Military MRO: How the French government wants to |
| Helen Chachaty in Bordeaux-Merignac |
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18 OCT 2018 | 594 words
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© ADS Show |
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"MRO was becoming the Achilles heel of our armed forces; it had been put on hold for far too long". The Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly hammered the point home to a packed audience of industrialists and military chiefs on 27th September at the ADS Show, dedicated to military aviation MRO. Raising the reform of aviation maintenance which was launched on 11th December last year in Evreux, the minister talked about a "new and balanced relationship between industry and the Government", with the objective of moving towards "knowing each other better and real teamwork".
The objective are ambitious. Florence Parly reminded everyone that she wanted "results quickly" - even if in reality the rise in certain availability rates next year would be more due to measures taken before the MOC reform was announced. In particular, the minister has declared her ambition to double the availability rate for the A400M fleet, a prospect which seems perfectly reasonable (see: Bright times ahead for the A400M programme); to go from six to seven Atlantique 2s available and target a 15 percent increase in H225M Caracal availability.
The cornerstone of the reform is the vertical organisation of maintenance contracts, with a single industrial project manager who will be directly responsible to the customer. "Fleet by fleet" analyses will enable a reduction from some twenty or even thirty maintenance contracts to "a few contracts", according to Monique Legrand-Larroche, who was appointed last April to the head of the new Aeronautical maintenance department (DMAé).
As an example, Florence Parly mentioned the Rafale fleet, which should go from 25 contracts to two main contracts "by 2019". Within the same order of scale, the Atlantique 2 fleet should go from 24 to three contracts. One other significant measure is the systematic use of "platform-based operation and one-stop shops at bases", declared the minister, with the practice already in place on certain fleets, such as the Rafale. The DMAé director also indicated that "to increase availability, we have chosen global, long-term contracts, for five to ten years, with a vertical work organisation, where we have committed to the future".
As for the industrial companies, some of them admit that this organisation is "worrying". While the reform represents a "major strategic objective" and would provide "visibility for turnover", it is still the case that increased responsibility will mean that many contracts will need to be "broken" and renegotiated. Moving to "availability commitment" type agreements would be "virtuous" but above all "essential", particularly for equipment providers. A few conditions would still need to be met for the change to be successful: access to data (fault reports, repair data, use by armed forces, etc.) to be able to take the appropriate measures if an event occurs.
Tender processes have been launched and some should be concluded by the end of 2018. They will act as models for future maintenance contracts. As we indicated last June, the army's Fennec fleet could be the first "guinea pigs" for the process. Still with helicopters, a competitive tender process is also in progress to provide support for the Super Puma VIPs based at Villacoublay, and the Dauphins in French Polynesia. Discussions are also said to be in progress to set up a "pilot model" for vertical organisation contracts for the Cougar fleet, co-contracted with Héli-Union. The offer should be submitted to the DMAé by the end of the year with the service hopefully commissioned soon afterwards. In keeping with the Armed Forces Minister's ambition, let's hope that "each Euro is a Euro well spent". |
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