 John Wilcock. Hello. My name's John Wilcock. As I said, I'm the head of manufacturing strategy. Today, you're going to hear a lot of words. I'll focus on complexity and structure. So I'm going to take you a little bit deeper into the context of the submarine build programme. Because if you don't get that complexity, you won't get why we use an architected approach. We needed something and we needed it badly. Right, Matthew, that's good going. So what I'm going to take you through is who are we, but a little bit deeper, more in context of the operations function within the build. Where are we based? A little bit deeper. Sunnybarrow, by the way, late district. What do we do in operations a bit deeper? What's my role? And then we'll get into some more talk of stuff. So I'm also going to try and take you through the journey we've come through and how complex engineering has took us into the high definition build that we've got now. Again, a very, very complex product. As we're building it, legislation is changing. Health and safety is changing year on year on year. We can't get as many people inside a boat anymore as we used to. You can't drive your efficiency up by bodies anymore. You've got to look for better ways. At the moment, in the operations function, we've got 27 change programmes going on. At once, it's too much. We needed something to pull it together, box it off, get it under control, get by in, get stakeholder by in, get it into a project, manage the projects. It was too many endless chicken running around, hobbyists, extension of university, but they weren't turning the dial. They weren't moving as in the right direction. So this was about pulling them together. OK, Matthew. Right, so we're going to set the scene in the complex problems we were having. So the next thing that's coming up now is a brief animation on our history. And then you'll see what Steve talked about was dropping the boat in the water. We don't really drop them. We take our time. But Matthew, it takes a little bit longer to build them than that. And they don't come out with that speed. It takes about 17 hours to get one out from the middle of the hall to there, and then we start lowering it down. There is a live nuclear reactor in that as we do that. Just make it a bit more complex, you know, a bit more complicated. Right, so where are we? We're in Barrow. We asked to be dropped throughout the UK. Predominantly in Barrow, the Sunilate District. It is a sunny part of the Custodale of the UK, not. OK, so the site itself, OK, Matthew. So the site, Steve told you about the site. So I was the architect that pulled together the 22 facilities. It took three years just to pull them together. I stand here and tell you that if I had to use Torgath, it wouldn't have took three years. Every time I look at it, I kick myself because I couldn't get the business to ask the question in the way that wanted them to ask the question. So every time I came up with a solution, I got the, have you not thought of? Did you not think of this? No, I sat there for three years and enjoyed myself. Not. So what Torgath gave me is a structure. It gave me the chance to box something in. I've spent the last 10 years of my career being given blank sheets of paper. Can you go and have a look at that? But I wasn't given the question at the beginning. I was given half a question. So I was constantly going back and back and back and getting buying from the board. So that's why this helped me. So we are a big, complex site with a lot of big facilities and a nuclear boundary, again, just to complicate things. OK, Matthew. Have a look at that. It's like an iceberg. All you're seeing is the top 5%. The clever bits underneath the water, yeah? Everything, it's a big bingtin stuffed full of complexity, full of pipes. When I first was on that, it was 10,000 pipes. There's now 26,000 pipes, miles and miles of cabling, miles and miles and miles and miles of vent, loads of structure. Got to make all this thing work. And again, just to make it complicate, we put a reactor right in the middle of it. It's a very, very difficult boat to build. Very, very difficult. Probably the hardest boat we've ever had. But it's a fabulous boat. You would not want that thing chasing you around. It's a fabulous piece of technology. But it's hard work to build one of these things. OK. Right, so that set the scene on the complexity, I hope. So who am I? Why should I come here and grace the tables of this conference? So I'm the ops guy. I'm one of the very rare ops guys now that have been there for 28 years in the same function. Pretty rare that now in Barrow. I don't think that happens anymore. I start my time as an apprentice ship right. Something I'm very, very proud of. I hope that comes across. I've come through the Tharmin, manager, project leader, Root, worked on many, many programs that I'll show you in a minute. The key thing for me on every one of them programs was that I committed to that program. I'm a big believer in the submarine program. Ice taught me a lot, but I've worked with some very, very good guys throughout that 28-year period that have taught me a lot. One thing I have been is open to change throughout that 20 years, so some big things have changed in industry. If you're not open to them, we're not going to move on. So when Torgath came along, we committed to it. We put our heart and soul into it. When it got hard, the late Friday nights, the early Friday mornings, the dark days in the middle of winter, which is probably the wrong time for me to set off something new, by the way, we struggled through when it got difficult and it did get difficult. We had problems with it. We got stuck in certain areas, which I'll talk to you about in a little bit later on. So there's my life on a page. There's not much to say. That's five submarine programs, four surface craft programs, the facilities program, and there's a couple of programs on there that I can't show you because I can't put them in the house. Let's just leave it there. I'll get locked away. What you don't see on there is that one program is three decades. One program spans three decades. Quite a long time. We try and keep someone in place for three decades on the same program. Doesn't happen anymore, so we've now got that. We've got the X and the Y generation that don't want to be seated in programs for that long. Don't want to be seated anywhere for more than two years to be truthful, but that's something we have to go through. So a manager of one of them boats is a boat manager for six years in one job. The world has changed. People don't want to be in their positions for that long anymore, and we are paying for that. So we're having to learn what's going on. So the first part of that was about who are we, how complex is it, and who am I. The next part of this is Torgath. The first question for us is where that comes from. Never heard of it. So what we're going to take you now is the origins of Torgath in Barrow for operations, what we did, and what we didn't do, which is probably quite a lot, and I've got my little book. This is the third copy of the little book, 9.1. The first two you won't be able to recognise them because they're full of writing, and coffee stains and blood and snot and everything else that goes with them, because that's what we went through to kick this off. Right, Matthew. Right, so about last September, a guy was brought into the business called Oliver Wignall. He was ex-IBM. He came in as a transformation lead, works closely with Steve, while he was brought in as part of the operations transformation project lead. Pull it all together, as I said before, get it into a project set, put a project management office in place and start managing the turning of the dial. I worked for Ollie at the time. So the question Ollie was under from the managing director was, how do we define and execute transformation within the operations function? That's code for getting under control. There's too much going on. There's too many moving dials. There's too many moving wheels. His job was to get it under control. Okay, so I've given him a problem. So Ollie came in and did what any other senior guy would do when he'd come into a business. He went for a walk for three months and frustrated the life out of me while he was doing it, because I was waiting for him to lay an egg on what he wanted to do. And what he was doing, he was lifting up stones. He was opening doors. He was finding out what was going on. Okay? It was driving me insane while he was doing it, because I was ready to start, ready to pull it together, but I had to see what he was up to. Okay, Matthew. Right, so at the time a thousand things were coming out. Every stone he lifted, a thousand rats came running out of it. Yeah, and we were trying to catch all the rats. It was hard work. So we were doing, we were in the TRLs, productive utilisation, workware, build strategy problems, defects were too high. We were going through a big leadership change programme in the business. The vision was under question. So all this stuff was, we tried to get this animator to move around, but it just didn't work. So all this stuff was going on, because Ollie was looking for a way to pull it together. Okay? All right, Matthew. So this was very, very complex. Too much going on. Okay, Matthew. So we had Ollie down there, and we had this guy appeared. Do you know him? The picture that just appeared, I'd had animations attached to this. Horns, the devil. We will be having a conversation tonight. So Paul came, and I think it was just over a conversation with Ollie, and Ollie was saying what his issues were, and one sentence sparked off where we are today. Okay, Matthew? Have you thought using an architecture framework? That's how it started. Simple as that. In a conversation, that's where it began. Right, Matthew. That took us into the next piece of work. So that one question ended up coming via Ollie to me. That's how it began. Okay, Matthew. Right, so how? This is the important bit. I'll take you through. Either we start downloading it, digesting it, our method, gaining credibility, what worked well, what didn't work well, because we did have some problems, and we still are having problems. And then, what are other people doing now? Other functions are coming to us and saying, can you show us how you did that, please? We don't quite get it. Okay, Matthew. Right, so getting started, we were looking. We were looking for the start. We were struggling to get a start. So, we asked ourselves some big, hard questions. And we were giving a word. Okay, Matthew. So why don't you have a look at this word? So we started looking. And looking. And looking. And we couldn't find it. But we could, but I'll let you look at your dictionary and say what it says, but I certainly can't put it on this screen. Okay, for the ladies in the ring. Okay. So then we found out about three days later, talk off. Not talk off. That's the truth. We didn't know. We were that unaware of what was going on. We didn't want to go on a Steve. Didn't want to do that. I wish I had it on, because I felt a feel when I told him this tale. All right. Right, so we needed to, once we got the talk off, we could go on a journey. So, our curiosity was burning at this point. So what did we do? We googled it. We had a good read of it. We researched it a little bit more. And out came the book. Yeah. We read it and read it and threw it about and read it and put it away and read it again because we didn't understand it. So we were confused. So then we did something that you might not like. We went through it with a black pen and every syllable over three words long, we hacked it. And then it made sense because we weren't looking for an ITs system solution pack. We were looking for something to change our business to set us in a program we could pull our projects together. So we translated it. We translated it into something that was our language and shipbuilding. You know? So there's the Torgath version. This is our version. Hopefully. There you go. So, why change? Remember I said before about the facilities program? I wanted all these guys for three years telling me have you not thought of? Have you not thought of this? Have you not thought of that? No, no, no. Why change? You tell me why you want to change. That one dot at the top of there has changed the way we do programs in every way. Because from now on I don't do anything unless I get the senior stakeholders joined up and agreeing why change. It's so important. Okay, and then if you follow it round that's our translation. And it works for us. And it works well. But I'll still give myself some problems with this. Right, Matthew. So, we got Paul back. And on this one I tried to draw a halo. Rachel, what did you say it looked like? A rubbish play where it was mid out of a coat on her. We'll give up with that as well. But Paul came back after our translation after we'd got into work and we asked him for validation. We were expecting a bit of a slap round the ear hole. Are we doing the right thing? Is this in the spirit of the Torgath principles? Okay. Feedback and guidance moving forward. My advice is if you're going to do this go get a Paul. Get somebody that can just you can talk to and believe me, we're operations and we talk a lot. I just wanted somebody to listen because we got stuck. And we got stuck a lot. So, the feedback and guidance is very, very important. But I'm sure and I'm really, really sure you let us go down a few rabbit holes. You know, and once we got in the rabbit holes it was again middle of winter, very dark. 6 o'clock Friday mornings, rain on the windows. It's a bad place to be because we can't get back out. So, we have to keep trying and trying and trying and trying. I'm now on my fourth Torgath project. I can now see why you let us go in the rabbit holes because I don't go in them anymore. So, it's important. I could have killed him at the time but it is important. Okay. Right. So, our method. iPads. All them things. Headset. This is to show how technical things can be. We didn't do that. We did it the old way. Okay, Matthew. That thing in there. Didn't do any of that rubbish. We did it the old way. Why? Because we were taking a lot of people on a journey and one thing I found out with Torgath is it's very, very difficult to present through PowerPoint when you try to bring people on a journey so we went back to war rooms and we went back to these things and we used a lot of them and when I mean a lot of them I'm talking boxes and boxes and boxes full of post-its because we needed people's views. We needed people's brains. Didn't want a laptop. I wanted what was in their head. 3,000 people had been input into this. Not eight of us. 3,000 people. 8,000 man-ours we spent doing this. Every one of the shop floor guys who I personally very personally think I represent had an input into this. We had God knows how many admin people had been up pulling all these things together. We went through 25 sessions with all 3,000 people in a room where they were all putting down what's wrong with their business, where they need a change and all that was a feeding to our togath. OK? Then we laid it all out into a war room. That's still live. We're still taking people through it. The fact that we're on our fourth project and we're doing it the same way but it's an iterative process constantly getting people in the room constantly feeding the process we learned a lot of lessons doing this on stage for a long, long time. Probably I still stuck but I'll take you through that in a little bit. So that's how it worked for us, you know? And I don't think I'd change it but I don't think I would I'd stick to this, for me it works because I can get people in front of it. I can get people stood there I can get them with a pen I can get them drawing and they do. The problem is when they draw on it when I'm not there they don't know who the hell is doing it and they don't know what it says. So there's people at this all the time. This is right next door to the operations director's office so we're using that all the time. OK? Right, so what worked well? OK Matthew. Buying sponsorship from the outset from the senior management team. Right, so this is the main thing. When setting off on a journey like this which is new, it's a leap of faith we had the ops director all my peers all heads off of all the functions bought into this and driving it. No dissenters. Everybody was in. Yeah? OK? Setting the scene by defining why change. I said it before, it's the most important part. Spend your time on why change. We spent about four or five sessions day-along locked away just working out that one. It seemed a bit daft at the time. Why were we spending so much time writing a question? We get it now. Get the question right at the beginning. Get it bought off then you can move on. Change your question completely go back all the time. You have two steps back so we understand that now. OK? The structure approach which followed the clear line of reasoning very, very important. It gave us that structure we were searching for a beginning when I showed you Ollie and he had all these projects going on he was searching for a structure. OK? It ensured a level of control and discipline not just to jump to the answer were operations. I'm sorry we like building things. This was about slowing it down pulling it back get it under control get it into a project get it into the PMO The ability to document decisions at key stages that's what my big book was when I walked around my big thing that's what that is. I should have brought that by the way OK? The ability to reference back to why throughout the process constantly take any decision back to why Right Mathew? Having a clear objectives to complete each stage of the process I'll think about that one. Sometimes they were clear sometimes we made them up as we got in there but it's important. Going forward now in our third and fourth project that's important OK? Taking a leap of faith as a team to try something new it's quite difficult 28 years of experience a lot of my peers got more I'm not saying I'm younger but I am It's quite hard for people to do that to shut their eyes and go I'm glad we did but it's difficult OK? Having a team that was flexible and could adapt to change Yeah, yeah It worked, yeah That's why we're on our third one of them because we kept throwing at each other when we got stuck and we are on our third OK? The energy levels and the passion at the team I said before about commitment you've got to commit to this if you commit to it mind, body and soul you'll get there if you don't commit and you're just putting your toe in and bringing it back out it's going to be a long, arduous process OK? Having something relatively close to give you guidance as I said before Yeah, we are going to have that debate you know it's coming but there's guidance and then letting you go Yeah, we needed somebody especially when we were getting too caught up in the words and we did sometimes we got caught up in the words and we back translated it again a couple of levels kept the principle and kept the structure OK? What didn't work so well? Having to define the mechanism for completing the next stage while trying to deliver the previous stages that was a bit complex that was quite hard actually Yeah, it caused a few late nights that and we're in now on our fourth project we're still having one of these issues we're trying to get something through and it's slightly changing what we did last time so it's making us think a bit harder OK? Sometimes getting stuck in cul-de-sacs oh god did we get stuck in cul-de-sacs but we're now glad we did we're glad we got stuck because we documented it when we were there so we go back to our notes and then we took a different direction OK? Presenting the stages of Torgath was difficult it's very very difficult as I said before to take 3,000 people through what you've done and I have to and I'll learn a few lessons while I'll learn to stop doing it because I don't want 3,000 people to be Torgath practitioners I want them to understand what we've done OK? OK? We tried to take all our stakeholders Oleg made a mistake and he'll tell you now that we did some engagement sessions with all our guys and he stood up and he took them through the work that Matthew's going to show you a little bit later on which was in architecture work the working out the analysis and we lost everybody because they got caught up in it they needed to know the input and the output they didn't need to know the bit in between we really really should have picked up on that much much earlier because we wasted a lot of time because we had to go from rooms of 70 people down to rooms with 10 people down to rooms with 6 people and do it slower, longer and believe you me we've done that everybody's gone back through this everybody OK? Project management office because there was 27 projects that Matthew will take you through after we said we were going to put a project management office in place to manage the output we have done but we've done it too late we should have put the project management office in place while we were defining the projects so you didn't have an air gap at the end it picked up the learning because it's struggling to learn it's struggling to understand the scopes because it doesn't understand the context of who wrote the scope OK? The tactical business demand so again when operations function we've got a lot of stuff so we have this strategic piece of work going on but we had a tactical demand demanding stuff from us one of the projects in here is to develop the manufacturing engineering function for the business as we were doing that we were being asked to deploy manufacturing engineers out into operations yeah strategic and tactical clashed badly at that point and it causes a lot of problems so that's something else if you can you might not be able to but I would advise that you fire all at OK? and lastly trying to align tactical in-flight projects to a strategic definition so some of them 27 projects were actually in work but they were in work without a defined scope so when you're trying to pull something back by somebody's racing with all their energy to get something embedded that again, that takes a bit of behaviour analysis OK right, other functions so I've now got the HR function knocking on our door looking at how we did this they've got a lot of change programs in their areas and they try to pull them together so they've been through our analysis looked at what we've done and are trying to adopt what we've done the only problem is I'm trying to let them adopt it without letting Rachel and Matthew go because many other people have done this sort of thing got to keep me eye on it and then again in-flight projects have realigned their scope in order to align the function leads expressed within the vision and the strategy so that they're getting back to the why change bit their understanding that get the question right at the beginning OK that's it so, who am I I am a lowly operations man that's used something to get us under control that's all we've done but it works and we're now doing it again and again and again and we'll get better but we won't translate it any more, I promise