Do steering committees and boards constitute good project governance?

One could argue that good project governance positively influences productivity, and that this shapes the economy in a sustainable way. However, there is a prevailing perception in the corporate and government environment that steering committees and boards in some way constitutes good project governance. This perception appears to be based in part upon the presumption that the corporate sector always performs better than government; the corporate sector assures good corporate governance through boards; Ergo everyone else, including government, would perform better if they did the same. The paper argues that this presumption is indefensible as there is no scientific or rational basis to support it. Moreover, the concept of governance as steering committees and boards can diffuse responsibility and accountability in the hierarchical structures of government departments and large organisations that initiate their own projects and this can lead to project delay, confusion and uncertainty. The paper reviews the literature on governance and project steering committees and concludes that establishing project advisory rather than steering committees removes the potential for organisational power play and provides an effective consultation mechanism that facilitates 'best for project' outcomes

AGILE Paradigm: The next generation collaborative MDO for the development of aeronautical systems

The research and innovation EU funded AGILE project has developed the next generation of aircraft Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization (MDO) processes, which target significant reductions in aircraft development costs and time to market, leading to more cost-effective and greener aircraft solutions. 19 industry, research and academia partners from Europe, Canada and Russia have developed solutions to cope with the challenges of collaborative design and optimization of complex aeronautical products. In order to accelerate the deployment of large-scale, collaborative multidisciplinary design and optimization, a novel approach, the so-called “AGILE Paradigm”, has been conceived. The AGILE Paradigm is defined as a “blueprint for MDO”, accelerating the deployment and the operations of collaborative “MDO systems” and enabling the development of complex products practiced by multi-site and cross-organizational design teams, having heterogeneous expertise. A set of technologies has been developed by the AGILE consortium to enable the implementation of the AGILE Paradigm principles, thus delivering not only an abstract formalization of the approach, but also an applicable framework. The collection of all the technologies constitutes the so-called “AGILE Framework”, which has been applied for the design and the optimization of multiple aircraft configurations. The ambition of the AGILE Paradigm was set to reduce the lead time of 40% with respect to the current state-of-the-art. This work reviews the evolution of the MDO systems, underlines the open challenges tackled by the AGILE project, and introduces the main architectural concepts behind the AGILE Paradigm. Thereafter, an overview of the application design cases is presented, focusing of the main challenges and achievements. The AGILE technologies enabled the consortium to formulate and to solve in 15 months 7 MDO applications in parallel for the development of 7 novel aircraft configurations, demonstrating time savings beyond the 40% goal

Aplicação de SAFe® a um Projecto de Manutenção de Aviões

Maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) operations have a great impact on the life cycle of an aircraft (A/C). MROs organizations address various challenges on planning activities to ensure the maximum reliability of an A/C, given the amount of unscheduled maintenance. Subcontracting MRO activities by airline companies, has been continuously increasing as an alternative of performing the heavy maintenance themselves, adding a constraint on this type of industries which is to manage the customer demands. Considering the main issues, it is required to select the most suitable approach to plan and manage A/C maintenance projects. Agile Project Management (PM) could be a solution to overcome the main difficulties in this sector, managing the uncertainty throughout the project, providing customer visibility and control over the service. This work arises in a real-life case of a subcontracted MRO program in a multinational A/C manufacture enterprise, which also suffers from significant challenges of planning and managing maintenance activities throughout the project life cycle. The program has experimented agile methodologies that revealed a positive impact. In order to the whole program embrace agility and overcome the identified main problems, it was proposed the usage of an elaborate and well-defined agile framework. Scaled Agile Framework for enterprises (SAFe®) is an online knowledge base that implements diverse agile techniques to support businesses, develop and deliver solutions, achieving business agility. As SAFe® was mainly developed for software industries, due to the characteristics of the project and the type of industry where it is inserted, the application of this framework needed to be customized. Accordingly to the particularities of the project, the most suitable PM approach is a hybrid approach, where initially the scope of the project is delineated, with a contingency plan, supported by SAFe® to manage the issues that arise throughout the project. The agile methodologies allow customer centred attention, more communication channels, and by iterating over the product, planning the unscheduled work focusing on high priority tasks. Lastly, a framework in the core of the appearance of the issues was developed, to define the interconnection between the whole SAFe® concepts and to provide an extended view of how the project will progress with the new approach.As operações de manutenção, reparação e revisão produzem grande impacto no ciclo de vida de uma aeronave. As organizações que operam neste setor enfrentam vários desafios no planeamento das atividades que garantem a máxima confiabilidade de uma aeronave, dada a quantidade de manutenção não programada. A subcontratação deste tipo de atividades, por parte das companhias aéreas, tem crescido continuamente como uma alternativa à realização da própria manutenção pesada, adicionando um constrangimento para este tipo de indústrias: gerir as exigências dos clientes. Considerando os principais problemas, é necessário selecionar a abordagem mais adequada para planear e gerir projetos de manutenção de aviões. A gestão ágil de projetos poderá ser uma solução para superar as principais dificuldades deste setor, gerindo as incertezas ao longo do projeto, proporcionando visibilidade ao cliente e controlo sobre o serviço. Este trabalho surge num caso real de um programa subcontratado numa empresa multinacional de fabrico de aviões, que também sofre de desafios significativos no planeamento e gestão de atividades de manutenção ao longo do ciclo de vida do projeto. O programa experienciou metodologias ágeis que revelaram um impacto positivo. Para que todo o programa adote a agilidade e supere os principais problemas identificados, foi proposto o uso de uma elaborada e bem definida estrutura ágil. O Scaled Agile Framework para empresas é uma base de conhecimento online que implementa diversas técnicas ágeis para apoiar as empresas no desenvolvimento e entrega de soluções, alcançando a agilidade nos negócios. O SAFe® foi desenvolvido principalmente para indústrias de software, devido às características do projeto e ao tipo de indústria em que está inserido, a aplicação desta estrutura necessitou de ser personalizada. De acordo com as particularidades do projeto, a abordagem de gestão de projetos mais adequada é uma abordagem híbrida, onde inicialmente o projeto é delineado, com um plano de contingência, apoiado pelo SAFe® para gerenciar os problemas que surgem ao longo do projeto. As metodologias ágeis permitem centrar a atenção no cliente, mais canais de comunicação e, ao iterar sobre o produto, planear o trabalho não programado com foco em tarefas de alta prioridade. Por fim, foi desenvolvido um framework no cerne do surgimento dos problemas, de forma a definir as interligações entre todos os conceitos do SAFe® e fornecer uma visão ampliada de como o projeto irá progredir com a nova abordagem

Challenges of Digitalisation in the Aerospace and Aviation Sectors

This report describes digital transformation in aerospace and aviation, and identifies some challenges that are likely to have parallels with the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) sector

Novel, yet similar: A similarity-assisted product family design approach for structural aero-engine components

The aviation industry is in a state of transformation. The climate crisis has amplified the need to innovate, and consequently manufacturers in the aviation industry need to investigate new and more sustainable design concepts. This is challenging, because there is no obvious replacement for kerosene-fueled aero-engines, though there are multiple technologies in development that may potentially take its place. Examples of such technologies include electric or hybrid-electric propulsion, or combustion engines fueled by hydrogen or synthetic sustainable aviation fuels. This increases the challenge for manufacturers, who must deal with high technological uncertainty. At the same time, manufacturers need to assert that the cost of realization is feasible for new aero-engine component designs, while also fulfilling the requirements for safety and performance. There is therefore a need for methods and tools that will assist designers in making fast and efficient design evaluations, to enable the exploration of large design spaces at reduced costs and lead-times.To make design space exploration more efficient, a similarity-assisted design space exploration method is proposed. This method provides increased trustworthiness in design space exploration results, while also highlighting opportunities for reuse of knowledge and other assets from legacy designs. Additionally, a software tool for automatically generating aero-engine structural components has been developed. This software enriches all generated geometries with information used to facilitate automated manufacturability analysis, as well as evaluation of structural performance. By utilizing the automated geometry generation tool in conjunction with the proposed design space exploration method, designers can quickly and efficiently evaluate the manufacturability and structural performance of novel concepts

Streamlining Cross-Organizational Aircraft Development: Results from the AGILE Project

The research and innovation AGILE project developed the next generation of aircraft Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization processes, which target significant reductions in aircraft development costs and time to market, leading to more cost-effective and greener aircraft solutions. The high level objective is the reduction of the lead time of 40% with respect to the current state-of-the-art. 19 industry, research and academia partners from Europe, Canada and Russia developed solutions to cope with the challenges of collaborative design and optimization of complex products. In order to accelerate the deployment of large-scale, collaborative multidisciplinary design and optimization (MDO), a novel methodology, the so-called AGILE Paradigm, has been developed. Furthermore, the AGILE project has developed and released a set of open technologies enabling the implementation of the AGILE Paradigm approach. The collection of all the technologies constitutes AGILE Framework, which has been deployed for the design and the optimization of multiple aircraft configurations. This paper focuses on the application of the AGILE Paradigm on seven novel aircraft configurations, proving the achievement of the project’s objectives