Kittery shipyard's equipment is old and work is late, but Navy may under-fund fixes

File Photo / Jim Neuger A new federal report reveals deficiencies at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, and warns the Navy's plan to fix them may be based on faulty budgeting.

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By Staff

As work on several projects to modernize Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery gets underway, a new federal study shows just how much the yard needs upgrading.

The study, whose results were released last week by the U.S. Government Accountability Office, generally confirmed its 2017 analysis showing that Portsmouth and the country’s three other naval shipyards were in poor condition.

At the time, GAO said, the yards were backlogged with nearly $5 billion in maintenance and restoration projects, which would take at least 19 years to complete. The Navy responded by launching a $21 billion, 20-year plan to upgrade the facilities.

Now the GAO is back with a report saying that plan may be faulty.

The report also goes into more detail about deficiencies at Portsmouth and the yards in Norfolk, Va.; Pearl Harbor, Hawaii; and Puget Sound, Wash.

Portsmouth, which maintains and renovates Navy submarines, was founded in 1800 and is the second-oldest of the four. Its equipment is also old, with an average age of 19 years, 3.5 years more than the equipment’s average service life, according to the report.

The Norfolk yard had oldest equipment, with an average age of 29 years, while equipment at Puget Sound averaged 22 years and Pearl Harbor’s was 15 years old.

Because of the aging equipment and other factors, the shipyards currently don’t have the capacity to keep up with increasing maintenance requirements of the Navy fleet. As a result, 71% of Portsmouth’s scheduled projects were completed late between 2007 and 2017.

Puget Sound recorded the same percentage in its work. Norfolk completed 64% of its projects late, while 84% were late in Pearl Harbor.

To fix problems like these, the GAO said, the Navy needs to budget more realistically. The current plan doesn’t consider risk factors such as inflation that “could add billions to the ultimate cost,” the report said.

“Without fully following best practices … the Navy risks requesting inadequate resources for addressing shipyard deficiencies.”

The Navy has concurred with the GAO findings, the report noted.

The report’s release comes as Pittsfield-based Cianbro Corp. recently received a $157.9 million contract to modernize one of three dry docks at Portsmouth. The contract was announced Nov. 22, the same day the yard broke ground on a new $59 million facility for painting, rubber manufacturing and other functions, as well as a $12 million expansion of a supply warehouse.