The two teams competing for the Navy’s Consolidated Afloat Networks and Enterprise Services (CANES) contract are both taking different approaches to how they look to reduce infrastructure and increase capability across surface ship networks.
Both Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Northrop Grumman [NOC] wrapped up successful preliminary design reviews (PDR) earlier this month and are now working toward critical design review and an eventual down select to a single contractor in 2011 (Defense Daily, August 19).
Lockheed Martin was able to complete its PDR in one day, Karen Conti, vice president for the CANES program, told sister publication Defense Daily recently.
“I think our PDR presentation was tightly constructed. There weren’t a lot of loose ends, no actions we had to go off, from that meeting, and research and get back to the Navy on,” she said.
Prior to PDR, the company provided some documentation to the Navy, Conti noted. “We are working through and closing on that as far as Navy comments on that documentation. But as far as PDR goes, it seemed to me we answered all the Navy’s questions real-time in the meeting.”
“I think that was the most significant issue in being able to close in one day,” she added.
In addition to finishing PDR in one day, Conti said the Navy had no requests for action.
“No additional Requests for Action (RFAs) were assigned (to the Lockheed Martin team) during the PDR meeting,” she said.
Conti also acknowledged the work the company has done on the CANES Early Adopters as part of the reason it had a successful PDR.
“Our team is extremely familiar with the shipboard computing environment and what it takes in being successful in qualifying a system and putting it onboard a ship,” she said. “We have over 7,500 displays, consoles, work stations out there.”
The Early Adopters Initiative is a common computing environment that is serving as a risk mitigator for the CANES program (Defense Daily, June 10).
“We have 15 years of lessons learned of how to put shipboard computing infrastructure out in the field, and on the warfighters’ platforms and I think that really helps us on our design, as far as maturity,” Conti added.
Lockheed Martin is also relying on the capabilities of its Technology Collaboration Center in San Diego, to help bring in software and hardware companies to help on the CANES effort, Conti said.
“That facility primarily is what we call an incubator for small business,” she said. “It has program of record equipment and lab space that small businesses can come in and test [with].”
Opening up the door to small contractors who might bring a niche capability has been one of the cornerstones of Lockheed Martin’s CANES effort.
And while Lockheed Martin has seen some of its CANES contributors disappear, for a variety of reasons, the company has been able to fill the vacancies and even bring on new firms, Conti said.
“We’ve had two small businesses disband and we’ve replaced them and we’ve added additional small businesses based on some key capabilities,”: she said. “For example we had a company called Integrits–a local small business. They have a great capability in the area of test and evaluation. We added them to our team in the last month or so.”
The day Lockheed Martin was awarded the 14-month system, design and development phase contract it added Del Rey, another small company that focuses on logistics, Conti said.
“That was an area we thought we’d like to get some folks involved that have experience with SPAWAR logistics. Of course Lockheed Martin has logistics expertise, but we were looking for past performance specifically tailored toward SPAWAR so we brought Del Rey on board,” she said.
Lockheed Martin also recently brought in MRC, a small woman-owned business to help provide graphics support.
“Those are three businesses we added in the last three months because they have niche capability that we felt would strengthen our team,” Conti said.