Premo Sabbatini, vice president of Central Planning and Process Excellence, will retire from Ingalls Shipbuilding effective January 1, 2027, after 40 years of distinguished service. As a Master Shipbuilder, Premo has dedicated his career to strengthening our shipyard, advancing our programs and supporting the shipbuilders who carry out our critical mission.
Premo joined Ingalls in 1986 as a planner supporting the USS Spruance (DD 963) overhaul. He went on to hold leadership roles across Central Planning and Program Management, including director of Planning and Scheduling, deputy program manager for USS America (LHA 6), LHA class program manager and, since 2019, vice president of Central Planning and Process Excellence.
Premo’s service has also extended throughout the Mississippi Gulf Coast, where he has supported numerous charitable and community organizations. We are grateful for his extraordinary leadership and dedication.
Premo’s expertise and commitment to excellence have made a lasting impact across Ingalls. Throughout his career, at every level, he has consistently understood, valued and practiced effective bill management. Because of this, I’ve asked him to dedicate the remainder of his time at Ingalls to teaching and reinforcing bill management discipline across all production-supporting departments, including Operations, Supply Chain Management and Engineering.
With Premo’s retirement, we have an opportunity to adjust our organizational structure to improve material readiness, production throughput and schedule predictability by better aligning around optimizing workflows. Our most complex, interdependent processes— Planning, Supply Chain Management, Program Management, Engineering and Operations—require fewer boundaries and clearer ownership.
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By bringing Production Control and Supply Chain Management together under one leader, we create a unified material flow that ensures the right material reaches our projects at the right time. Josh Hayden, director of Production Control will report directly to Stephen Fitts, vice president of Supply Chain Management.
By embedding Field Industrial Engineering within Operations, we strengthen Operations’ ability to understand and act on throughput and cost drivers, enabling data-driven decisions on bottlenecks and corrective actions. Dave Smith, director of Field Industrial Engineering, will report directly to Donny Dorsey, vice president of Operations.
By aligning Planning directly with Program Management, we make Programs fully accountable for building achievable, predictable schedules that are synchronized both top-down and bottom-up with real resource constraints. Bryan Williams, director of Production Planning and Bubba Hughes, director of Planning and Scheduling will report directly to Eric Crooker, vice president of Program Management.
By positioning Homeroom Industrial Engineering within Contracts & Pricing, we align the way we bid the work with the way we budget the work and strengthen our earned value management. Burt Adkison, director of Homeroom Industrial Engineering will report directly to Danny Marks, vice president of Contracts & Pricing.
By bringing Process Excellence together with Quality Engineering, we create a critical group of people skilled in root-cause problem solving and advanced analytics to tackle strategic improvement opportunities. The individuals supporting Process Excellence will report to Amanda Whitaker, director of Quality Engineering.
These changes will create an integrated, closed-loop system connecting material readiness, schedule development and production execution—driving better predictability, better alignment and better outcomes for our teams and our customers.
Please join me in congratulating Premo on an exceptional career and wishing him and his family every happiness in retirement.
Brian Blanchette
President, Ingalls Shipbuilding
