Deltek/MoD case study, spring 2008

Thales ahead of schedule on multi-million-pound MoD Watchkeeper project, thanks to ever-alert Deltek Cobra EVM system

As an aerospace manufacturing firm, if you're given a chance to work on a vast, high-profile MoD contract, worth millions of pounds, the last thing you want to do is risk falling short of delivery expectations.

This was situation Thales UK's aerospace business could have found itself in when it was named the preferred bidder for the UK Ministry of Defence's Watchkeeper Tactical Unmanned Air Vehicle (TUAV) system in 2004/5, such was the scale and criticality of the contract it had taken on.

The vehicle Thales is engineering is designed to provide UK Army commanders with vital intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) information, through the provision of accurate, timely and high-quality imagery gathered on long, unmanned flights.

"Two things were immediately apparent when we won this project," says Patrick Kennerson, project controls systems manager on the Thales Aerospace team. "Firstly, we had never undertaken a project of this magnitude before; it was 10 times larger in scale than anything we had worked on before; and secondly, this had to be Earned Value Management [EVM] controlled from day one which was another 'first' on a project of such a size."
Earned value proves critical

Indeed, so critical was the need to demonstrate earned value, that having an EVM-based project management system to keep track of the programme was a pre-requisite for any engineering firm that wanted to be considered for the Watchkeeper TUAV contract.

Kennerson, who was not involved with the bid at the time, believes experience of Deltek by other team members was to thank for Thales' decision to invest in Deltek's Cobra software to measure and manage earned value on the project.

Deltek Cobra specialises in managing project costs, measuring earned value, and analysing budgets, actuals and forecasts, by analysing and reporting on live data fed into it from a range of key business systems that already exist in an organisation. "I had used Cobra myself when working on CVF [aircraft carrier] projects, so the teams here would be quite familiar with the software," he notes.

Even leaving aside the sheer scale of the Watchkeeper TUAV project, the contract is further complicated by the fact that as much as 40% of it is embedded in the supply chain. "This means that a huge chunk of it is outside of our direct control," Kennerson explains.

To keep such a large and potentially unwieldy commitment on track and to budget, the Thales team needed a software system that was highly proactive in pushing out critical performance data to project managers, and which could be depended upon for basing its reports on only the most accurate, up-to-the-minute information.
Meeting milestones

Deltek Cobra has had such an impact on the performance of the project that the Thales team hasn't missed a single milestone in the two years it has been running the contract, whose designated timeline is 2005-2013. "This is probably the most successful project our organisation has run," Kennerson enthuses.

Earned value management lies at the heart of this success, he notes. "The tool's sole purpose is to measure and manage earned value, as this project is being judged and run on our value," he explains. "It's not that payment would be denied if we did not deliver, but more that this is being justified by the measurable value we bring to the table."

Cobra calculates this by intelligently measuring at any given time, and reporting on, how the project is performing - and how it will perform - based on a number of key indicators. This aids informed, early decision-making, enabling managers to keep the project on track.
Integrated systems

Of particular importance to the Thales team has been the ease with which the Cobra system integrates with other critical business systems, such as scheduling systems, HR and finance systems. This ensures that the system is being fed with accurate, current data on resource usage, and costs, to produce consolidated, meaningful reports that can be acted upon promptly.

"This means Cobra needs to interface to our planning system, which in turn interfaces with our actuals financial system and to Oracle," Kennerson explains. "The planning system acts as a single point of truth for everything, and Cobra is the outward-facing customer interface to this, including the supply chain, to produce a single point of truth to project managers.

"This means we can directly monitor and control what is coming back from the project so that, if one aspect is running 3-4 months behind, we can change that."

Instant reporting

Cobra's reporting capabilities are particularly impressive," Kennerson notes. "We found that the Cobra package offers a whole suite of ready-made reports - all we had to do was choose which ones we wanted," he says. "Even better - these just happened to be the exact reports mandated by our customer."

Yet the reports are only as good as the data fed into them, and this is very powerful, too, he says. "The system is very good at bringing together metrics with the narrative, to produce an accurate, real picture of where we are at any given time. The level and range of these metrics is very impressive."

Crucially, Cobra reports the actual value, cost and resource usage of a programme versus its anticipated performance. "It is very good at producing a real-world measure of perceived versus actual progress," he explains. "In this way, it acts as an independent control, to check whether our perception of how things are going is borne out by the facts (and vice versa). It isn't the final judge, but it provides strategic control of the programme. Without Cobra, we would have no real way of anticipating problems; there would be no independent adjudicator."
Reallocating resources

If money is not being spent as had been predicted in a certain area, Cobra will spot this and can help project managers to release those funds so that they can be reallocated elsewhere in the programme. "This is because we have clear visibility of our actual spend versus the planned spend," says Kennerson.

EVM allows delays to be tracked in cost terms, too, freeing up potentially substantial funds to be reallocated every time slippage is reversed. "We could recoup £10 million by bringing the schedule back on track if it's gone off-track," he explains. "Ie. this is the amount the delay would cost if left unaddressed."

To ensure that Thales gets the most from its investment in the Cobra software, the company has struck up a close partnership with Deltek. "Some organisations will spend £10,000 on a tool, but only £200 on implementation, which is ridiculous," Kennerson notes. "We like to purchase the know-how and best practice as well."

The resulting partnership means the Thales team invites its Deltek contacts to its strategic planning meetings, so that Deltek knows where Thales needs to go with the software, and so that Thales has the latest information on planned new releases of Cobra and new features it will be able to exploit in future.
Enterprise-wide roll-out

Thales is also impressed at how proactive Deltek has been in its support for Thales. For example, Deltek sent out an EVM specialist 'all the way from Australia' when first invited to help establish Thales' EVM capabilities, and to link Cobra to its main business systems. That consultancy is still open, Kennerson notes.

"The Watchkeeper project has been such a success so far that we plan to use this as a case study and business case to promote Deltek Cobra to the rest of the organisation, both across Aerospace and, eventually, to our other business units," he says. "Our aim is to have a single, consolidated, 'air-proofed' EVM and project management system across the whole organisation, so that the whole enterprise can benefit. We're already in discussions to that effect."

[ENDS]

About Thales

Thales Group is a world leader in electronic systems and industrial electronics, and operates in five business sectors, each of which draw on a shared platform of technologies to meet the unique demands of a huge variety of applications. These are aerospace, air systems, land & joint systems, naval, and security solutions and services.

Thales in the UK, based in Addlestone, Surrey, now draws together in one company such famous businesses as Racal, Thomson CSF, Shorts Missile Systems, Thorn EMI and Pilkington Optronics.

About the Watchkeeper TUAV project

In July 2004, the UK Ministry of Defence announced that Thales UK had been selected as the preferred bidder for the Watchkeeper Tactical Unmanned Air Vehicle (TUAV) system. Watchkeeper will provide the UK armed forces with Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) capability.

In August 2005, Thales UK was awarded the contract for the Development, Manufacture and Initial Support (DMIS) phases of the Watchkeeper programme. Watchkeeper is a tactical system that will be operated in theatre by the British Army Royal Artillery.

Thales UK's Watchkeeper proposal included a large UAV and a smaller UAV, support equipment and ground stations. The MoD has decided that a single UAV solution is more cost effective and only the larger WK450 UAV will be developed.

The air vehicle will be capable of carrying a range of sensors including day and night cameras and surveillance radars. Two WK450 air vehicles will be able to operate in tandem, with the second acting as a communications relay. The ground control station will be network enabled to ensure comprehensive communications links, for example to airborne stand-off radar, attack aircraft and battlegroup headquarters.

In June 2007, following completion of the critical design review, Thales unveiled the final design which features the dual payload, all-weather operation with de-icing and automatic take-off and landing capability. The Watchkeeper system will enter service in the British armed forces Royal Artillery in 2010.