February 29, 2024

Whitney Jones - Submarine Construction, Technology, and Skilled Workforce

40 minutes

In this episode of NucleCast, Adam Lowther interviews Whitney Jones. She is the Director, Submarine Industrial Base (SIB), a component of the Navy’s (DON) Program Executive Office, Strategic Submarines (PEO SSBN). about the workforce challenges in submarine construction. They discuss the unique challenges of building submarines, the need for skilled tradespeople, and the efforts to recruit and retain a skilled workforce. They also address the impact of high cost of living areas on workforce development and the importance of leveraging technology for workforce training.

As Director of SIB, Ms. Jones is responsible for leading enterprise efforts to develop and deploy the industrial base capacity and capability required to build and sustain submarine warfighting needs. In this capacity, Ms. Jones is accountable for collaborative efforts across defense workforce, technology, infrastructure development, process change, and data analytics. Her role focuses on fostering relationships between Navy and industry to improve communications, industrial processes, and capacity planning.

Before assuming the role as Director in February 2022, Ms. Jones served as Deputy, Shipbuilding Industrial Base Task Force, where she leveraged her shipbuilding acquisition and supply chain experience to coordinate cross-enterprise projects and oversee strategic communications. She also led Navy Enterprise response, engagement, and assessment of the impacts of COVID-19 on the defense industrial base, working closely with industry to mitigate the pandemic’s impact on key suppliers by maintaining defense supply chains as part of “critical infrastructure” exempt from work stoppages.

Additionally, she served as the submarine enterprise lead for a Columbia (CLB) and Virginia Submarine (VCS) Industrial Base assessment with Office of Secretary of Defense (OSD) Cost Assessment Program Evaluation (CAPE). During this same time period, she implemented submarine enterprise efforts on benchmark setting workforce development pilots including Accelerated Training in Defense Manufacturing (ATDM) and the Pennsylvania Talent Pipeline Project.

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