Southwest Regional Maintenance Center

Southwest Regional Maintenance Center is only 20 years old, the origins of the command reach back nearly 100 years to 1918.

What is today Naval Base San Diego (NBSD) began as a small ship repair facility along a partially submerged marsh land in the industrial waterfront of San Diego Bay. Originally designated "U.S. Destroyer Base, San Diego," when then-Secretary of the Navy, Teddy Roosevelt Jr., issued General Order 78 to establish a naval facility in San Diego dedicated to ship maintenance and repair. Because the base's mission was to maintain the fleet and not just house it, San Diego survived the military draw down following World War I and the Great Depression of the 1930's. During World War II, the base was re-designated "U.S. Repair Base, San Diego" and focused exclusively on ship conversions, maintenance, and battle damage repair for all ships seeing action in the Pacific theater. More than 5,000 ships were serviced during WWII, proving the essential need of a permanent repair facility on the west coast.

Following the war, the base was once again re-designated as "Naval Station San Diego" and underwent reorganization and expansion. With more than 200 tenant commands on base during the subsequent decades, ship repair duties split into several commands with varying focus - production, contracting oversight, conversion and shipbuilding, Fleet technical assistance, and diver salvage units. These missions came together to refocus into one mission in 2004 with the merging of five different commands.

Southwest Regional Maintenance Center (SWRMC); Supervisor of Shipbuilding, Conversion, and Repair (SUPSHIP); Shore Intermediate Maintenance Activity (SIMA); Fleet Technical Support Center Pacific (FTSCPAC); and Consolidated Divers Unit (CDU) all merged together to form the newly reorganized SWRMC in November of 2004. The newly consolidated SWRMC became the single point of contact for ship maintenance in the San Diego area, thereby achieving better coordination and efficiencies for the Fleet. Today, SWRMC oversees more than $1.2B in contracted maintenance and overhaul activities for all ships stationed in and visiting San Diego.

Strategic Alignment

SWRMC’s Strategic Framework was designed to directly support and reinforce NAVSEA’s Expand the Advantage campaign.

As a NAVSEA field activity under CNRMC, SWRMC contributes to the NAVSEA mission: “We design, build, deliver and maintain ships and systems on time and on cost for the United States Navy.” SWRMC is supporting our fleet customers by providing a “one stop shop” maintenance philosophy which includes planning, execution, and close out of maintenance actions. Our support ranges from emergent Casualty Repair/Fleet Technical Assist calls, to innovative I-level work in the production shops (Product Families), and the D-level “heavy lifting” capability provided by the Waterfront Operations Department and their private commercial industrial partners as they overhaul and maintain ships throughout their deployment cycle. Through the use of process improvement methodologies, SWRMC has engaged our multi-talented workforce to create an environment unique across the Regional Maintenance Center enterprise with regards to how we approach Navy maintenance.