Employment at Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard is expected to grow by 2015 to keep up with workload, but some fear efficiency problems at the yard could lead instead to its restructuring, major repair work being shifted to the Mainland and a drastic reduction in jobs for the state's largest industrial employer.

With a new military emphasis on the Pacific, the shipyard's 4,200 civilian workers could grow to 4,350 over the next seven years, officials say.

But tin-roofed, steel-sided structures built for World War I- and II-era requirements are now inefficient for work on nuclear submarines, and $2 billion in improvements are needed.

And, officials say, challenges also remain in on-time delivery and working toward goals as a unified shipyard, rather than as individual "shops."

"I can't say it's vulnerable for (Navy restructuring), but if I were them, I'd be worried about such things," said Philip Coyle, a defense analyst and former assistant secretary of defense who was on the Pentagon's Base Realignment and Closure, or BRAC, commission in 2005.

The shipyard at Pearl Harbor barely escaped inclusion on the list of military facilities to be shuttered when its operations and Portsmouth Naval Shipyard's operations were examined.

With the Navy shrinking following the end of the Cold War, the Defense Department concluded at the time that three of the Navy's shipyards could do the work of the existing four. Ultimately, none was closed through BRAC.

Coyle said Pearl Harbor has a reputation for being less efficient than the other Navy yards: Puget Sound in Washington; Norfolk in Virginia; and Portsmouth in Maine.

"It was a factor in the Navy's (base closure consideration), and they are under pressure to reduce costs all the time," Coyle said. "So if I had anything to do with the shipyard, I'd try to address those issues."

Overall, however, the strategic location of Pearl Harbor bodes well for the shipyard as it celebrates its 100-year anniversary. The Navy is shifting more submarines — the main source of work for the shipyard — to the Pacific to meet growing threats.

"From now through 2015, which is as far out as we program workload, Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard's workload goes up," said Capt. Gregory Thomas, shipyard commander.

By moving nine more submarines to the Pacific by 2011 — three Los Angeles-class, three Seawolf, and three from the new Virginia class — the Navy will achieve a 60-40 split of submarines in the Pacific and Atlantic, officials said.

The USS Texas, expected to arrive at its Pearl Harbor home port in October 2009, may be in drydock here for a year's worth of work in 2011. The USS Hawaii, another Virginia-class sub, will arrive in 2010.

The shipyard uses three drydocks, with BAE Systems, a contractor, using the fourth for surface ship work.

Thomas said the yard's biggest competition is itself.

"We know we can do better, and we will do better," he said. "We are better now than we were three years ago."

Some officials have said that if work gets siphoned off to other shipyards because it takes too long at Pearl Harbor, it could set up a permanent reduction in the type of maintenance the yard performs and turn the yard into a "mid-Pacific Jiffy Lube."

SUBMARINE WORK KEY

Pearl Harbor's ability to put a submarine on blocks in drydock for extended overhaul is the difference between a 4,200-worker yard and a 600-person facility that does everything else, officials said. About 600 military members also work in the shipyard.

Thomas said he's not worried about such a possibility, but "it's something we should be mindful of. Our performance should dictate the size of our yard, not anything else."

Recent performance shows results are mixed.

The USS Olympia pulled into the shipyard for an overhaul and reactor refueling — the last such refueling the Navy will ever do on the aging Los Angeles-class subs, officials said. Typically, the job takes about two years and costs about $200 million.

According to the shipyard, the sub is four to six months behind schedule, and as much as $20 million over budget. It is expected to be delivered before Christmas.

The shipyard said it was prohibited from discussing the specifics of the delay.

But a shipyard team completed a systems "takedown" on the submarine USS Key West in eight days — half the scheduled time and beating a previous shipyard best of 15 days in 2006.

The shipyard in March reported that the submarine USS Columbia, in Pearl Harbor for 15 months of work, was on track to be the fastest-ever depot modernization.

The yard also is working on or expected to soon work on the submarines Minneapolis-Saint Paul and Cheyenne, and surface ship Chosin, a cruiser. The destroyer Chung-Hoon finished an availability in April.

U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, D-Hawai'i, said Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard has a proud history dating back a hundred years.

"However, with shrinking defense dollars, we cannot be content to rest solely on our strategic military location," Inouye said. "We must continually raise the bar, improving our efficiencies, and completing our tasks on time and on budget."

On-time delivery is a key benchmark for the shipyard.

Thomas said the shipyard needs to continue to maintain safety and quality, and in conjunction with that, commanders need their submarines back on time.

A delay on one submarine keeps a crew and the Pacific Fleet commander waiting, and sometimes prevents another submarine from going into the yard for scheduled maintenance. Some Pearl subs have been routed to the East Coast for repairs.

"What our customer needs — because we've gone from 600 ships to 278 (in the Navy), from 140-plus (attack submarines) to 52 — is he needs his boats back," Thomas said.

Thomas, a former operations officer at Portsmouth Naval Shipyard who came to Pearl Harbor in June 2007, said his biggest emphasis has been "getting that sense of urgency to finish what you start — what's scheduled to be done today, you've got to get it done today."

The shipyard has been shifting from a mindset of "Hey, I'm a ship fitter, and the way my shop goes is the way I measure how well I'm doing," to a mindset of measuring performance by completed shipyard projects, he said.

A mantra for Thomas also has been that he never again wants to see a Pearl Harbor-based submarine be routed to the East Coast for maintenance as a result of past poor shipyard performance here.

EFFICIENCY NEEDS WORK

In 2005, the BRAC commission said there was sufficient excess shipyard capacity to "realign" the workload of either the Pearl Harbor or Portsmouth shipyard. The nine-member commission fell two votes short of including Pearl Harbor on the closure list.

The fear of losing the shipyard — and the $1.3 billion impact it had on Hawai'i's $50 billion-a-year economy — jump-started efforts to improve.

Hawai'i's strategic advantage in the Pacific also has proven to be a disadvantage for shipyard efficiency.

Although the shipyard works with the University of Hawai'i, it can't recruit engineers fast enough to replace aging workers, 25 percent of whom are now eligible to retire.

Additionally, "emergent" work, including fixing ships and submarines that have breakdowns while under way in the Pacific, require immediate attention, and can throw off schedules.

Matt Hamilton, president of the Hawai'i Federal Employees Metal Trades Council, the bargaining agent for about 2,500 shipyard workers, agrees that efficiency needs to be improved.

"We are in the process now. We are improving," he said.

Hamilton said the Olympia overhaul fell behind "for reasons I can't talk about."

"The Columbia, the Key West, we're moving forward on those and we'll really try to get those out on time," he said.

Hamilton said the Navy finally has acknowledged the "emergent" repair work the shipyard does, and is building more time into completion schedules to take that into account.

"Before, what would happen, I believe, is that people would come up with an unreal schedule to try to please Washington," he said. "We'd come up with a schedule, and they'd say, 'That's not good enough, do it faster.' "

Hamilton added that "it's not a question that the workers aren't efficient." Rather, Hamilton echoed what Thomas, the shipyard commander, says about pulling all the individual efforts together as a whole.

VITAL, BUT OUTDATED

An additional problem for Pearl Harbor is its infrastructure — aging tin-roofed, steel-sided buildings that may be historic, but are not suitable for nuclear submarine work. Nor are they located where shipyard workers need them most.

The shipyard has identified the need for $2 billion in improvements over the next 20 years. Where it will come from is a question mark.

Thomas said shipyards like Portsmouth have sturdy "brick and mortar" construction already, as well as granite block docks "that will be here long after you and I are gone."

Inouye previously said the shipyard would receive $30 million to improve drydock services as part of a modernization effort to remain competitive with other Navy yards.

Hamilton takes the Navy to task on infrastructure funding.

"The only time we get an improvement in our infrastructure is what comes from our Congressional delegation (in markups)," Hamilton said. "It doesn't come from the Navy (budget)."

The strategic advantage of Pearl Harbor in the Pacific will continue to play in the shipyard's favor as it enters its next 100 years of service.

"The Pearl Harbor Naval Shipyard is a national asset providing essential ship repair services on the front lines of the Pacific Theater," said U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, D-Hawai'i. "It is also an economic engine in Hawai'i's economy that creates job opportunities for a highly-skilled workforce."

In an era of "persistent conflict," with ships and submarines to address new threats, the shipyard must continue to modernize to be able to maintain and repair 21st-century ships and submarines, Abercrombie said.

But there have been painful job cuts in the past, including a reduction from 4,132 civilian workers to 2,803 in 1996. A merger with the Intermediate Maintenance Facility at Pearl Harbor brought those numbers closer to where they stand today.

And there is uncertainty in the future.

Coyle, the former BRAC member, said there is talk of serious defense budget drawdowns when and if the United States gets out of Iraq, and that would put additional pressure on shipyards, including Pearl Harbor.