Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
Issue link: http://vanguardcanada.uberflip.com/i/155544
P Procurement In complex project management, schedule is king: the issue that will always get away from you is schedule ... Through our project management development, we do try to bring a lot of oversight to bear on schedule but it can be very difficult to predict. disappearing and getting rid of things. We are fortunate: our allies are seeing a lot of their capital budgets going down and ours has been preserved. The real challenge is around the competencies and experience of our people. We could probably add 10 people next week to one of our major capital projects, but if they are 10 apprentices, they are actually a burden on a small project office, not an asset. During Dan Ross's tenure, he stood up Project Management Competency Development, where we looked at project management competencies in the private sector and among our close allies. The Australians, for example, have a Master's level program, to which we have sent some of our people, and now we're looking at what we can stand up here. We have a fairly robust succession management program where we are grooming the future project managers. We're making sure people show up with a fair amount of pedigree. We've also stood up a project management support office so that there is a body of knowledge and other resources you can go to to help kick start a project. Also, if you go back 15-20 years when we were doing major projects, it would have been done by very large project offices, all internal to DND or government. It's not that way anymore. It's much leaner and most of our major project offices are supported directly or indirectly by some level of contracted support, often from industry, for expertise that allows us to surge. Q In a public presentation earlier this year, Mr. Ross indicated that schedules rather than budgets were the primary cause of delays in programs: Is that a people problem? In complex project management, schedule is king: the issue that will always get away from you is schedule. It could be because of lack of experience and what was set up in the first place – and we are trying to do that knowledge transfer – or process; like it or not, there is an internal process, a process to get you to Treasury Board, etc. You may want to go out to industry with a short, sharp 90-day request for proposal but all the bidders come back and say, we can't give it to you in that amount of time. It can be a whole bunch of factors. Through our project management development, we do try to bring a lot of oversight to bear on schedule but it can be very difficult to predict. But we recognize that schedule is the biggest thing that will get away from you. Q Is slippage in schedule the primary reason why money allocated to procurement has not been spent in recent years? 32 AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2013 www.vanguardcanada.com One of the things the government has done, particularly on the capital side, is move us into an accrual-based budget. That gives you more flexibility in reallocating budgets, but if you are not careful it will attrite your buying power as well. We spend $5 to $6 billion a year, so the program is moving. We do over 10,000 contracts a year. Most of the focus is on the big ones, but when you look at all we do – spare parts, smaller capital projects, obsolescence management – most of it moves successfully under radar. But in the context of money not being spent, I would say it is a whole bunch of things. The volume of projects we are trying to move in parallel is a challenge. It is difficult to forecast into next year and the year after and predict what will happen in this RFP or with that evaluation. There is slippage: you take a given ship project, there could be slippage in the design phase because as you have made it more and more detailed, you've determined there is a flaw and you're better off dealing with a weight or length issue which is going to cause a two-month delay but will have a positive impact for the next 50 years. And with so many government people involved in these large projects, getting it lined up and streamlined is complex. But if you go down the list of CFDS projects and look at where we have come in five years, a lot has been delivered. Q Public Works recently announced a pilot specific to the Ae Netw - Th (A - Fix - Clo - Clo - In -M - Ta - In Integrated Soldier System Project to address the delays to programs because of small technical issue. Can you elaborate on it? Within a competitive RFP, you can't have a process where you select a winner and then say, now let's sit down and talk about the contract. You really have to lay out the roadmap for the entire acquisition, and potentially the in-service support. In the case of that particular project, it was issues around mandatory requirements and people's ability to achieve them. We worked with Public Works to come up with a pilot project for a "two-pass approach" for these requirements which gives everyone an opportunity to revisit what would be a black and white technical thing, such as different costs numbers in two tables or a clerical error. I have had discussions with industry to identify the list of things we need to chip away at, not just the strategic pieces, but also some of the more technical things. Q You began with the CFDS. It is expected to undergo a refresh. What role will ADM(Mat) play? We would be involved in discussions around updates. It's a 20-year roadmap and when I look at the policy – the three roles, the six missions, the list of equipment – I don't see a lot of changes. Our Chief of Force Development has a robust process by which they look at the future security environment, the threats, capability-based planning and the equipment you then need. We participate on what that may mean from a cost perspective and things of that nature. It is a support role. I just don't see anything that is going to dramatically change the list of work that we at ADM(Mat) have to do. RAdm Finn will be a keynote at DEFSEC Atlantic in Halifax September 4-6. d