Knowledge Management: Building a Better Battleship

CIO — Think you’ve got procurement problems? Try buying battleships. The Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA), which engineers, builds and supports the entire U.S. Navy fleet, manages more than 130 acquisition programs worth about $20 billion a year for everything from solid waste shredders to next-generation nuclear aircraft carriers. Yet NAVSEA historically had no established rules for running those hundreds of programs. And during the years it takes to build, say, a ship or a submarine, NAVSEA invariably lost many of its employees to retirement or new tours of duty. Out went the experience those employees gained about the acquisition process and in came increased time and costs to re-create that knowledge.

In 1999, NAVSEA began to look for a solution to its problems and found an answer in the form of a knowledge management database of acquisition best practices. But getting the database was only one challenge for NAVSEA, headquartered in Washington, D.C. NAVSEA had to get its 45,000 team members working around the country to participate in the new KM system. Given that the Navy’s culture emphasizes internal competition rather than cooperation, instilling the need to share information was a tough roadblock.

But NAVSEA did eventually win over many of its workers with the benefits of the acquisition knowledge database. And in the process, NAVSEA developed its own best practices for knowledge management implementation: Take it slow and show people why it pays to share.

Shape Up or Ship Out

The origins of the acquisition knowledge database go back to the Clinton administration. Tom Eden, then-director of NAVSEA’s Acquisition Reform Office, and others in the armed forces were charged by the former president to improve the way they bought things. Acquisition at NAVSEA is a protracted process -- building a ship or a high-tech warfare system takes several years. And once a ship or system is delivered, the cost to operate it is roughly 80 percent determined. So in an effort to cut costs and reduce the number of sailors required to operate a ship or system, the Navy wanted to focus on the way its products were made much earlier in the process. "We wanted to make sure we were getting what we wanted along the way, rather than waiting until we get the product years later," Eden says.

Eden oversaw the acquisition reform process that aimed to reduce the money and time spent to get a product to the fleet. As part of that effort, Eden sought to introduce a set of best practices for NAVSEA acquisitions. In the past, if one of NAVSEA’s buyers in Rhode Island wanted to learn about the purchasing process, Eden would fly in an expert to conduct a workshop in person. Wouldn’t it be better, Eden thought, to instead provide continuous access to expert knowledge?

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