BIW’s Blasters and Painters were recognized with a 2024 Manufacturing Excellence Award for their work painting the underwater hull of the future USS Harvey C. Barnum Jr. (DDG 124) while it was in drydock.
Painting the underwater hull in the drydock freed up space on Land Level for the integration of Louis H. Wilson Jr. (DDG 126), BIW’s first Flight III destroyer.
The Paint Shop combined an “Old School” approach with new ideas and a continuous-improvement mindset to reduce the underwater hull process time by 50 percent, creating an additional 33 percent capacity at the Land Level stage of construction. Our customer recognized it as BIW’s “Best Underwater Hull.”
“With anything new, you always come across difficulties you have to deal with,” said Sandblaster Zach Canning. “We had to deal with the wind, which wasn’t an issue on Land Level.”
Another drydock-benefit, crews were also able to move about in condo lifts more freely without having the constraints of nearby OSTs.
Department leadership brought the crystal excellence trophy around to each shift and thanked the crews for making the new approach successful.
“The blast went well, the paint went well,” Charlie Hallett told a group of blasters and painters. “It was a big honor to represent you guys.”
“People came up to us after we were done presenting, and they were just amazed at what we do,” said David Kinee. He told the crews, “It doesn’t happen unless you guys do it.”
Blasters and Preservation Technicians are applying lessons learned on DDG 124 to the bottom hull painting for the future USS Patrick Gallagher (DDG 127), which is also being done in the drydock.
