BENEFITS The SESC structure delivers a number of significant benefits, including a contributing role as an enabler to achieving savings at the waterfront, through helping to move towards a more through-life approach to maintenance planning. It facilitates convergence of current and future class support, including Astute (overcoming concerns that Astute would require a parallel and separate support arrangement to current class submarines), and helps to sustain the submarine support capability, creating a greater SQEP pool within a joint MoD/industry resource. This is particularly important at a time when the building of Astute boats 4-7 and SSBN concept design programmes are increasing demand for submarine SQEP engineers and the MoD is looking to work with industry to develop the next generation of submarine engineering resource. Further, by moving away from traditional volume-driven contracts to align profit to performance (the principle on which the SESC commercial model is built), all stakeholders are appropriately incentivised to deliver the jointly prioritised joint outputs. While it is still currently early days for the SESC contract and joint team, and achieving and benefiting from full integration and collaboration are longer term goals, transition to the new ways of working are well in-hand with good progress to date and significant change evident from the start. Some issues are inevitable in any change programme, but overall behaviour has clearly moved towards a more collaborative approach and, significantly, at contract management level any issues arising are seen as matters to be resolved together. Ultimately, the SESC joint team is working collaboratively to deliver ISM’s mission: ‘In partnership with our stakeholders we will deliver, more cost effectively, submarines that meet the military need, to agreed capability, availability, and readiness programmes, by the continual rationalisation of business and technical solutions, and the adoption of a whole life systems approach to design change, whilst assuring through-life submarine safety including the safe disposal of submarines.’