Preserving capacity, General Tom Lawson, Chief of the Defence Staff, Keys to Canadian SAR
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multiple fl eets. Likewise from a logistics and maintenance perspec- tive, the more commonality of pieces the easier it is in terms of train- ing requirements for the technicians, for managing inventory, etc. Q More than one commander in recent months has noted the importance of schedule, especially on shipbuilding projects. What do you need to do to ensure there is minimal slippage? I think a key step will be the governance that has just been put in place. In the past, a fi le may have stalled at a lower level because somebody in one of the key departments – DND, PW, Industry Canada or Treasury Board Secretariat – may not have been seized with the urgency of the fi le. Now these issues will escalate up the chain much faster to the level where people can make decisions and unblock fi les. Further, schedule is just one of three key project performance criteria – capability and cost are the others – and there has to be a balance between the three. Schedule does tend to be king because we lose buying power over time on multi-billion dollar projects, but there is a requirement to be able to accept possible tradeoffs – for example it might be worth accepting a delay of a project for six to nine months if the capability that is going to be delivered is signifi cant enough to justify the schedule slippage. Q The government has clearly stake a lot on the DPS and has raised hopes in industry: how important will it be to manage expectations as this rolls out? It is still early days. As we were putting the strategy together we gave ourselves gates by which certain things would be accom- plished: six months, 12 months, and 18 months. The review panel was one of the items that had to come out within the fi rst six months and it is progressing well. The DAG is out and we are also doing a lot of work on increased delegation of authority. We will, however, need time to fi gure out the various processes and how they are going to work, and to build capacity within the system. Many of these components are new and we will need to fi gure out how to get the right balance, for example, between value proposi- tions, cost, schedule and capability. In terms of managing expectations, we are going down the right path, but there are some projects that are caught in between the previous system and the DPS and we are doing our best to apply the DPS or its intent with the least amount of churn possible. P PROCUREmENT 14 OCTOBER/nOVEMBER 2014 www.vanguardcanada.com Q Does that pose any challenges with respect to project management competencies? I think the challenge for us is making sure that we have done the training and put the tools in place so that we respect the govern- ment's contracting regulations to the T. That can be a bit of a challenge in an organization that is spread out across the country and we will have to fi gure out what we need to do to ensure we have competencies in place before we actually start executing the increased delegation of authorities to make sure we don't get it wrong. It sounds like a simple thing but there is actually quite a bit of work involved and we think it is probably going to take about a year before we start executing the increased delegation of authority. Q You have taken steps to improve and align competency development for project managers. It's one thing to have com- petent people but given the number of projects outlined in the DAG, do you have enough of them? We actually ask for the project management people in our project approval submissions to Treasury Board. When we go in to Trea- sury Board we say, this project is going to take four to fi ve years to deliver and it is going to require 50 people in the project manage- ment offi ce. So we then have the authority to hire the people we need. There is a strain on the people that we matrix because they have certain skill sets that can be used by multiple projects, but to date projects and people are managing. Q It's not directly tied to the DPS but you also have a sustain- ment initiative underway that does impact acquisition. What is ADM MAT's objective with this? This is an interesting initiative. It is one of 22 that are part of the broader Defence Renewal initiative and is one of four that Mate- riel Group is responsible for. We are drawing on lessons from the private sector and from our allies on what is the optimal way to maintain fl eets. We are asking ourselves if we are over-maintaining fl eets at the moment. Do we put some fl eets in for routine main- tenance every six months when, in fact, we could be doing the maintenance every nine months? And what's the savings and po- tential operational impacts associated with that? We're also trying to move more to performance-based logistics, putting in place contracts that are more metrics based. For exam- ple, do we need to have 100 percent of all spares 100 percent of the time? Could we live with 80 percent if the supplier could pro- vide the additional spares within 24 hours? What is the impact then on inventory management and the cost of inventory management? Can we get away with less warehouse space? These are all things we are hoping to explore as we seek to spend money more effi ciently and ideally reduce costs throughout the supply chain. Q Is it also an eff ort to look more holistically across fl eets within a service? We are looking at things we can do between fl eets as well as within fl eets. For example, we are interested in simulators that can service C M Y CM MY CY CMY K