a MAC-MO [Multiple Award Contract Multi Order] based contract.”

According to a GAO report, “as opposed to the prior strategy, which used cost-reimbursement contracts and was only competed among ship repair contractors every 5 years, MAC-MO will use firm-fixed-price contracts, a third-party contractor to identify and plan the work, and increased competition, among other things.”

EMPLOYEE NOTIFICATIONS

According to the WARN notice, BAE expected that the first round of impacted employees (seven total) would be notified on October 18, 2019 with their last day of employment on December 17, 2019.

“We then plan to notify a second round of impacted employees during the December 2019 timeframe with their expected last day of employment to end in February 2020,” said the notice. “We plan to consistently evaluate manning needs to execute the final availability that is scheduled to end in the 1st quarter of 2021 and will see continued reductions in our workforce through 2020 with the final impacts in early 2021. Once completion of all work and cessation of operations at our facility in 2021 all employees will have been impacted although some may transfer to other locations and/or apply to other roles outside of the Hawaii Ship Repair location.”

Read the WARN notice HERE