Former soldier tasked with getting Navy builder in shipshape

BATH, Maine (AP) — Making the switch from building corporate jets to building Navy warships has been reinvigorating for a soldier-turned-business executive who’s leading Navy shipbuilder Bath Iron Works.

Charles “Chuck” Krugh said he wasted no time in getting his hands dirty, meeting daily with workers on the ships' “deck plates.”

“I’m a hands-on guy that likes to get into the details,” he said.

Shipbuilders weren’t so sure at first whether it was just an act, but after six months they’re now accustomed to him regularly chatting with shipbuilders to get a handle on their workflow, at all hours of the day and night.

Labor relations have improved along the way.

“It’s all been good. We’re moving in the right direction. We’ve just got to keep moving that way,” said Rock Grenier, president of Local S6 of the Machinists Union, which represents production workers.

Krugh, 58, arrived in June after the abrupt departure of former Bath Iron Works President Dirk Lesko, who led the General Dynamics subsidiary through a difficult period that included a pandemic and a two-month strike, both of which lengthened construction delays.

The future USS Carl M. Levin that completed acceptance trials this month is more than a year behind schedule. The silver lining, Krugh said, is that the warship earned the highest marks for a Bath-built ship in years in a review by the Navy’s Board of Inspection and Survey.

Krugh said he's encouraging the shipyard's 7,000 workers to rethink processes to ensure they can complete tasks as efficiently as possible. A big part of that is ensuring proper planning before a task even starts.

“We show people that you can do the impossible, or the seemingly impossible, if you spend enough preparation time to get...