Week 8 - Your Individual Assignment Instructions(Individual Assi.docx

Week 8 - Your Individual Assignment Instructions
(Individual Assignment) (8%)
· After studying The Orion Shield Project, (linked here and
posted as a separate module at the end of course content), each
student critically discusses the technical, ethical, legal,
contractual, and other project management issues that faced
program manager Gary Allison.
· He or she decides where Gary has done well and where not, in
a succinct report that includes an executive summary.
Clarification:
After you view the videos, you'll likely agree that Gary Allison
has not done well as Orion Shield R&D program manager.
Your task is to identify and discuss the technical, ethical, legal,
contractual and other project management issues that he has
faced. There are difficulties in each of these areas.
For instance, perhaps the Orion Shield contract type is wrong.
What would have been a better one? For whom - the customer,
the company or both?
This is no time to be politically correct. Name names as you
identify the culprits in this case.
Be careful to study all the information in the case.
Remember to include a meaningful, results-filled executive
summary at the beginning of your report. Be sure to leave
enough time to run your analysis through Turnitin and make any
necessary changes. You must submit both your final paper and
your final Turnitin report to your assignment folder by the due
date.

The Orion Shield Project Transcript:
Gary Allison accepted a position at Scientific Engineering
Corporation (SEC) soon after graduating with a Ph. D. in
mechanical engineering. Over the last 14 years he established a
reputation as a respected and talented project engineer.
Everything changed once he accepted a position as Project
Manager on the Orion Shield Project.
"This is impossible! Just totally impossible! Ten months ago I
was sitting on top of the world. Upper-level management
considered me one of the best, if not the best engineer in the
plant. Now look at me! I have bags under my eyes, I haven't
slept soundly in the last six months, and here I am, cleaning out
my desk. I'm sure glad they gave me back my old job in
engineering. I guess I could have saved myself a lot of grief and
aggravation had I not accepted the promotion to project
manager."
Henry Larsen, the director of engineering, called Gary into his
office.
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Gary was pleased to be involved in such an effort. He had no
trouble getting functional support for the R&D effort necessary
to put together a technical proposal. All of the functional
managers continually remarked to Gary "This must be a biggy.
The director of engineering has thrown all of his support behind
you."
On December 2, the RFP was received. Gary identified one
trouble area. The technical specifications stated that all
components must be able to operate normally and successfully
through a temperature range of -65 degrees F to 145 degrees F.
Current testing indicated the Scientific Engineering Corporation
design would not function above 130 degrees F. An intensive
R&D effort was conducted over the next three weeks.
Everywhere Gary looked, it appeared that the entire
organization was working on his technical proposal.
Gary and Henry Larsen met a week before the final proposal
was due to develop a company position concerning the inability
of the preliminary design material to be operated above 130 F.
Gary was concerned. Every approach he tried indicated that the
original design wouldn't work. He didn't think the specification
requirements could be met without a change in materials.
Gary wanted to tell the customer the truth, let the chips fall
where they may and start over, and he told Larsen this. But
Larsen had a different approach.
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The proposal was submitted after two solid months of sixteen-
hour days. On February 10, Space Technology Industries
announced that SEC would be awarded the Orion Shield Project.
The contract called for a ten-month effort, negotiated at a $2.2
million Fixed Price Incentive Fee (FPIF).
1. Are there any valid reasons for Henry Larsen to suggest that
SEC’s proposal should state that it expected to be able to meet
the specified performance standard?
2. Should Gary have followed up on his ethical concerns? If so,
how?
Following the contract award, Henry Larsen called Gary in for a
conference.
Gary was excited about the new opportunity. However, he

wondered why Larsen was offering him the position, when SEC
had several good program managers. He asked Larsen why he
was being given this opportunity.
Read Transcript
1. Should Gary accept the position of project manager? Explain.
2. Why might a company not allow a project manager to return
to his functional department?
Gary accepted the new challenge. His first major hurdle
occurred in staffing the project. The top priority given to him to
bid the program did not follow through for staffing. The
survival of SEC depended upon the profits received from the
production programs. In keeping with this philosophy Gary
found that engineering managers (even his former boss) were
reluctant to give up their key people to the Orion Shield
Program. However, with a little support from Henry Larsen,
Gary formed an adequate staff.
Right from the start Gary was worried that the test matrix in the
technical volume of the proposal would not produce satisfactory
results. Gary had a milestone, ninety days after go-ahead, to
identify the raw materials that could meet specifications. Gary
and Paula Arnold (the chief project engineer) held a meeting to
map out their strategy for the first few months.
During the meeting, Gary expressed his doubts about the text
matrix and asked for Paula's recommendations
Gary decided to let the other project office personnel handle the
administrative work and run weekly team meetings. He asked
Paula to work with him in the research lab until they got
acceptable results. For the next three weeks they spent virtually
twelve hours per day, seven days a week, in the research and
development lab. None of the results showed any promise. Gary

kept trying to set up a meeting with Henry Larsen but always
found him unavailable.
During the fourth week, Gary, Paula, and the key functional
department managers met to develop an alternate test matrix.
The new test matrix looked good. Gary and his team worked
frantically to develop a new workable schedule that would not
impact the second milestone, which was to occur at the end of
180 days. This milestone was final acceptance of the raw
materials, and preparation of production runs of the raw
materials. The production runs would verify that there would be
no scale-up differences between lab development and full-scale
production.
Gary personally prepared all of the technical handouts for the
interchange meeting. After all, he would be the one presenting
all of the data. The technical interchange meeting was
scheduled for two days.
On the first day, Gary presented all of the data, including test
results, and the new test matrix. The customer appeared
displeased with the progress to date.
Space Technology Industries decided to have an in-house
caucus that evening to go over the material that was presented.
The following morning Sarah Wilson stated the company
position.
Although Gary was unhappy with the first meeting, especially
with the requests made by Space Technology Industries, he felt
they had sufficient justification for their comments. Following
the meeting, Gary personally prepared the complete minutes.
"This is absurd! I've wasted almost one entire week doing
nothing more than administrative paperwork. Why do we need
such detailed minutes? Can't a rough summary just as well
suffice? Why is it that customers want everything documented?
We've been completely cooperative with them. If we've gotten
this much paper-work to do now, I hate to imagine what it will
be like if we get into trouble."

1. What mistakes did Gary make? What did he do right?
2. Are Sarah’s requests reasonable? Why or why not?
Gary completed the technical interchange meeting minutes and
distributed them to the customer and all key team members. For
the next five weeks testing went according to plan, or at least
Gary thought it did. He was so caught up in administrative
paperwork that he hadn't found time to visit the research labs in
over a month. The test results were still poor.
On a Wednesday morning, Gary entered the lab to observe the
morning testing. He found Paula Arnold and Henry Larsen
testing a new material, JXB-3.
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Although Gary was concerned that problems might arise when

the customer learned about the new material, Larsen assured
him there wouldn't be any trouble.
Before he contacted Space Technology, Gary called a team
meeting to present the new data to the project personnel. At the
meeting one functional manager was markedly upset that he had
not been notified of the change in materials. His people had
been working with the existing materials for the last two
months, and now this effort seemed wasted. In addition, there
was no information available on this new material. His unit was
going to have to play catch-up, which would substantially
increase costs.
One week before the 180-day milestone meeting, Gary
submitted the handout package to Space Technology Industries
for preliminary review. An hour later the phone rang. It was
Sarah Wilson.
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Gary was upset that Space Technology Industries did not trust
SEC. It seemed all of the extra work he had put into the
administrative tasks required for the interchange meetings had
not paid off.
Two weeks later Space Technology reluctantly agreed that the
new material offered the greatest promise.
Three weeks later the design review meeting was held. NASA
was definitely not pleased with the prime contractor's
recommendation to put a new untested material into a multi-
million-dollar effort.
1. What actions can Gary take to restore trust between SEC and
STI?
2. What can Gary do about Henry Larsen’s personal
involvement and interference in the program?
Gary planned to make the first verification mix during the week
following the design review meeting. The verification mix was a
full-scale production run of the material to establish final
specifications for the raw materials. It would verify that there
would be no changes in the property of the materials as
production went from the small mixes made in the
R&D laboratories to large batches needed in manufacturing.
Unfortunately, the manufacturing plans were a week behind
schedule, primarily since Gary had decided to reduce costs by
accepting the responsibility for developing the bill of materials
himself.
Gary called a meeting with Ed Anderson, the team
representative from the production department. He asked Ed if
the mix could be rescheduled for late the following week.
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After testing, it became obvious that the wrong lots of raw
materials were used in the production verification mix.
Sarah Wilson called a special meeting with Gary. She wanted an
explanation of why the mistake had occurred and what the
alternatives were. Gary tried to explain that working people
overtime had caused the problem.
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Gary left the meeting feeling as though he had just gotten raked
over the coals. For the next two months, he worked sixteen
hours a day, almost every day. Gary did not want to burden his
staff with the responsibility of the handouts, so he began
preparing them himself. He considered hiring additional staff,
but with such a tight budget, and having to remake the
verification mix, cost overruns appeared inevitable.
As the end of the seventh month approached, Gary was feeling
pressure from within Scientific Engineering Corporation. The
decision-making process appeared to be slowing down. Gary
found it more and more difficult to motivate his people. In fact,
the grapevine was referring to the Orion Shield Project as a
loser, and some of his key people acted as though they were on
a sinking ship.
By the time the eighth month rolled around, the budget had
nearly been expended. Gary was tired of doing everything
himself. He wished he had stayed an engineer. Elliot Grey met
with Gary to see what could be salvaged. Grey agreed to get
Gary additional corporate funding to complete the project, but
he insisted that performance must be met, since the company
had a lot riding on the Orion Shield Project.
Gary called a team meeting to identify the status and map out a
strategy for the rest of the program. During the meeting, he

presented a revised schedule.
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The engineering and testing departments were equally unhappy
that they would have to reschedule facilities and people without
proper notice. They echoed the need to review the new
schedule.
1. What could Gary have done differently to improve
communications within the program team, and with SEC
functional departments and STI?
The second verification mix was made the following week.
Testing proceeded according to the revised schedule. It looked
as though the total schedule milestones could be met, provided

that specifications could be adhered to.
Because of the revised schedule, some of the testing had to be
performed on holidays. Gary wasn't pleased with asking people
to work on Sundays and holidays, but he had no choice. The test
matrix called for testing to be accomplished at specific times
after end-of-mix.
A team meeting was called on Wednesday to resolve the
problem of who would work on the holiday, which would occur
on Friday, as well as staffing Saturday and Sunday. For an hour
and a half, the team members argued about little problems and
continually avoided the major question, stating that they would
have to first coordinate commitments with their boss. It was
obvious to Gary that his team members were afraid to make
major decisions and "ate up" a lot of time on trivial problems.
During the team meeting Gary became quite disappointed. Phil
Rodgers, who had been Gary's test engineer since the project
started, was assigned to a new project that the grapevine called
"Larsen's new adventure." His replacement was a relatively new
man with only eight months with the company.
On the following day, Thursday, Gary went to see the
department manager responsible for testing. He hoped Phil
Rodgers could work over the weekend to do some unscheduled
testing necessary to catch up. As it turned out, both Phil
Rodgers and his replacement were on an extended weekend
vacation. Sarah Wilson was flying down her best people to
observe the weekend's testing, and it was late to change the
schedule. The department manager finally agreed to find
someone to help with the testing.
The weekend's testing went according to schedule. The raw data
were made available to the customer under the stipulation that
the final company position would be announced at the end of
the next month, after the functional departments had a chance to
analyze it.
Final testing was completed during the second week of the ninth
month. The initial results looked excellent. The materials were
within contract specifications, and although they were new,

both Gary and Space Technology's management felt that there
would be little difficulty in convincing NASA that this was the
way to go. Henry Larsen visited Gary and congratulated him on
a job well done.
All that remained was four additional full-scale verification
mixes to determine how much deviation there would be in
material properties between full-sized production-run mixes.
Gary tried to get Sarah Wilson to concur (as part of the original
tradeoff analysis) that two of the four production runs could be
deleted. However, Space Technology's management refused,
insisting that contractual requirements must be met at the
expense of SEC.
The following week, Elliot Grey called Gary in for an
emergency meeting concerning expenditures to date.
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Gary returned to his office very disappointed. No matter how
hard he worked, the bureaucratic red tape of project
management seemed to always do him in. But late that
afternoon, Gary's disposition improved. Space
Technology Industries called to say that, after consultation with
NASA, SEC would be awarded a sole-source contract for
qualification and production of Shuttle Launch Booster
components using the new longer-life raw materials. Both Space
Technology Industries and NASA felt that the sole-source
contract was justified, provided that continued testing showed
the same results, since Scientific Engineering Corporation had
all of the technical experience with the new materials.
Gary received a letter of congratulations from corporate
headquarters, but no additional pay increase. The grapevine said
that a substantial bonus was given to the director of
engineering.
During the tenth month, results were coming back from the
accelerated aging tests performed on the new materials. The
results indicated that, although the new materials would meet
specifications, the age life would probably be less than five
years. These numbers came as a shock to Gary. He wondered if
they could be wrong.
Gary and Paula Arnold had a conference to determine the best
strategy to follow. Gary suggested that they not tell anyone
until the production contract was signed.
Two weeks later, as the program was winding down into the
testing for the final verification mix and final report
development, Gary received an urgent phone call asking him to
report immediately to Henry Larsen's office.
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1. Why is a person like Henry Larsen able to remain in a
position of responsibility at SEC?
2. List the mistakes Gary made that contributed to the problems
SEC experienced with the Orion Shield project. Discuss those
actions he could have taken that would have allowed SEC to
more successfully complete the Orion Shield Project Phase I.
3. Summarize the ethical aspects of the case, to include which
ethical and/or legal standards were violated.

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