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Schedule for this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, October 25, 1999
Risk Management is often accomplished in a segmented and incomplete process. The engineering design team will worry about technical risks, the mission planning team will worry about mission success, and the program management team will worry about cost and schedule risks. None of these issues is independent. Schedule reductions or cost reductions will cause technical risks that may compromise mission success. Likewise a solution to a mission risk will create technical risks, which directly impacts cost and schedule performance.
Risk-based decision support is a process of examining the entire risk environment of a decision issue and presenting not just a point value to a decision maker, but the complete, integrated risk impacts, the uncertainties, and the risk drivers for the solution options.
Current hot topics such as DoD's CAIV (Cost as an independent variable) and NASA's "Faster, Better Cheaper" (FBC) approach to projects and programs are concepts that beg for an integrated approach to risk management. The previous culture was to approach risk as "reduce all risk at any cost". The current environment demands that risk be a traded resource along with cost, schedule, and mission performance. Decisions must be made such that an acceptable balance is achieved.
Bryan O'Connor, a California native, received a BS degree in Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1968 and a MS in Aeronautical Systems from the University of West Florida in 1970. He began active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps in June 1968, and received his pilot wings in June 1970. He served as an attack pilot flying the A-4 Skyhawk and the AV-8A Harrier in the U.S., Europe, and the Western Pacific.
O'Connor was pilot of the crew of Atlantis on a night launch in November 1985 and commander of the crew of Columbia in June 1991, on the first dedicated space life sciences mission. Between flight assignments, he served as Assistant Program Manager (Operations) for the Space Shuttle program, Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations, and founding Chairman of NASA's Space Flight Safety Panel.
While at NASA Headquarters, O'Connor led the team that negotiated the framework for the Shuttle/Mir joint U.S./Russian space program. He then directed the redesign and restructure of the International Space Station (ISS) program, and served as Director of the transition from the Freedom to the ISS. In early 1994, he was assigned as the Director of the Space Shuttle program. As such, he was responsible for all aspects of the $3.5 billion per year program that employed over 27,000 government and contractor personnel. By the time he left NASA in March 1996, he had led the program through twelve safe, successful missions, including the first three flights to the Russian Space Station Mir.
From June 1996 through January 1999, O'Connor was an independent aerospace safety consultant. He currently serves as Director of Engineering at Futron Corporation in Washington DC, providing risk based decision support and systems engineering services to a variety of government and commercial programs.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Dr. Eugene Waluschka
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