The federal government exercised a five-year extension with Babcock Canada to refit and maintain Canada’s four Victoria-class submarines.
The $531 million extension is the first of potentially three five-year options for the submarine in-service support contract originally awarded in 2008 to Canadian Submarine Management Group, a joint venture between Babcock International Group and Weir Canada that became known as Babcock Canada in 2011.
Kerry-Lynne Findlay, Associate Minister of National Defence, said the extension would support over “400 high-quality, skilled jobs.”
The in-service support contract includes material acquisition; repair and overhaul; and engineering services; project management oversight to plan and organize refits of the submarines; and the provision of scheduled refit and maintenance activities. All heavy maintenance work will take place at Victoria Shipyards in Esquimalt.
Babcock Canada began performing the first extended docking work period on HMCS Chicoutimi in 2010 and expects to complete the work this year. Work on HMCS Corner Brook is expected to begin in 2014. Both HMCS Victoria and HMCS Windsor are considered operational. The Royal Canadian Navy says the “objective of this in-service support contract is to ensure that the fleet maintains a steady state of three fully-operational submarines by 2014.”