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Aerospace Project Management Woes - Why?

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Aerospace Project Management Woes - Why?

Old 18th Aug 2015, 17:58
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Aerospace Project Management Woes - Why?

Most aerospace projects of the last twenty years seem to be behind schedule, over budget and in some cases stalling over seemingly ridiculous issues. In theory we should have learnt from the first 100 years of aviation and we should now have the project planning tools in place to get it right; so where is it all going wrong?

Which, if any of the following are to blame:

  • Lack of clarity of project goal
  • Over optimistic budget
  • Insufficient early stages R&D in an effort to pare down costs
  • Interference from Politicians/VSOs/Ex-VSOs/others
  • Lack of engineering/scientific knowledge amongst project planners
  • Insufficient input from hands-on end users
  • Project participants who don't intend to be in-post at the into-service point, so they don't care if they are wrong
  • Suppliers more interested in profit margin than a viable product
  • Component designers without sufficient hands-on experience
  • Over-reliance on computer outputs (Garbage In/Garbage Out)
  • Striving for the cheapest rather than the best
  • Too many 'yes-men'
  • Something else?
In the military arena, F-35, KC-46, Nimrod MRA.4, Eurofighter and A400M immediately spring to mind. In the civil world, A380 and B787 are the obvious candidates.

Are there any financially large aerospace projects in the last thirty years or so which have come in near to time and price with a good product as well? If so, what was their secret?
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 18:13
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Are there any financially large aerospace projects in the last thirty years or so which have come in near to time and price with a good product as well? If so, what was their secret?
It seems the only on-cost on-schedule projects were derivative programs and even some of them had trouble. P-8 (basaed on 737) was a successful derivative project. But Wedgetail (also based on 737) took much longer and cost way more than expected. But P-8 used mostly off-the-shelf technology. It was not bleeding edge. Wedgetail was very bleeding edge in the sensor and processing areas. I don't know what the excuse is for the KC-46. Nothing bleeding edge there that I can see. H-53K was a big success. But H-53E was a mess. Longbow Apache was a success.
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 18:30
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Dare I suggest RAF E3D.

On time, on budget, and the end user got exactly what they needed/wanted. And is wasn't tarnished with the need to accomplish many and varied different mission profiles I.e. Not a multi-role frame.

'Course, the fact that it was predominantly an RAF managed project, and more than one Senior Officer involved came from an AEW background probably made a large contribution.

Add to this, it wasn't hijacked by political vote-chasing decisions.

The less ingenious might suggest its total programme success lay in the fact BAe weren't involved, but that might just be seen as sour grapes.
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 18:33
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Nowadays a Project Manager is hired as wiz kid who is expert in PRINCE II, DOORS, DODAF etc etc, and all the other buzzwords. Engineers who learned other skills working on projects don't even get considered.

The only problem - they don't know what they're talking about on the programme. So problems don't get an engineer fix when they arise, they get a schedule fix and the hRd problems get slipped toward the end. Then the decision is made to start working concurrently on design, development and production.

If you're a smart PM, at that stage you move onto a new start up programme for "career development" and leave the minor clean up problems to your junior successor.

Guess what happens.......
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 18:43
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Originally Posted by KenV
H-53K was a big success.
Ken, H-53K got moved three years to the right. Not saying it isn't a good bird, and it seems that the government and Sikorsky made good with GAO on the "why is this moving right" deal, but it did suffer schedule setbacks.

EDIT: Link from a few years ago, Rotorheads forum discussion on CH-53K.

Last edited by Lonewolf_50; 18th Aug 2015 at 19:07.
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 19:02
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In the military arena, F-35, KC-46, Nimrod MRA.4, Eurofighter and A400M immediately spring to mind. In the civil world, A380 and B787 are the obvious candidates.

I was heavily involved as a member of the design team with two of those projects you quote. In both cases there was a massive and fundamental underestimation of the time, effort and cost involved in delivering the project, which was the main reason they ran badly late.
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 19:04
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Camlobe, To the casual observer the E-3D is little more than an off the shelf product with different engines. How far, within the bounds of public knowledge, is this from the truth?
The fact that it was only three years from order placement to aircraft delivery presumably meant that most decisions would have been taken within one tour of any particular RAF project officer post. Was this a significant contributor to its success?

ORAC wrote,
If you're a smart PM, at that stage you move onto a new start up programme for "career development" and leave the minor clean up problems to your junior successor.

Guess what happens.......
That certainly rings true. I have vivid memories of asking a programme director where the time for re-testing failed first articles was in her plan; only to be told, 'There won't be any failures, we don't have time for failures'. Strangely enough she left for an 'opportunity too good to miss', a few weeks before testing started.

KenV, From the projects you were closest to, can you recall anything which stood out from the early stages of the most successful ones?

Flaptrack
wrote,

I was heavily involved as a member of the design team with two of those projects you quote. In both cases there was a massive and fundamental underestimation of the time, effort and cost involved in delivering the project, which was the main reason they ran badly late.
Was that because the experts in their fields underestimated from the beginning, or because the programme managers pushed them into corners to give unrealistic timescales and budgets, as, 'The customer won't like the original figures'?
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 19:44
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Well, if we cannot get AEF flying into Wittering effectively without forgetting fire cover and ATC at weekends, what chance has anything more complicated got................OK, hat, coat, black Omega.................
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 21:11
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Was that because the experts in their fields underestimated from the beginning, or because the programme managers pushed them into corners to give unrealistic timescales and budgets, as, 'The customer won't like the original figures'?

All of the above.

In my experience, the team which delivers the forecast is not the team who has to deliver the project. Also, I find that we engineers are rubbish at estimating how long tasks take, usually wildly under estimating.

Recently, I have been involved with a 'lessons learned' for a non-aerospace military project I was involved with that went completely pear shaped and the main points were total underestimation of timescales and costs and that all the bad decisions were taken right at the start.
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 21:55
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Flaps, as you get near the edges of tech, to go from leading edge to new stuff, the risk in a program grows ... and sadly, one can only estimate what that risk is as one doesn't know until one gets there.

AS the level of tech increases in complexity, so too does the price of the unknown and failures induced by same as project push back the edges of the possible.

There are things that can be done, but there are also things that can't be planned away. What I think happens most often is that a groupthink occurs in order to get started. Management, funders, and those in the trenches conceptually minimize how hard the unknown can be on us during a project. It is hard to quantify, as we don't have the data points yet, but we have to get started or we never get there.

Damned if one does, damned if one doesn't.
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Old 18th Aug 2015, 22:01
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I thought the Airbus helicopters Lokota helicopter programme for the U.S. Military had been both on time and on budget.
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Old 19th Aug 2015, 03:59
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Originally Posted by NutLoose
I thought the Airbus helicopters Lokota helicopter programme for the U.S. Military had been both on time and on budget.
I think you will find after the Army keeping the Comanche money then basically saying we want a commercial derivative, the all singing/all dancing steps were skipped.
Allegedly the recommendation from the testing community was no.
However that was ignored, but did not negate the scrambled rush to cool avionics that were not rated for hot places. Caused quite a stir in high places that one did.
Where you buy is oft times more important than what.
Just my tuppence worth.
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Old 19th Aug 2015, 08:29
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However that was ignored, but did not negate the scrambled rush to cool avionics that were not rated for hot places. Caused quite a stir in high places that one did.
Not totally correct, the avionics presented no problems, however the US military having a "we do not have air conditioning in our military helicopters" stance had airbus remove it for the Lakota, the air conditioning was not just there for the crew, but for avionics cooling as well, hence they had problems early on until the system was restored.

However a 300 plus helicopter programme with every one delivered on time or early and on budget from a purpose built facility employing a large percentage of veterans is something to be proud of.

http://www.defenseindustrydaily.com/...-n-high-04247/

Nov 10/07: The LUH program encounters its first spot of trouble. The Associated Press reports that during flight tests in Southern California in 80-degree weather, cockpit temperatures in the UH-72A Lakota soared above 104 degrees, the designated critical point for communication, navigation and flight control systems. In response, the Army will be installing air conditioning in many UH-72s, something that’s common on the EC145 civilian helicopters it’s derived from, but rare on military machines.
http://tacticalmashup.com/uh-72-lako...efense-market/


.

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Old 19th Aug 2015, 08:43
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however the US military having a "we do not have air conditioning in our military helicopters" stance
Which proves the OP's point 4 quite nicely Nutty....
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Old 19th Aug 2015, 09:42
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Each project will have a combination of the above, however, don't underestimate the impact of politicians, workshare and the customer changing the requirement. We will probably end up with the mpa solution we should have if it weren't for BAE lobbying government for a new solution.
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Old 19th Aug 2015, 10:03
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Mechta,
A very short précis.

The RAF E3D's weren't strictly off the shelf as the E3 production line had been shut down years before. The build line wasn't there. However, Boeing had the facility and the plans. The RAF team knew exactly what they wanted, and how much the total budget allowance was. One of the slightly bizarre issues covered the American favoured boom refuelling system. The RAF didn't want this, just probe and drove, but to design the boom system out would have cost circa $500,000 per airframe. The E3D's have both refuelling systems. Saved money and increased capability. The only notable carry over from the AEW3 was the one good piece of kit the RAF liked, and the Loreal pods were removed from Nimrod and installed on to the E3D's at production. Utilising this piece of proven kit gave further financial savings.
First-hand knowledge of mission requirements along with experience on the NATO E3 fleet helped this programme run smoothly from inception to delivery without any of the 'normal' delays and cost overruns we have become used to.
There are others on here who could help with deeper explanations on how well executed this whole acquisition project was accomplished without crossing the OPSEC boundary.
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Old 19th Aug 2015, 10:36
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Was that over budget/time compated to what was realistic or what the customer demanded? I can think of many examples.
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Old 19th Aug 2015, 11:41
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Originally Posted by KenV
H-53K was a big success
Development is currently 45% ($2.1 Bn) over budget, and the program is already four years behind schedule, a figure likely to slip further.

Flap Track 6 covers many of the causes. Others include a disconnect between top management and engineering in many firms where engineers are overlooked by the management development process; a tendency by CFOs (esp. in publicly traded firms) to adopt the best-case program schedule as the most likely schedule; and the usual proclivity towards firefighting -- i.e. day-to-day milestones being missed, leading to heroic efforts to recover schedule down the road -- in the absence of strong management.
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Old 19th Aug 2015, 12:05
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And remember the E3F was procured in parallel.
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Old 19th Aug 2015, 12:43
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camlobe-

The production line for the 707 airframe was still going in the late 1980s, albeit at a low rate, with US Navy E-6s taking up most of the slots. Bearing in mind that most airframes off the line were basically empty, do you mean the 707-to-E-3 gubbins installation line?

I could be wrong, but I believe the last RAF E-3 may have been the last 707 built.
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