SA Growth Plan in Advanced Manuf

The article listed below was published in The Australian today. It goes some way to explaining why Cedar Woods has invested so heavily in its development projects in Adelaide. Building suitable residential accommodation for families connected to the creation of advanced manufacturing and the high paying jobs that creates.

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Future Submarine Program to propel SA economy

$80 billion investment in the Navy's future class of subs will create thousands of jobs and decades of employment for South Australia.
Sam Duncan


Live, work and invest in the future.
The replacement of Australia’s ageing Collins-class submarines with 12 new high-tech boats is big business. In fact, it’s the largest Defence acquisition in the nation’s history.
To give context to the scale of this procurement program, a comparison between the complexity of building a fighter jet and a submarine is useful — the former takes about 57,000 hours and requires roughly 30,000 parts; to build an Attack-class submarine is an estimated eight million hours and one million parts.
With the first vessels of the Future Submarine Program (FSP) scheduled to enter service in the mid-2030s and the last build set to hit the water in the 2050s, the $80bn project wiill continue to benefit South Australia’s economy beyond 2080 — the scheduled retirement date for the fleet.
Director of the Australian Industrial Transformation Institute at Flinders University, Professor John Spoehr, says with the closure of the automotive industry, shipbuilding is set to be a major driver of manufacturing output and jobs in SA and other parts of the nation for decades to come.
“There are various estimates of the jobs impact of the FSP,” he says. “The direct impact is estimated to average about 1100jobs per annum and the indirect impact in the supply chain is about 1700.”
But the actual numbers will vary from year to year as it ramps up during the next five years, he adds.
The program is in the preliminary design phase, with a team of Australians currently in France working with Naval Group, the French shipbuilder contracted to build the subs based on the design of its Shortfin Barracuda.
“We currently employ 198 people in Australia with a further 500 skilled personnel in France,” says Gary Swarbrick, chief technical officer for Naval Group Australia. “At our peak in 2028-29, we will have about 1800 people working on the program.”

During the detailed design phase, the work is expected to transition to Adelaide’s Osborne Shipyard where planning is underway for a new shed, bigger than the Adelaide Oval Stadium, for building the new submarines.
The construction of a hull qualification section, which will certify Australian workers before the first vessel can be built, is projected to commence at Osborne in 2023.
“Nineteen Australian engineers are currently living in Cherbourg, France, learning the know-how and know-why of submarine design,” says Swarbrick. “We have just recruited a further 15 Australian engineers who will soon be travelling to Cherbourg. Then they will return to Australia to oversee the detailed design and build phases of the subs.”
Professor Spoehr says the FSP build and sustainment program will, in addition to creating thousands of jobs, generate high-value contracts for hundreds of companies.
“The key to this is hard targets for content and jobs and a commitment to working with companies and the workforce to build new capability and capacity,” he says.
Naval Group and the Defence Department in February took steps to reassure Australian industry that this would be the case, confirming that 137 Australian companies had, to date, been awarded subcontracts and at least 60 per cent of the value of the FSP would be spent in Australia.
PwC estimates that SA’s Gross State Profit will benefit by about $134bn over the life of the entire naval shipbuilding program, which includes Future Submarines and the Future Frigates Program already underway. It’s the equivalent of more than $6000 per household each year.
The sheer complexity of submarine building will see the spend spread across a wide range of sectors. The construction industry is already benefiting from the build of the new site at Osborne. And there’s engineering, metal fabrication, machining, electrical and electronics, pumps, piping, hydraulics, batteries, engines and propulsion, optics and sensors, automation and robotics, welding, instrumentation, weapons systems, education and training, and professional services, all set for a shot in the arm.

Dr Giselle Rampersad, professor in innovation at the College of Science and Engineering at Flinders University, says large shipbuilding programs have ripple effects on research and development (R&D), improved manufacturing approaches and spill-overs to other industries.
She says there had been earlier concerns that the “smarts” (intelligent R&D) would be done overseas, with an Australian labour force only getting the low-end welding and assembly work.
But fortunately, that hasn’t been the case, she says. “I am very pleased to see that Australian universities have started to make inroads in supplying and undertaking the intelligent R&D that feeds into these programs.”
Dr Rampersad is leading a $2.9m program, in partnership with BAE Systems, ASC shipbuilding and the Innovative Manufacturing Cooperative Research Centre, on the use of innovative manufacturing technologies in shipbuilding and the supply chain.
“This explores how we can use digital technologies for the digital shipyards,” she says.
“Technologies such as “cobots” (collaborative robots) to reduce heavy lifting and repetitive work … as well as automated ground vehicles to collect parts and materials at the shipyard, transport and deliver them autonomously to where they need to be used.”
Dr Rampersad says manufacturing capability is critical for sovereign capability development.
“The coronavirus has shed light on our over-reliance on global supply chains and the need to diversify the Australian economy,” she says.
“If done well, the defence investment can be leveraged to reboot our manufacturing capability in areas of need and comparative advantage.
“Transformation of the South Australian economy is likely through improved cost efficiency in manufacturing, with increased awareness, adoption and diffusion of industry 4.0 technologies and upskilling of workers.”