LHD landing craft - case study

The Royal Australian Navy (RAN) has a fleet of 12 amphibious landing craft purpose built for the landing helicopter dock (LHD) ships – HMAS Canberra and HMAS Adelaide.

These LHD landing craft (LLC) allow the movement of troops, equipment and vehicles from land to ship where there are no port facilities.

LLC have been integral in the support of humanitarian missions delivering disaster relief aid and specialist teams, including responding to the Fijian tropical cyclone in 2016.  

The challenge

The RAN needs the LLC fleet to maintain a certain level of availability and reliability given the nature of its role, and that it is often at sea and hard to access.

The fleet requires regular maintenance as well as unplanned servicing when needs arise.

Our solution

UGL provided maintenance support services including preventative and corrective maintenance to the fleet of 12 LLC for the Royal Australian Navy from their delivery to the RAN in 2014 until 2022.

UGL’s scope of work included:

• operating
• engineering
• maintenance and
• supply support services including:
  
  • management of preventative and corrective work
  • planning, scheduling and maintenance management
  • engineering design and configuration controls
  • supply chain support
  • safety, quality and environmental controls
  • subcontractor management

Regular mandatory maintenance of each craft includes:

• maintenance of:
  
  • valves
  • gauges
  • sensors
• hot works and structural repairs
  
  • damage and age repairs
• hulk and cargo deck preservation
  
  • blast, preparation, paint, livery

The scope also included emergent repairs which needed to be completed in the field where possible.

Key successes

UGL delivered many benefits to the client including:

• continually improving the craft availability and reliability ensuring the needs are either consistently met or exceeded
• streamlining the mandatory maintenance into work packs to improve efficiency and availability
• increasing the visibility of the vessels for the client so they can see where they are, the state of the craft and what is in the pipeline with regards to maintenance
• continuing to embed activities that improve the availability of the vessels
• delivering continuous improvements to the vessels to address advances in Defence equipment

UGL participated in the Capability Acquisition and Sustainment Group (CASG) Performance Exchange Industry and Defence Scorecard program. This program allows both CASG and the industry partner (UGL) to peer review each other across a multitude of areas. 

UGL was scored the highest rating overall achieving an excellent (purple) rating from the SPO which provided a clear confidence in UGL by the SPO.