NAVSEA Discovery Team Advances Shipyard Maintenance Innovation

NAVSEA Discovery Team Advances Shipyard Maintenance Innovation

By Brittny Odoms, NSWC Carderock Public Affairs

The Naval Sea Systems (NAVSEA) Discovery Team is helping drive innovation across the Navy's public shipyards by identifying technologies and process improvements designed to increase the operational availability of ships and submarines.

Part of Engineering Initiatives for Naval Shipyards (EI-NSY), the Discovery Team serves as the front door to NAVSEA enterprise resources supporting maintenance improvement and innovation efforts.

The effort traces its roots to 2021, when Naval Sustainment System-Shipyards (NSS-SY) established a system of "pillars" focused on improving naval maintenance performance. NSS-SY tasked the Engineering Pillar with addressing challenges across the engineering enterprise, including reducing maintenance availability duration, reassessing technical requirements, leveraging innovative technologies and developing uniform standards for repeatable work across ship platforms.

To support that mission, officials established the Engineering Intervention to identify solutions to reduce labor requirements within the 100-700 SWLIN series of shipyard project work. However, by spring 2022, officials recognized the need for a more direct connection between shipyards and headquarters organizations.

The Discovery Team was created to bridge that gap by bringing ideas from the shipyards directly to NAVSEA leadership and enterprise stakeholders.

"Our goal is to identify opportunities to complete maintenance faster, safer and more efficiently," said Mike Tracy, Discovery Team lead. "We want to ensure shipyard workers and engineers have a pathway to propose innovative ideas and receive support to move them forward."

The team focuses on three major areas: evaluating technical requirements that may be overly stringent, implementing new technologies and methods to reduce maintenance time, and securing funding for improvement and innovation projects.

The Discovery Team also serves as an entry point for employees across the enterprise to submit improvement ideas. Cross-organizational stakeholders review proposals and provide feedback through the Discovery Team Advisory Panel, which helps participants refine problem statements, prepare approval requests and define funding requirements.

In its first year, the team surpassed its initial goal by identifying 90,000 man-days of potential savings across the Navy's four public shipyards over a two-year period.

To date, the team has received more than 250 ideas, generating additional initiatives and partnerships to support emerging maintenance improvement efforts. The team recently held its spring 2026 update sessions to evaluate these new proposals and share technical milestones across the enterprise.

Command leadership is prioritizing wider internal and external awareness of these resources to maximize their impact across the enterprise.

"My goal is to make people aware of these efforts to help our shipyards," said Dr. Paul Lara, NSWC Carderock chief engineer.

Following the conclusion of the NSS-SY effort, NAVSEA 05 elected to continue the Engineering Pillar's work under the banner of Engineering Initiatives for Naval Shipyards.

As NAVSEA continues organizational transitions and defines Portfolio Acquisition Executive structures, senior leaders at the Washington Navy Yard have reaffirmed their support for EI-NSY and the Discovery Team's mission.

"The greatest opportunity and potential strength we see is increased collaboration with other improvement and innovation organizations," Tracy said. "If we choose to come together, we will do amazing things that will help shipyards deliver ships to the fleet on time."

Tracy added that continued cooperation across the enterprise will ultimately help sailors accomplish their missions and strengthen the Navy's ability to protect the nation.