Volpe Center: Volpe Center Highlights

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Volpe Center Highlights - November/December 2005

Organizational Excellence

Photo of Coast Guard Cutter Hawser as it steams up the East River near lower Manhattan.

Coast Guard Cutter Hawser steams up the East River near lower Manhattan during a homeland security patrol in March 2005. The Volpe Center is supporting the recapitalizing of the Coast Guard's aging fleet to help ensure cutter readiness. (USCG photo by PA1 Mike Hvozda)

Sustaining the Life-Cycle of Boats and Cutters (Coast Guard)

The U.S. Coast Guard has implemented efforts to document its requirements and to tie these requirements to critical missions and to boat and cutter readiness. In support of these efforts, the Volpe Center recently completed a Life-Cycle Recapitalization Plan, which involved performing an engineering analysis of boats and cutters currently in the Coast Guard fleet, and defining the requirements to keep them running until they are replaced under the Integrated Deepwater System (Deepwater program). As the Deepwater program is scheduled to take 25 years, keeping the legacy assets running is essential.

Based on engineering data, manufacturing data, and data collected from the cutters, Center staff analyzed more than 600 systems on more than 400 vessels and developed a 30-year plan that would cost $2.2 billion to keep the fleet running until the replacements are commissioned. Messrs. Robert Pray, Dave Crawford, Joe Koziol, Mario Caputo, and Chris Murray, all of the Technology Applications and Deployment Division, contributed to the study and wrote the report.

The Volpe Center is currently performing an economic analysis of the plan to determine the most economical time to perform the individual system recapitalizations. This involves the review of more than 27,000 data entries on system failure and repair costs. Ms. Sarah Dammen of the Economic and Industry Analysis Division is assisting in this effort.

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