>> My name is Kent Sturgeon.
I am a waterfront supervisor for the
Piping and Mechanical Submarine Branch
at Norfolk Naval Shipyard
in Portsmouth, Virginia.
My job on a daily basis consists of coming in,
looking at outstanding problems that we have,
determining what their priority is within
the shipyard, in order to meet specific goals
that they're trying to meet on different
projects, and then managing the individuals
in my code, and trying to make sure we get
those problems answered in a timely fashion.
A sample of my typical day, come in, review
those outstanding problems that we have,
put together a list of what those things
are, have a meeting with our group leads
within the codes that are the system matter
experts on different systems within a submarine,
manage those issues, try to figure
out when we're going to get them done,
are there any things that are
holding us up, such as material,
or concurrences from other
codes within the shipyard.
It's also then helping manage those people,
answering questions from the projects.
Projects will call up with additional issues.
Some of them may be brand new that are on fire
that are stopping a job on the deck-plate level.
So we'll need to send individuals
down to go do a ship check,
or go troubleshoot something that has come up.
And then part of my job also entails
making sure that our second shift
and follow-on shifts get the correct information
for things that they may need to follow
up on later on that day, or to provide them
with work so that they can be productive,
and so that we can get the assets
overhauled and returned back to the Navy.
In general, you know, I work
about a 9- to 10-hour day.
I like to get in early when
there's nobody there.
I can kind of focus on what I need to get done.
It also allows me to get everything
together that my coworkers need
in order for their jobs efficiently.
Due to our security clearances and
a lot of the programs that we need,
there's not really the ability
to work from home.
In general most of my time is
spent in the yard doing work.
There are certain aspects within the
Navy where you do travel quite a bit
to support different boats that you work on.
Working on submarines they're usually pretty
guarded as far as where they do home courts,
or do port visits when they're overseas.
A lot of our work if we're going to
go overseas is for emergent repairs.
The boat will be out on deployment,
something breaks, it needs to be fixed
so that the boat can continue on its deployment.
So we'll send teams to go out to do that.
Most of our travel consists of going to other
naval bases, whether it be the naval base there
in Norfolk to places in King's Bay or
our training unit down in Charleston,
to support either upcoming availabilities
for ships coming into the yard,
or to do repair work at those facilities.
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