The Challenge
A major component of the Victoria In-Service Support Contract (VISSC) is conducting Extended Docking Work Periods (EDWPs), where Babcock maintains, refits, and overhauls Canada’s fleet of Victoria Class Submarines.
One of the requirements of each EDWP is to survey and remove a number of the acoustic tiles that are applied to the submarine’s structure. Among other things, these tiles are crucial to the sound-proofing and cloaking of the Victoria Class Submarines as they move through the water.
During previous EDWP docking periods, tiles were removed mechanically using hand tools with numerous scaffolding modifications required, which has proven to be a very labour intensive and slow process. For HMCS Corner Brook, given the higher than normal number of tiles that needed to be removed, it was estimated that the time required to remove the tiles using the existing method would take over 37,000 hours of labour.