A Conversation With: Loren Shriver

In this issue of the USA Update, we continue our look at USA’s four capability centers with a conversation with Loren Shriver, USA’s Vice President for
Engineering and Integration (E&I) and Chief Technology Officer. As the head
of E&I, Shriver is responsible for all space systems engineering and integration functions, program integration, software engineering and development and technology development processes across the company. In a recent interview, he discussed the present and future of E&I. Shriver will discuss technology management and development processes in a future article.

UPDATE: Engineering and Integration (E&I) came into being as a single organization with the functional realignment last year. What functions comprise E&I?

SHRIVER: We have four main groups in E&I. We have what used to be the Orbiter Element headed up by Jim Wilder. We refer to that organization internally now as Space Systems Engineering, but when they are working for (Shuttle Program Manager) Howard DeCastro, they are still known as the Orbiter Element. Those folks do engineering in support of the Orbiter Project Office over at NASA, who is their prime customer.

We also have Program Integration, which is Bill Reeves’ group. They are involved in systems engineering and integration throughout many of the elements of the program. He has two or three direct customers on the NASA side and has people here in Houston, in Florida and in Huntsville.

We’ve got Patti French’s organization, Flight Software. They support the Shuttle Program and are directly supporting the Constellation Program through the CEV subcontract to Lockheed Martin for flight software engineering and development. Flight Software already has a fairly significant role with Constellation.

The fourth major part of my organization is Rick Davignon’s Specialty Engineering and Technical Services organization in Florida. His people provide materials and process engineering and specialty engineering support for the Solid Rocket Booster Element and Ground Operations. They also can provide that service for other folks when it’s needed.

Rick is also our engineering process owner. There are a lot of engineers within USA that aren’t part of E&I, so his job is to look for best practices and common tools. Mike King is our product system software process owner, and he does the same thing for the software community. Those will continue to be important functions for the future.

Those are the four main components of E&I, but we have a fifth function called Transition and Retirement, which is under Kevin Repa. Kevin has representatives from throughout each of the elements in USA working on the early part of the transition and retirement efforts in support of NASA.

UPDATE: As one of USA’s Capability Centers, what role does E&I play within the company?

SHRIVER: In terms of the role we play, I would divide it into two sets of responses – near term and what we will be doing farther out.

In the near term, we have a huge amount of activity going on in support of the Shuttle Program, the Station and some support of Constellation. Of course, we also support business development and can support other Capability Centers if they might need us.

There are all kinds of people or organizations we can support as the need arises. So, here in the near term, between now and the fly out of the Shuttle Program, we’ll continue to do pretty much what we do here today, and that is to provide robust systems engineering and integration services. We also support our business development proposal efforts whenever they need some direct engineering support.

UPDATE: And for the longer term?

SHRIVER: That will depend on the evolution of the company and the different types of work that we will get from our new business efforts.

As the company changes to meet the demands of the Constellation Program, E&I will have to change right along with it. We’ll have the basic skill sets from the four parts of our organization already. It is possible that we may need to morph E&I into something different in the future, but we will be ready to change in whatever way we may need to change to support mission requirements. That would be our goal, to provide the best skill support we can.

UPDATE: What do you see as your biggest challenge over the next few years?

SHRIVER: In the environment we are in right now – coming to the end of a major contract – retaining critical skills and trying to hold attrition at an acceptable level is going to be a big challenge. There’s a natural pull on people to go where the work is, but we still have, in my opinion, as much work to do right up to the last flight and through the last flight as we have now. Retention of critical skills will be a challenge we’ll all need to work on collectively as a company. As the E&I Capability Center, we have to make sure that we have the right kind of skills to support the Shuttle Program right up to the last flight and then begin to transition that skill base to our Constellation work.

UPDATE: How do you think E&I’s role will change as we transition to Constellation?

SHRIVER: As we go through Shuttle fly out, we’ll come into a period where Constellation is in the DDT&E – or Design, Develop, Test and Evaluate – phase. Of course, USA is a space operations company, so we’re really not a prime contractor for the DDT&E phase, and we’re not an original equipment manufacturer. But I think there is a role for USA in this early design phase for Constellation. It’s very suitable for an operations company to be involved in the early design phases of a new project. We have a huge amount of experience in our people and in our processes and systems we use. There will be different vehicles, but some of the concepts and skills are an exact, direct need for the new vehicles.

From our people, we have a lot of lessons learned from the many years of flying Space Shuttles and the vehicles before that. There’s a lot of knowledge and a lot of corporate memory on how we can do those things. I think as we go through the design phase, we can offer a lot of inputs to the equipment manufacturers and say, “Hey, if you think about doing it this way, you’ll have a product that will be very safe to operate and will be very safe for ground crews to operate, and your overall life cycle costs will be decreased.”

That kind of robust engineering and integration support will be important, and that goes all the way from flight hardware to ground equipment that supports it. We have a lot of very innovative people, and we will need to be very flexible, very agile and very forward-looking to be the company to provide space operations for the future. I think USA is well suited for that.

UPDATE: What have we learned from the Shuttle Program that will be used to improve engineering and integration in the Constellation era?

SHRIVER: The Shuttle Program has been in existence for almost 27 years. We have a huge amount of lessons learned. Though USA has only been around for the last 11 years, our folks have watched the Space Shuttle Program progress throughout its whole lifetime, so our people are very much aware of the lessons that have been learned.

I think what that means for us (E&I) is that when you’re designing a human space flight system that is going to operate over several years – even decades – you need to have a robust engineering and integration function, and that organization has to be flexible and have an open mind. It needs to be always striving toward knowing the latest and greatest advancements in the discipline so that you can evolve the vehicles and the processes to stay up with the latest changes. For example, our engineering modeling capability has evolved greatly since the Shuttle Program first started out, and by incorporating those advances, I think we’ve made the Shuttle a lot safer than it was when we first started.

The Shuttle Program has been one continuous change process, and quite frankly, I don’t think Constellation is going to be any different. That is the greatest lesson learned. Nothing in this business is static. It’s always changing, and we have to be on the alert for those changes.

UPDATE: How does the work that E&I accomplished contribute to USA’s competitive edge in being the operations company of choice for the next era of space exploration?

SHRIVER: I think our company’s reputation is built on the very superior performance that we’ve had over the last 11 years. E&I is part of that. We have had some reorganizations within E&I over the past couple of years, but it’s the same work we’re doing. Our immediate contribution to USA’s competitive edge is the very good work our elements contribute to USA as a whole in doing this process of flying the Shuttle safely.

Performance is what sets you up to win new work in the development phase and carry your skill set through development and into the operational phase. Our strength lies in our people. We have great people, and our success is due to them.

I just feel like it’s the people that have made it work, and it will continue to be the people that make it work. We have a great set of people within USA that have all the right skills. We have great performance, and that’s what our customers will notice and want to maintain.

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