Leadership1 publisher2 min readPublished
Navy's submarine office leans on states and transit agencies to get workers to the yards
Navy submarine officials are backing bus pilots and transit deals as the service plans to hire 250,000 skilled workers over the next decade. The office calls the commute make-or-break for recruiting, though its published results so far count riders and aid dollars.
The Board Room · Leadership desk
What happened
- Erica Logan, the office's workforce director, said her team assesses each yard's region on education, demographics, unemployment, cost of living and transportation.
- General Dynamics Electric Boat partnered with Rhode Island's transit authority on direct service to Quonset Point, where ridership more than doubled year over year at no cost to the Navy.
- A Hampton Roads maritime training program has provided nearly $200,000 in transportation aid, including gas cards and bus passes, since September 2023, funded by grants, donations and Virginia.
- The office has not funded permanent housing or subsidies for shipyard or supplier workers, relying on state and local efforts and partnerships with individual yards or vendors.
Compiled by The Board RoomSomething wrong?How this is made
Why it matters
- cost The commute's cost lands on contractors, transit agencies and state budgets, so yards in regions without a willing local payer have fewer ways to reach recruits.
- decision Suppliers choosing where to recruit or expand face a Navy regional assessment that weighs transport beside cost of living, so the commute belongs in the hiring budget with the wage.
- constraint Grant-funded transit aid has to be renewed against a need averaging 25,000 hires a year for a decade, and a lapse in one region's funding would show up in that year's hiring.
The Navy's Submarine Industrial Base Program Office works on pay and work-life balance as it rebuilds the network of builders and suppliers behind the boats [11]. It also tracks problems particular to single communities [11]. Erica Logan's questions start with the road. "What does the transportation system look like? Is it a very rural area where there may not be transportation?" she said. "How would we get folks there? What could we do to help a supplier that lives in an area like that?" [3]
The size of the requirement sets the time frame. The Navy expects to need 250,000 skilled workers over the next 10 years to replace those lost to attrition and retirement [10]. That averages 25,000 hires a year [12]. A bus pilot is something a region can set up within a year. It then has to keep running, and keep its funding, for every year the yards hire at that pace.
In the two cases the office has published, the Navy connected the parties and someone else carried the cost [6][7]. Its housing work follows the same approach [8]. The trade-off is reach against control. The office gets programs fitted to each region for little federal money, and it cannot promise a program where no local partner will pay. The pilots have already prompted further questions about free bus passes and van pools [4].
Ridership counts passengers. The Navy needs to count hires. The office did not release hiring or retention figures for workers who use the pilots, and its view that transport can decide whether a region attracts workers is its own judgment [1]. Logan described the progress in terms of understanding. "I think we've done a lot in that area using this regional approach to really just get a good understanding of what that region has," she said [5].
The evidence supports putting the commute into a workforce plan beside the wage, though it does not yet measure the effect on who stays. Trainees get more direct help. The Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing program in Danville, Virginia, houses students through its 16-week course, part of an effort to keep a steady flow of workers into naval shipbuilding [9].
For a supplier near a rural yard, the first step is inexpensive. It can join a regional pilot, or broker a direct route with a transit agency as Electric Boat did at Quonset Point [6]. A recruiting plan built on a grant or a transit board's budget is exposed to that budget every year, and the Hampton Roads money comes from funders outside the shipyard [7].
What to watch
- Whether the office publishes hiring or retention figures for workers who ride the bus pilots, which would test its claim that transport decides recruiting.
- Whether the grants, donations and Virginia money behind the Hampton Roads transportation aid are renewed.
- Whether the free bus pass and van pool questions turn into funded programs, and which party pays for them.