Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) is a development and acquisition program intended to replace a wide range of existing fighter, strike, and ground attack aircraft for the United States, the United Kingdom, Turkey, Italy, Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and their allies.
Client: BAe Systems
Contract Duration: 1 Year
Contract Value: £100,000
Project Duration: 12 Years
Project Value: >$1 trillion
Optimise were asked to setup and enhance the clients schedule and risk management arrangements for support to manufacture of key components of the F35. The state-of-the-art production facility in Salmesbury, Lancashire manufactures the Horizontal and Vertical Tail Planes and the Aft Fuselage section. The client had a mature base set of deliverables for schedule and risk management, however, were looking to get more value from the existing controls following some external audit findings. Optimise was engaged to specify some “quick win” deliverables to close the audit actions but were then retained to implement the suggestions and help to setup the culture and structure to support better information collation within the risk registers and schedule.
Optimise provided the client with a number of key improvements which are still in use on the programme. Some of the highlights included:
- Moving the organisation into a programme planning space, with the introduction of an integrated management schedule, which was fed and underpinned by a schedule hierarchy down to the level of individual production activities fed from the production schedule. This not only gave a clear line of sight for the purposes of reporting and Earened Value Management validation, but also enabled the risk management process to delve deeper into the operations to help optimise and refine the approach to the manufacturing sequence and assumptions.
- Enhancing risk reviews and timely and frequent update of risks and associated mitigation re-invigorated the stale approach that was in place, and made programme personnel more aware of the value of a robust risk management process to not only provide confidence in delivery, but confidence in decisions at key strategic milestones.
