The Challenge

This is the second part of two outlining my ideas for what the Royal Canadian Navy should strive for and the challenges of getting there.

“There are no problems, there are only challenges.”

Gordon Forbes

Whether the need is 27 ships or seven, the challenge is to get them and to get the right ones to meet the Navy’s challenges.  The truth is that the present government has been singularly unsuccessful in pulling off a major military buy.  The only ones that they are able to point to were all sole-source procurements.  Now they are falling back to what they accused the previous government of doing – cutting promised defence spending to meet other fiscal goals.  The defence budget is just too big a target for governments to resist the urge to cut it when they want to do other things – the defence budget being the largest discretionary item in the government’s portfolio.  The sad thing about this round of cuts is the harm it is doing to ongoing defence initiatives based on the government’s promises.  Only this week, another defence project, the replacement of the CP-140 Aurora, has been shelved in favour of an upgrade and an extension of these airframes until 2030 (hopefully).  

But budgetary woes are not the primary problems with defence procurement (and procurement in other departments as well).  Based on over 30 years of involvement in defence procurement, I offer the following points that hinder military procurement.

Requirements – The starting point for any procurement project is a requirement.  This requirement must be clearly articulated in a Statement of Operational Requirement (SOR) (or whatever you want to call it these days).  The SOR must define the problem that must be solved by the new or updated product, whether it is by describing the threat to be faced or by the scenarios that must be fulfilled.  It is not a shopping list.  It does not define the solution to the problem.  But the truth is that we have been singularly bad at articulating the requirements.  This tendency has got more projects off on the wrong foot that can be imagined. Some years ago, I gave a presentation to the local Project Management Institute conference called “The Requirement for Requirements” outlining the many problems I had encountered in requirements documents.  The number of heads nodding in agreement indicated that I was not the only one to have experienced this issue.  Of the recently announced changes to defence procurement, the only measure that may have a chance of improving things is the idea of independent review of requirements.  However, it will only be effective if it is done right, and not become just an exercise in bureaucratic ass clearing.  Unless the review group is knowledgeable, and independent of government, military and industrial influence, it will be useless.

Design and Development – There is some degree of design and development in almost every significant military procurement, whether it is the design of a new ship, or the alteration of an off-the-shelf product to meet unique Canadian requirements.  Other countries, when faced with this situation separate design and development from straight procurement.  In other words, the design and development phase is considered a separate project and is funded and contracted differently from the actual procurement of the final product.  Whereas the procurement phase can be fixed price and low risk after the design is finalized, the design and development phase recognizes the inherent risk in any such endeavor.  Contracts for this phase can be cost plus or incentivized to cater to this risk.  Once we get to the procurement cost, schedule and performance goals can be accomplished with very little risk.  It even becomes possible to compete the procurement to ensure that the lowest cost and benefits are achieved.

Staffing – When I was part of a team of consultants evaluating DND capital projects, one of the biggest weaknesses we found was the staffing of project offices.  Many were short of key people, but more often it was the knowledge and experience of the staff that was wanting.  The truth was that in too many projects, the staff consisted of people who had no prior experience in project management and were not getting the requisite training in a timely manner.  No wonder there was so much reliance on outside consultants to fill in the numbers and experience gaps. Too many of the military staff was there for only a short time (one or two years) and only to get their “ticket punched”.  At that time, only the Army Electrical and Mechanical Engineering branch seemed to have sufficient people with extensive experience.  Once many military were posted into a project office, they would have to wait their turn to get the basic PM course which often came near the end of their tour.  So what about civilian employees?  Again, many came into a project as a stepping stone to other things.  Many considered it a chancy position because of perceived uncertainty about what would await them when the project ended.  

But the biggest weakness of both the military and civilian staff was their total inability to relate to industry. Most project offices had nobody who had any experience in industry.  In one project office where I worked as a consultant, I was only one of two out of a staff of over 140 who had spent any time working in the defence industry before coming to the project.  The result was a total misunderstanding and mistrust of industry, both its capabilities and motivation.  

A Thought – As much as we think that Conservative governments are the only real friend that the military has, remember this – all of the major weapons systems that are the current mainstay of our military, CF 18s, CPFs, CP 140 Auroras, Tribal Class destroyers, MCDVs, were initiated and pushed forward by a Liberal government.  Conservative governments have promised nuclear submarines, fixed wing search and rescue aircraft, and F 35s, none of which have come to pass.

Summary – The current proposal for a reorganization of defence procurement is only a rehashing of the way the thing is supposed to be handled.  The difference seems to be an opportunity for another layer of bureaucracy comprising some high level civil servants and a no-doubt bloated “secretariat” to serve them.  If it cuts out military participation in the decision making process, it will never serve the real needs of that military.  Unless the problems I have identified above are addressed, the challenge of getting the best product to meet their needs will never be overcome.