On 22 September, at least 124 suppliers followed the Supplier Readiness webinar about the collaboration between Damen Schelde Naval Shipbuilding and Swedish Saab Kockums. In preparation for the replacement of the Walrus-class submarines, this is a demonstration of what joining forces can mean for subcontractors.

This is great attendance, says Otwin Günther, who, as Proposal Director on behalf of DSNS, is very closely involved in the replacement process for the four submarines. “We received a lot of positive reactions afterwards.”

Hein van Ameijden and his counterpart at Saab Kockums, CEO Lars Tossman, and Otwin and his Saab colleague Johan Brisfors used the nearly 40-minute webinar to talk about the progress of the efforts made by the consortium’s proposal team to land the submarine order.

Because this was the first time that a webinar has been organized, the event was not broadcast live. “We may hold follow-up webinars on 27 October and 24 November and they will be live,” expects Otwin, who is the webinar initiator and co-organizer. He is hoping for many visitors, and given the ‘cliff-hanger’ at the end of the first webinar, he is confident. “That cliff-hanger looked ahead to the next episode – ‘Submarine 101’ – when we will go more in-depth into the submarine as a product. What is a submarine? And how does it work? This is a subject that is still surrounded by a haze of mystery and also has a James Bond quality to it…. ”

In the meantime, the DSNS Proposal Director is “almost completely convinced” that the DSNS/Saab duo will win the contract to build the successors to the Royal Netherlands Navy Walrus-class submarines that were built in the 1990s.

The so-called ‘B letter’ from the State Secretary of Defence, published at the end of 2019, was discussed in the House of Representatives in June, after delays due to Covid-19. The ‘B letter’ is the second phase of product acquisition for the Dutch Ministry of Defence; this is a research phase. Moreover, there is still a motion pending from political party SGP calling for action to be taken by the government.

“We are currently in the pre-dialogue phase until January 2021, after which the dialogue phase will start. That will involve direct consultation between us as a supplier and DMO [Defence Materiel Organisation] about, among other things, the requirements and specifications that the new submarines must meet.”

Otwin expects that the contract for construction will be awarded in 2022. “The first submarine will be in the water by the end of 2028, although it will not be operational yet because still sea acceptance tests have to be conducted.”

After the experience gained with the Walrus project, DSNS and Saab Kockums want to continue the cooperation and hope to enter the export market together.

The cooperative process is going so well because both companies come from countries that are also culturally very similar: open democracies where citizens are fairly down-to-earth and do not look up that much to ‘the concept of power’, Otwin explains. During the webinar, the two top executives Hein van Ameijden and Lars Tossman also made no secret of being very pleased with the way of working together.

“This alliance dates back to 2014 and since then we have become familiar with each other’s organisations,” notes Otwin. “During those six years, we have exchanged a lot of knowledge. This has resulted in further increase in knowledge about the technology of building submarines here at DSNS, while Saab has learned a lot about the way in which we implement project management, in addition to learning from our experiences with export and international aspects of the shipbuilding business.”

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