Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | JANUARY 13, 2025 13 5 To Watch lectric Boat President Mark Rayha standing in front of the south yard assembly building at the submarine maker's Groton shipyard. CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Business Continuity Supply chain issues will pause Electric Boat's hiring frenzy in 2025; new President Rayha focuses on creating 'agility' within company number of adjustments. For instance, the yard is setting aside floor space for multiple modules at one time, so work can be switched according to the availability of components. It's also meant deploying skilled trades people who are not needed in the short-term to what are called "road jobs" — in other words sending them to help out at other shipyards. The need for this kind of creative thinking was a theme that was stressed by Rayha's boss, General Dynamics Chairman and CEO Phebe Novakovic in an October earnings call. "The supply chain is not getting better at a fast enough rate as we had hoped. Through our internal efficiency we have now outpaced them," she told analysts. "This is the reality of the post-COVID environment for many of our most important suppliers." "While we will continue to work on improved productivity, there is no point hurrying portions of the boat, only to have to stop and wait increasingly extended periods of time for major components to arrive," she went on. "We need to get our cadence in sync with the supply chain and take cost out of the business if we are to hope to see incremental margin growth." By Harriet Jones hjones@hartfordbusiness.com M ark Rayha has stepped up to the president's office at General Dynamics Electric Boat just as the Groton- based submarine builder experi- ences an inflection point in its now years-long expansion. "I think the hiring in Connecticut will not be as rapid as it was," he said, indicating a slowdown, or even a pause, that may last until the second half of the year. "There's been a couple of issues that have kept modules from coming to Groton. So, because the work's not here, we don't have the need to fully staff up." EB has been hiring at such a fast clip of late that it has strained the ability of the labor force to keep up, and of surrounding support services like housing to accommodate all the new employees. The shipyard hired 5,300 people across Connecticut and Rhode Island in 2023, and another 4,100 in 2024, launching outreach efforts in both Providence and Hartford to find enough people. The expanded workforce — which currently stands at around 23,200 between the two yards — is needed to support the ongoing Virginia class program, and construction of the new, larger Columbia class, as well as overhaul work on older Los Angeles class boats. The news of a 2025 hiring slowdown shifts the narrative significantly for Electric Boat, which previously had spoken of workforce shortages as being a key factor in the yard falling behind schedule on deliveries. Rayha insists the change of pace does not signal any lack of work, but rather issues in the supply chain that have persisted for some four years now — ever since the COVID-19 lockdowns crippled some of the smaller companies that EB relies on, and caused significant issues for its peers like Northrop Grumman and partner Newport News. "Shipbuilding is a very intricate, long process. There are key compo- nents that you have to be able to get — we call them sequence-critical components — that you have to be able to install at the right time, otherwise it holds up the build," Rayha explained. "The supply chain has been a chal- lenge for us — I think that's been pretty well documented," he went on. "What we're working on now is to create agility so that when we encounter supply chain shortages that impact the build, we can be agile and more efficiently work around them." "Agility" has so far meant a MARK RAYHA President General Dynamics Electric Boat Education: Bachelor's degree in business administration, Univer- sity of Michigan; MBA, University of Michigan Age: 58 Continued on next page

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