Outsourcing services: a strategic direction for ICT at Damen Naval

If everything goes according to plan, it will be fully implemented by the end of next year: the ambitious Master Plan that ICT Manager Egbert Stuit and his team have written for Damen Naval’s ICT department. The most important spearhead in the plan is the outsourcing of a large part of the ICT work. This outsourcing must be largely completed by the end of 2022. Looking back on 2021, Egbert concludes that “a lot has happened”: “A lot was asked of our people, but the team did a great job”. He looks to the future with optimism.

“ICT is of course a very important link in the F126 project, the construction of the four frigates for the German Navy,” Egbert says. “And our department has had to step up a gear over the past year to keep up with the pace of change that this assignment has brought to our company. The German project essentially resulted in considerable growth for the company. But it also involves a lot of external parties, all of whom have to communicate and cooperate with the Project Team.”

“However, this team works in a restricted environment and that, combined with the complexity of this project, poses an additional challenge. We have now written a Master Plan, which outlines our ICT policy for the coming year. An important intention is that we will outsource ICT services to external parties in 2022. The contract negotiations can hopefully be finalised this month. IBM will also be involved in the implementation of our Master Plan. Considering the necessary secrecy surrounding the F126 project, Damen Naval had to choose companies for this outsourcing process that have been approved by the Dutch Military Intelligence and Security Service, the MIVD.”

Egbert says that the fact that IBM is building a new computer environment for the Defence Materiel Organisation (DMO) also played a role in the choice of IBM. Damen Naval, as a permanent partner of DMO within the Golden Triangle, could possibly benefit from this. “IBM could repeat the trick that they are doing for DMO for us,” he says. But, according to Egbert, the purpose of the outsourcing operation goes even further. “We want to get to a situation where it will soon be quite normal for a company to buy services – in this case ICT – from third parties.”

“Just like electricity that you get from the wall socket, ICT should soon become a commodity service, an extra service that you as a company purchase as standard from an external party. This can provide Damen Naval with stability in project progress, predictability in terms of costs and reliability in tackling problems. And ultimately it saves you a lot of headaches as a company. You have to organise it internally in such a way that outsourcing is easy to manage. If all of that is successful, you can concentrate as a company on other points of improvement within the organisation.”

According to Egbert, the ‘big picture’ behind the Master Plan is that ICT must grow into a department that, as a business enabler, actively optimises all business processes – from engineering to work preparation and from finance to HR – while ICT is currently still primarily a facilitating department. “If that process succeeds, it will automatically lead to the purchase and application of new technologies that will substantially improve the execution of projects and ultimately, therefore, build better ships and become more competitive in the market.”

“It would be ideal if all companies within Damen Shipyards Group used the same software. The engineering package that Damen Naval delivers to the shipyards in Vlissingen-Oost or Galati where they actually build the ships is put together with different software than the software they use at those shipyards. We have to move towards a uniform digital platform for designing ships; that is the dot on the horizon. With such a uniform package, shipyards within the Damen Group, as well as all the contractors and subcontractors involved, will soon be able to work more efficiently anywhere in the world.”

“Digitisation and automation are the basis of everything. You can use them to improve your business processes so that you can build ships faster and safer in the long run. Damen Naval is playing a pioneering role within the Group in order to put these ideas into practice Damen-wide.” Egbert looks back on a hectic, but fruitful first year as ICT Manager at Damen Naval. “But since I started here in April, we have fortunately solved quite a few problems. In the meantime, a good number of people have had to work remotely again because of COVID, and there are more of them now than during the first corona wave last year. But the switch from working in an office to working from home has gone well.”

“In addition, several applications have become available to the Project Team in the past year, such as Dassault’s new 3DX platform, which has now been further refined and extended. That process is going very well. And all the signs are in place for a switch to a new ERP system in early 2022. ERP – Enterprise Resource Planning – is a computer programme that supports all processes within a company. We are still using a system from BAAN, but after January we will migrate to a more modern application, from SAP, a well-known supplier of business software.”

“When the outsourcing is completed at the end of 2022, we will continue as a more compact organisation as part of a further professionalisation drive. We now work with just under a hundred ICT staff. The use of many external contractors in our current organisation makes downsizing a lot easier. A lot was demanded of the people. But our leadership team has put in a lot of time and energy to ensure that hopefully everyone will be able to successfully complete the transition. We are taking everyone through the process as best we can.”