Consultants and institutional memory in ship design

The second conversation revisits Sal Mercogliano's account of dispersed NAVSEA teams and yards relying on outside naval-architecture consultants. Alex Clarke connects that arrangement to a loss of institutional memory: neither temporary consultants nor fragmented oversight necessarily retain the reasoning behind the complete design. Drachinifel adds that consultants can have incentives to find further work. Admiral Henderson's informal Sunday yard visits provide a contrasting historical example of identifiable responsibility and direct inspection. The criticism concerns repeated interventions without a resident designer able to explain their consequences, rather than an objection to inspecting construction at all.