The chief executive of Huntington Ingalls Industries says the company has returned to its pre-pandemic production rate -- but the company lost time and money it will likely not fully recover.
In an interview with Inside Defense last week, Mike Petters said the company is proud of how it learned to adapt to the pandemic.
But the low attendance rates it saw in the early months of the pandemic created a "big divot that was taken out" in terms of program schedules.
"I'm not sure we ever recover all of that," Petters said.
The HII CEO told Inside Defense he also doesn't expect the company to recover all of its related costs. Petters said he thinks HII will be reimbursed for straightforward, pandemic-related expenses, such as masks and cleaning.
"There are some costs that are called out that are . . . 100% no doubt this is related to the virus," he said. "I don't have any concern about that."
But the larger costs are created by more subtle issues. For instance, Petters said, a quality issue might in fact be linked to a foreman being quarantined because of the coronavirus.
"How do you allocate responsibility for that in terms of our contracts?" he asked.
However, Petters said he's optimistic Huntington Ingalls will be able to come out of the pandemic with a new agility and flexibility.
"We were not slow before, but we are going to be a lot faster now," he said. "That to me has been a big outcome of this, if there's a silver lining."
Petters said the company will also likely see some changes based on what it has learned during this period.
He noted the company at one point had more than 10 times as many employees working remotely during the pandemic than it had before the pandemic began.
While he expects many of those to return to their offices at some point, not all will, Petters said.
"I imagine we're going to find some happy ground . . . somewhere in the middle," he said.