Devonport Management Limited
Encyclopedia
DML was the company which owns and manages Devonport Royal Dockyard
HMNB Devonport
Her Majesty's Naval Base Devonport , is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy . HMNB Devonport is located in Devonport, in the west of the city of Plymouth in Devon, England...

, the largest dockyard in Western Europe. DML was owned by Babcock International Group
Babcock International Group
Babcock International Group plc is a British-based support services company specialising in managing complex assets and infrastructure in safety-critical and mission-critical environments. Although the company has civil contracts, its main business is with public bodies, particularly the UK...

 who purchased it from previous owners; KBR
Kellogg, Brown and Root
KBR, Inc. is an American engineering, construction and private military contracting company, formerly a subsidiary of Halliburton, headquartered in Houston. The company also has large offices in Arlington, Birmingham, Newark, Delaware and Leatherhead, UK. After Halliburton acquired Dresser...

 (51%), Balfour Beatty
Balfour Beatty
Balfour Beatty plc is a British construction, engineering, military housing, rail and investment services company. It is one of the largest construction companies in the UK, and the 15th largest in the world...

 (24.5%) and The Weir Group
Weir Group
The Weir Group plc is an engineering company headquartered in East Kilbride, Scotland. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.-History:...

 (24.5%).

History

DML, then owned by Brown and Root and Vickers Design and Projects
Vickers
Vickers was a famous name in British engineering that existed through many companies from 1828 until 1999.-Early history:Vickers was formed in Sheffield as a steel foundry by the miller Edward Vickers and his father-in-law George Naylor in 1828. Naylor was a partner in the foundry Naylor &...

, was one of three companies bidding for the Devonport contract in 1986. The others were Devonport Dockyard, formed by the then management of the dockyard, and a consortium of Foster Wheeler, A & P Appledore, and Wharton Williams.

The DML consortium changed in 1987, with B&R taking 29.9%, Balfour Beaty joining with 29.9%, the Weir Group joining with 29.9% and Barclays de Zoete Wedd taking 10.3%. Vickers had formed a joint venture with B&R which included its contracting arm. The management contract was awarded to DML on 1987-02-24, with management officially transferred on 1987-04-06. The dockyards remained property of the Ministry of Defence
Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom)
The Ministry of Defence is the United Kingdom government department responsible for implementation of government defence policy and is the headquarters of the British Armed Forces....

 at this stage.

In June 1993 DML was awarded the contract for refitting of Royal Navy nuclear submarines. This was the result of a two year "highly politicised battle" between DML and the management of Rosyth Dockyard
Rosyth Dockyard
Rosyth Dockyard is a large naval dockyard on the Firth of Forth at Rosyth, Fife, Scotland, owned by Babcock Marine, which primarily undertakes refitting of Royal Navy surface vessels.-History:...

 in Scotland. The Rosyth dockyard already had nuclear refitting facilities under construction when, in 1993, DML made an unsolicited bid to take over the work which in future would only be awarded to one yard. For the next two years the two dockyards made "tit-for-tat" claims regarding the suitability of their own facilities compared to their competitor.

In 1994 GEC acquired VSEL and withdrew it from the DML consortium. At the urging of the MoD, Brown & Root took 51% control of DML. In February 1993 DML purchased the Devonport yard for GB£40.3 million.

In 1998 Brown & Root's parent, Halliburton
Halliburton
Halliburton is the world's second largest oilfield services corporation with operations in more than 70 countries. It has hundreds of subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, brands and divisions worldwide and employs over 50,000 people....

 indirectly acquired The M. W. Kellogg Co. and merged it with Brown & Root to form KBR
KBR
KBR can stand for:* KBR - American engineering and construction company* Key-based routing* Royal Library of Belgium* The ISO 639 linguistic identifier code for the Ethiopian language Kaffa ....

. In 2006 it was announced that Halliburton would be floating its subsidiary KBR on the stock market, this went ahead against the wishes of the UK government and Ministry of Defence as they felt the floating of KBR would make the DML group unstable. In 2004 DML acquired Appledore Shipbuilders
Appledore Shipbuilders
-History:The Appledore Yard was founded in 1855 on the estuary of the River Torridge. The Richmond Dry Dock was built in 1856 by William Yeo and named after Richmond Bay in Prince Edward Island, where the Yeo family's shipping fleet was based....

 in North Devon.

In early 2007 it was announced that the DML group was for sale and major players in the world defence industry were rumoured to be interested in buying the company from the current share holders. BAE Systems was one of the companies rumoured to be interested; The Independent on Sunday suggested that the Ministry of Defence was keen to see these combined with BAE's submarine manufacturing facilities. In the end this purchase was not completed and DML was bought by Babcock International Group instead.

Only two companies made bids by the closing date, these were the Carlyle investment Group and Babcock International.

Babcock was announced as the successful bidder for Devonport in a deal that was worth 350 million pounds sterling and would secure them a 100% stake in the company. Babcock international announced that the DML Group would then become part of Babcock Marine Services, a new sector (of which Rosyth Dockyard is also a part) within its organization.

The deal was rubber stamped by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence at the end of June 2007, following this move the company was rebranded as Babcock Marine, part of Babcock International Group
Babcock International Group
Babcock International Group plc is a British-based support services company specialising in managing complex assets and infrastructure in safety-critical and mission-critical environments. Although the company has civil contracts, its main business is with public bodies, particularly the UK...

.
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