THE NAVY���S NEW
REA CRAFT
BY KEITH INGRAM
W
hen the contract for the Royal New Zealand
Navy���s new Rapid Environmental Assessment
craft was announced it certainly sent a ripple
of consternation through the New Zealand boat
building industry. How can a company who have never built
a boat win a New Zealand Defence Force contract worth over
NZ$1.5 million? Good question, and given that the contract
specified two vessels only nine metres in length, one would have
thought every boat builder in town would
be having a go. Not so. In fact the Navy/
otally
Defence procurement team were totally
nders
disappointed with the number of tenders
submitted.
zen
We understand that less than a dozen
rse,
tenders were submitted and it gets worse,
w
the majority were from Australia. Now to
m,
be fair to the NZDF, given past criticism,
de
they want to buy New Zealand-made
et
and only one of the local tenders met
ny
the contract budget. Yes, the company
at
was a relative unknown in the boat
w
building world, but they had built a few
t
boats and employed very competent
designers and boat builders, so after
due diligence was done the contract
was let to Northland Spars and
Rigging of Opua.
In doing so, and given the initial
A functio
response from industry, the Navy
nal
helm posi
tion
is very mindful that the Defence
tender process is quite foreboding,
20 Professional Skipper March/April 2013
3
sometimes involving a huge amount of unnecessary paperwork.
After all, we were not building a battleship, rather, two small
support vessels. Besides the paperwork, one of the foreboding
thing���s about NZDF contracts is the Military requirement to have
the parts list of spares, in NATO numbers, as well as the full
operating manual, and a raft of other complicated requirements.
This is all very well for a big ship but for a boat that is expected
to be a turn-key delivery, it is just not practical.
Granted, the builder can supply a vessel operation manual
ever
detailing every aspect of the vessel and its
operating parameters, along with
all manufacturer���s support manuals.
Most boat builders would not have
a clue about NATO parts numbers,
b
but they could supply a parts list with
m
manufacturers numbers. Likewise, it
is not practical to expect them to
te
tell a Naval Cox���n how to operate
hi
his boat in a given seaway, they can
on
only set safe working guidelines,
ma
manufacturers specifications and
wa
warranty requirements.
H
Hopefully, Navy bosses on high take
note and will simplify the process for the
next round of tenders for any new RNZN
vess
vessels. This should provide the added
bene
benefit of a competitive tender pricing
round and give the NZDF more supplier
option
options.
Thi
This aside, the contract was let to a Kiwi
compa
company venturing into the unknown and
