NITEOWL Project Contingency Plan

David P. Steele

(Draft 0, December 3, 1996)

Phase A

General risk of time overrun by individual or group, due to insufficient time in schedule, unforeseen difficulties, or unforeseen responsibilities related to project, e.g., management responsibilities.

Management responsibilities: PI delegate University administration liaison to S. Pfeil where possible; lay groundwork for contract management ahead of time.

Time overrun by student or permanent faculty impacts Phase A salary cost through extended salary requirement for P.I.; do we need to build in an adequate margin for this?

Difficulties:

optics raytracing and optimization may require design effort by subcontractor (e.g., Applied Physics Specialties, Don Mills, ON) at considerable extra cost in time and money; solution is to define now as best we can whether this will be required, and budget for design costs in Phase A, leaving fabrication and testing costs to Phase B; establish at the outset whether additional optics are required beyond the lens, e.g., a fibre optic taper;

instrument modelling may be delayed by item above, and may be allocated inadequate time; fortunately, synthetic data preparation does not begin until 1-2 weeks after end of instrument modelling task so some schedule slippage can be accommodated; if custom lens design is required, work from lens specifications as far as possible in modelling instrument, including ray tracing (is this possible?);

delay in synthetic data preparation may impact data compression study which defines end of Experiment Modelling task and determines timing of Requirements Review; it seems unlikely that minor changes in lens characteristics would materially affect the data compression requirements;

Requirements Review will result in adjustment of requirements, with corresponding adjustments in specifications; could this make Experiment Description and Specification harder, or only easier?

optics (including baffling) study may be obviated by subcontractor's report (see above); requirement for image demagnification will add complexity to this task;

detector system may require considerably more time than allocated in schedule; solution is to allocate more time; NOTE that Prof. Bolton's student is working on detector system and data compression/handling simultaneously!

selection of a suitable CCD for the detector system has been advanced as far as possible in the proposal phase to avoid surprises during Phase A;

data compression/handling may require more time than 5 days allocated; require student to begin work on problem at outset of Phase A study under Prof. Bolton's supervision, so that work is well along by the Requirements Review;

Preliminary Design Review preparation may take more time than allocated; probable solution is to work overtime!

Phase B

General risk of time overrun during Experiment Implementation phase should be avoided by realistic scheduling, as we've tried to do; Detailed Scheduling near the end of Phase A should better define actual time requirements.

Critical Design Review may require changes to implementation plans; solution is to build in two weeks to handle these.

Experiment Integration and Test timing is fairly speculative right now, as no concrete information is available on the individual subsystems that will be built.

We have allocated 16 weeks after requisition for receipt of all parts, and a further four weeks after that to complete the integration and test (at the most basic functional level) of all subsystems; this basic duration can and will be re-evaluated and firmed up during Phase A;

Extension of Phase B activities at SCI-TEC Instruments Inc can be accommodated by the estimated time for Phase C, but not by the budget for Phase B activities at SCI-TEC; a conservative approach should be taken to estimating the time requirements for Phase B;

Imaging Spectrograph Calibration is known to be difficult to complete in the expected time; a careful estimate should be prepared during the Calibration Procedures Study to guide the Detailed Scheduling activity;

Attitude Video Camera (AVC) Calibration and Calibration of AVC and ISG Relative Orientation both involve Bristol Aerospace Ltd (BAL) and must be coordinated with their schedule; advice on expected duration and required effort will be solicited based on their experience with an identical AVC on the OEDIPUS-C project;

Travel time to and from Winnipeg for the Attitude Video Camera (AVC) Calibration and Calibration of AVC and ISG Relative Orientation activities is not explicitly included in the duration estimate but should not make a major difference;

The time required for the Instrument Test Review is currently unknown.

Phase C

Component activities and their durations in this phase are sheer guesswork, and will have to be revised on receipt of a quotation and statement of work from BAL.

Phase D

The comments above for Phase C also apply here, with the exception that a quotation and statement of work must also be received from Akjuit Aerospace Inc (AAI).