A Conversation With: Joe Hammond

Joe Hammond has been USA’s Vice President, Business Development, since it became a separate organization in 2004 and was responsible for the group’s activities when he served as Vice President of Human Resources and Administration. He discusses USA’s business development approach and outlook for the future.

UPDATE: Why is pursuing new, future business opportunities so critical for United Space Alliance at this time?

HAMMOND: As we all know, the announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration by President Bush set the wheels in motion to retire the Shuttle by the end of 2010. That means that about 90 percent of USA’s business base is going to go away in less than five years. Our real concern is what is out there to replace that business? We have some ongoing small subcontracts, and we also have the continuing ISS work. But the retirement of the Shuttle is a very real threat to our company. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that the Vision also defined requirements for future exploration, including returning to the moon and going beyond to Mars. Understanding and adapting our proven space operations skills to those new space exploration requirements provides a huge opportunity for USA. We can hopefully capture a significant amount of that business. Whether it can completely offset the Shuttle program is really hard to predict at this time.

We do know there are some timing issues – the dates set up for returning to the moon are 2015-2020 – but the Shuttle is scheduled to be retired by the end of 2010. How much NASA work is going to be available within those five years is the question, and one that we have to address. To help do that, we are also looking at other select DoD (Department of Defense) and commercial-space-operations-related opportunities. We absolutely have an obligation to our employees, and we have to make every effort to capture as many of these future space operations opportunities as possible.

UPDATE: How successful can we be at capturing those new opportunities?

HAMMOND: We can be successful in capturing a lot of the operations roles associated with exploration. USA has some unique core competencies and critical-skilled employees that are going to be required to support exploration.

Whatever is developed for exploration, USA can operate. That’s what we do well, and that’s what we bring to the program. We operate the Human Space Flight program in the United States, and those same skills and capabilities are what are going to be required for the future. We just have to be able to take advantage of them. A leading example of this is our USA participation on both of the Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman/Boeing Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) development teams. We are directly involved in helping define more operable, more supportable and more cost-effective space exploration systems while positioning USA as the operator of choice for follow-on deployment.

UPDATE: What is the outlook for USA’s marketplace in the post-Shuttle era?

HAMMOND: NASA Administrator Mike Griffin recently released his Exploration Systems Architecture Study (ESAS), and since the system he recommends is Shuttle-derived, our outlook is bright. There is the ongoing support of the International Space Station (ISS). While assembly is scheduled to be completed in 2010, the US ISS program is scheduled to be in existence until 2016. We’re going to have a need to provide cargo and crewed transportation back and forth between the Earth and ISS, and that means operating a CEV through 2016. CEV will require a human-rated launcher, and now we know that will be a Shuttle Derived Vehicle.

USA has been part of an industry team that includes Boeing, ATK and Lockheed Martin that has been developing SDLV concepts for medium and heavy lift for well over a year in anticipation of this need.

The second part is looking at what is required for lunar exploration. We know that there will be a number of hardware development activities. We know there will be a CEV follow-on, which will travel between Earth and the moon and back again for crew transfers. Some kind of cargo capability will be needed as well as other elements of the lunar ‘train.’ If we are truly going to go back to the moon and to Mars, we’re going to need some kind of heavy-lift capability as well as a LEO (Low Earth Orbit) assembly capability associated with those missions. Once again, our SDLV industry team has provided NASA an SDLV-Heavy (100+ metric ton) concept to address this space exploration need for moon and Mars. And once we get there, we’ll need a habitat for the exploration crews to base from – a lunar habitat that will require operations support similar in function to what we do today for the Station.

We’re well-positioned to continue in a significant space operations role.

UPDATE: What is the most important factor for our success in capturing new business?

HAMMOND: I believe that one of the key factors in moving forward is how we can refocus or redefine the current USA structure to address multiple programs and multiple customers in the future. The systems and processes that we have in place today will not work in the future. In addition, we need to come up with innovative solutions for future exploration scenarios. We need to creatively apply technology to the operations environment that we know is going to exist in the future. How can we become much more productive and cost effective? How can we provide state-of-the-art tools and processes to our customers to satisfy the requirements for exploration? Answering these questions will be critical to our success as a company.

UPDATE: What is USA’s biggest “selling point”?

HAMMOND: I think our biggest selling points are the core competencies and critical skills that exist within USA. In a nutshell, it’s our people. The skill and ability of our work force does not exist elsewhere in NASA or in any other U.S. industry. It is incumbent upon us to capitalize on that and take our rightful place as the premier space operator for future exploration.

UPDATE: Is there much of a market outside of NASA for USA’s services?

HAMMOND: It’s difficult to know how much potential is really there, but we’re taking a look at all angles right now. We know there is a big DoD market; however, we don’t have much expertise in that area. If a situation presents itself where we can use our critical skills, we’ll thoroughly investigate and coordinate with our member companies to make sure there is no conflict or confusion. We also see a potential for commercial or even international markets for our services that could open up in the future.

UPDATE: Tell me about the Business Development team.

HAMMOND: Business Development is a highly matrixed organization. We have a very small department, with under 20 full-time employees, but we constantly draw on the rest of the organization for people to work capture activities, to prepare and present white papers, and support our proposal efforts. Since the majority of these activities are temporary in nature, it doesn’t make sense to carry additional full-time business development employees, so I depend on Anne Martt in SOD (Space Operations Development) as well as the rest of the program elements and infrastructure elements to provide me key resources.

There are four different functional areas that we focus on: opportunity identification, marketing and capture, proposal development, and IR&D (Independent Research & Development).

Opportunity Identification is making sure that we clearly know what potential acquisitions and new business opportunities are on the horizon for evaluation. When opportunities come up, we make an interest decision, which is basically evaluating the opportunity to determine if it is a good fit for USA. If it is, we turn it over to the Marketing and Capture activity. This is a more focused effort where we select and assign resources to an opportunity, thoroughly investigate the opportunity, market potential customers and teammates, determine if it is something we can win, if it is profitable, and if it effectively uses our skills and abilities. Based on that evaluation, we make a bid/no bid decision. A bid decision says that we are formally going to submit a proposal to get the business.

With a bid decision, our Proposal Development activity focuses the talent of our company on winning the opportunity.

Finally, in addition to new business, we are also responsible for the IR&D budget, which focuses on development activities for new technologies that support our core competencies for the future. This has really been an active area that is enabling us to explore marketing opportunities for new products – it’s a good fit for our company. Our employees are doing a great job of coming up with innovative ideas and solutions as to how to improve system operability for next generation space exploration. We have about seven active IR&D programs, each supported by a sound business case, in place today with a $2-million plus budget.

UPDATE: What can the rest of the company do to support the efforts to win new business for USA?

HAMMOND: It all gets down to two things. First, that we develop the infrastructure systems and processes that will allow us to be competitive in this new business environment. That’s a big factor. A primary example of that is preparing for multiple programs and multiple customers and ensuring that we can support that. The current Vision activities are extremely important to our future success.

Second, we all need to be on the same page in understanding the importance of new business activities and the key resources it takes to pursue them. As I indicated, Business Development is a matrixed organization, so we don’t have a large staff to apply to these activities. We rely heavily on other organizations within USA to assist us with technical expertise and innovative space operations solutions in the proposal process, and we appreciate their support. It’s critical to our future as a company.

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