Project Management
The current generation of instrumentation and telescope systems projects for Astronomy represent significant challenges for Project Managers. The projects almost always include major technological advances with associated high levels of risk, will be a collaboration probably involving several international boundaries and time zones, the Scientists will want it yesterday and the Funding bodies will only give a fixed budget. The UK ATC was one of the first Astronomy organisations to employ professional Project Management techniques and now has a wealth of experience in planning and implementing such projects. Our record in recent years compared to other astronomy projects has certainly been world class and we continue to improve through the ongoing introduction of appropriate changes in methodology and process. For example we now have well established pricing methodologies, Risk Management, fault logging, collaborative web tools and are introducing a comprehensive Configuration Management Tool (Livelink) based on the CMII process advocated by the Institute of Configuration Management. In recent times we have also found it essential to have professional Systems Engineering.
Internally the UK ATC operates a matrix management structure with the work organised into projects with well defined multi-disciplinary teams. All projects now have cash limited budgets and may vary from as little as a staff year of effort to systems requiring well over 40+ staff years and £1M+ in industrial procurements etc. Although the project managers report to the Head of Programme Delivery and Engineering (Gary Rae), they are required to agree internal staff resourcing by consultation with the Heads of Engineering Groups and the Head of Strategic Development. The Heads of Group ensure that appropriate engineering procedures are applied across all projects.
It is not uncommon for a Project Manager to work on several projects at a time. Currently a typical collaborative project would be SCUBA 2 or KMOS though project managers will also be expected to cope with Design Studies (ELT Instrument Studies, Gemini Phase 2 Conceptual Studies), local work packages for a major project (VISTA IR led by RAL) led from another Institute or as a workpackage manager on a major procurement for something such as a telescope sub-system, VISTA Enclosure, VISTA Telescope etc.
Head of Group
Alasdair Fairley
Group Domain/Skills
Collaborations, Programmes, Projects, Design Studies, Workpackages;
Consortium building and networking, partner/ collaborator interfacing and control of work; negotiating & managing contracts, costing & planning; risk analysis; product lifecycle knowledge; cost control; Innovation and IP management; engineering competency; staff management
Tools
PMI Body of Knowledge, MS Office and MS Project, TimeSheet, in house Management Information, Effort Allocation, Risk and Fault logging systems, QPulse, TWikis, Configuration Management System in development using Livelink software.