The SA Navy says it expects big savings on its repair bill from public-private partnerships.

"Turn-around times to repair a larger variety of defective systems will improve radically since industry will be available on-site, eliminating time-consuming transportation of equipment to remote centres," said Rear Admiral Kobus Visser on Wednesday.

He was reading a paper on the navy's collaborative engagement with the private sector, prepared by an absent Vice Admiral Johannes Mudimu, at the 9th National Maritime Conference and Exhibition in Cape Town.

Visser said considerable savings were expected with the navy making its support facilities and infrastructure available to industry to share.

He said the delivery of the new corvettes and submarines, as part of the multi-billion arms acquisition package, meant the introduction of a host of new technologies which needed to be effectively managed.

Visser said government was the most important funder of defence forces, but the international trend of decreasing defence budgets meant it was necessary to show that savings were obtained in real monetary terms.

"Taxpayers all over the world require more bang for less bucks," he said.

Globally, navies were making increasing use of contractors that were integrated into the naval ship activities, in a bid to reduce operating and support costs of vessels.

With an annual budget of about R1 billion not expected to change in the next few years, the navy needed to make "optimal" use of available resources — including organisations involved in the support of vessels, such as Armscor, industry, the naval dockyard and the navy's own capacity.

Visser said the navy was now confronted with a situation of having to support more vessels with the same budget allocation.

Besides reducing the size of its ageing fleet, the navy found that a major cost-driver in the support of the fleet of ships was the contracting of private industry to provide technical upkeep and repairs.

Investigations showed that changes needed to occur in the manner of contracting, implying a "collaboration" between the navy and industry.

"Under such a model risks and infrastructure will be shared. This should lead to a substantial reduction in costs to the state."

Visser said the envisaged collaboration required a change of mindset among all roleplayers, with the establishment of a "support centre" mooted and overseen by a joint management team, which in effect would be the main contractor responsible for delivering support services.

The main work expected to be carried out by industry in the proposed collaborative model included system engineering work, logistic engineering, planned maintenance and corrective maintenance.

The naval dockyard in Simon's Town has been earmarked as the site for the navy's first public-private partnership, with Armscor currently finalising the Dockyard Transfer Agreement.

This agreement would enable the navy, the Department of Defence and Armscor to manage the transformation of the dockyard, with the actual transfer expected to start in the next financial year.

With acknowledgements to Sapa and the Business Day.