15 September 2009

Space operations organisation improves information management system, making It more flexible and scalable with partner Dekker.

United Space Alliance (USA), owned equally by The Boeing Company and Lockheed Martin, is one of the world’s preeminent space operations organisations. Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Houston, Texas, United Space Alliance is the primary contractor in all human space operations for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), including the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programmes.

In order to comply with Federal reporting standards, USA relies on Earned Value Management (EVM) to track progress on its multi-year, multi-billion dollar projects. With over 10,000 employees working in five states and two countries, USA needed a solution that would allow employees and contractors to access and manage complex information easily and quickly, all while maintaining stringent EVM accounting and transparency standards.

Wanting to avoid complicated enterprise project management systems, USA turned to Dekker Ltd and its Program Management Information System (PMIS) software suite to provide the solution. “USA deals with huge NASA programmes, and the project work is very large scale,” says Simon Dekker, president and CEO of Dekker. “USA needed a technical solution that could aid compliance with federal EVM requirements and make it easier to share information and collaborate.”

To that end, Dekker helped engineer USA’s deployment of an Office Business Application (OBA) designed around the integration of the Dekker PMIS suite with Microsoft applications. Now USA can expedite tasks such as data analysis, report processing, and providing project status updates to government agencies using Office SharePoint Server 2007 for the dissemination of information; Office Outlook 2007 to create e-mail alerts or status reports; and Excel 2007 to generate ANSI 748, UN/CEFACT, or FAR-compliant reports.

“The OBA lets us quickly generate customer deliverables directly out of our system,” says Jack Thrift, director of the Constellation Programme Office at USA. “We spend less time accessing data and formatting documents, and more time on analysis and other activities that really matter.”

In addition to its software solutions, Dekker also provided USA with training services to help technicians and cost accountants learn project management techniques quickly. “We created a solution for USA that provides ‘just-in-time’ training for its personnel,” says Dekker. “It was all set up with the capability to augment the key components of Office, which they were already familiar with. If the employees are viewing a screen and they don’t know how to perform a specific task, there is a help system where they can quickly view the training that teaches that particular topic.”

Through the deployment of the Dekker PMIS suite, United Space Alliance has embraced a game-changing solution that works with existing systems to integrate data and has increased the organisation’s capabilities for sharing information with government agencies, vendors, and subcontractors. And moving forward, the scalability and flexibility of the system eliminates the need for expensive IT reinvestments as the company continues to grow.

This article first appeared In the 2009/10 edition of the Prime Partner Guide

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