Projects: How to move RPDEly | ADM June 2011
Julian Kerr | Sydney
Now in its seventh year of operation, Defence’s Rapid Prototyping, Development and Evaluation (RPDE) program is in the process of implementing a new strategic plan whose broadened scope reflects the success of the work it has undertaken to date.
When the agency was established in 2005 within the Capability Development Group (CDG), RPDe’s remit was to enhance ADF warfighting capacity though accelerated capability change in the network Centric Warfare (NCW) environment – in essence, to support the NCW roadmap.
Over the last 12 months, however, the program’s problem-solving role has moved from a network centric focus to also addressing wider-ranging technical problems as well as organisational and policy topics.
According to Board Chairman Air Vice-Marshal Jack Plenty, head of Capability Systems in CDG, the new mission statement, “To accelerate and enhance ADF warfighting capability through innovation and collaboration”, emphasises RPDe’s ability to expedite decision-making and bring about change through its unique blend of expertise from Defence, industry and academia.
For heather Layton, RPDe’s general manager since November, the new strategy not only more effectively encompasses the Defence environment but also recognises the increasing complexity of the challenges the program is being asked to tackle.
Layton, on secondment for two years from BAE Systems Australia where she was national head information systems, leads about 60 staff of whom all but half-a-dozen Defence civilians are on secondment from industry. The Defence civilians handle the program’s financial and commercial activities.
Starting with an initial five companies in 2005, RPDE now boasts 208 participants on its books. These include the major defence contractors, a small number of professional service providers, a small number of specialised academic research centres, universities, and about 130 small to medium enterprises (SMEs).
Organisations taking part in an activity are paid for their involvement by way of a Standing Offer. Additionally, says Layton, “they get access to Defence they wouldn’t otherwise have; they get information about how Defence operates, the opportunity to work in a collegiate environment, and they receive certain information about projects in which they’re involved”.
Participants who contribute to an activity are not excluded from participating in a later Request for Tender, with the obvious sensitivities involved in this being covered by the Relationship Agreement signed by all participants when they join RPDE.
“There are some pretty strict rules about it, so it’s pretty much a level playing field,” comments Layton.
The surge in participants has been matched by an increase in tempo. In the 2009-2010 financial year RPDE had the highest number of Quicklooks and Tasks in progress of any 12-month period since inception – 13 of each. These ranged from support to the Counter-IED Task Force to themes relating to information architectures, system integration and command support systems.
RPDE’s strategic direction is set by a 12-member Board chaired by AVM Plenty. The Board comprises two Defence members, six rotating representatives from Member companies, and four elected representatives from Associate companies – generally niche SMEs albeit with some R&D capability. Activities, however, are selected from requests received across Defence by a 16-strong Steering Group of One Stars currently headed by Air Commodore Andrew Dowse. The Steering Group also sets priorities.
RPDE staff undertake the initial, discovery phase of any agreed activity, defining the problem space and the type and level of expertise needed to resolve it. A service request is then issued to all Participants articulating the labour and/or materiel resources required to work on the activity. A selection is then made by RPDE, with the commercial aspects already covered by the Relationship Agreement and the Standing Offer.
A Quicklook usually takes between two to four months and produces a written report, with recommendations and/or options, to the Defence entity sponsoring the activity. It could point out that the technology under consideration is not suitable or doesn’t exist.
Greater flexibility has recently been built into the Quicklook process by way of additional specialist analysts, greater participant engagement and longer duration. This takes into account the broader and more complex range of areas being examined and provides greater certainty to a Defence customer on whether or not to move on to the establishment of a Task.
A Task delivers a prototype solution, whether as a written report, a proof-of-concept, or a physical prototype, and normally takes 12 to 18 months to complete. The value of this work is reflected in the increasing number of Tasks that are transitioning directly to implementation, either led by Defence or as a follow-on activity by RPDE.
Layton attributes heightened activity to the organisation becoming better known within the Defence community.
“The sponsors that use us tend to return. We’ve had some quite high-profile successes and we try to make those well-known, so success breeds success.
“I think also the model has shown there is a level of trust within industry – it’s putting aside its commercial interests to find the best solutions for Defence.”
Layton acknowledges that not every Defence activity would benefit from broad industry engagement – a key criterion in determining RPDE’s interest in accepting a brief.
“If there’s just one industry player who knows how to fix the problem, then it’s not for us,” she comments.
Over the past six years the majority of activities have been sponsored by CDG and the Vice Chief of Defence Force Group. But this has gradually widened to DMO and its System Program Offices, and Layton anticipates further interest from the Chief Information Officer Group.
One of the high profile successes to which Layton refers was a task to reduce the level of interference to satellite communications equipment aboard RAN ships from electronic support measures.
“The ships were really restricted in their ability to transmit or receive data, in fact the data rate was virtually zero. So we worked with Navy and DSTO and ultimately provided a prototype physical barrier which is known as the surfboard – it looks like a surfboard attached to a mast and it facilitated a data throughput of up to 8 MB per second.
“The solution was so simple and it had a very significant outcome – in fact Navy didn’t want to give the prototype back.”
RPDE’s current workload involves six Tasks and eight Quicklooks examining issues ranging from future technologies and training to the most effective way of supporting the integration of uninhabited underwater vehicles into an amphibious task group.
“We have completed a Task for which the question was, literally, can a capability be developed to enable a pattern-of-life analysis in support of the Commander Counter IED Task Force,” Layton explained to ADM.
“We’re also just starting a project as part of SEA 1439 Phase 5B 2 – is it possible to build an information management system that permits submarines to act as effective nodes within the NCW construct?”
With staff numbers having nearly doubled in three years, RPDE has taken additional office space in Canberra and broken new ground by basing eight staff in Adelaide.
“There’s now sufficient pressure on industry, and that’s a cyclical thing, for some companies to find it difficult to release people with the appropriate skills to Canberra so we’ve got to look at other models,” Layton said.
“I’ve instituted a review of what skills we think we’ll need two to three years out and where those skills are located, and that includes greater participation by targeted academics in research centres. We’ll certainly remain in Canberra because that’s where Defence HQ is, probably expand Adelaide, and set up a third presence, although right now I don’t know where that will be.”
RPDE is continuing its close working relationship with the UK Niteworks organisation, a collaboration between the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) and the British defence industry which is governed and funded by the MoD.
As with RPDE, Nitework’s emphasis has moved from network enabled capability and warfighting experimentation to providing decision support across the range of MoD unified customer needs.
“The UK people are our peers, our model was based on theirs but was adapted for our particular environment. We exchange ideas, processes, lessons learnt, it’s a very useful interaction,” Layton comments. “They do have some very good documentation, they’re also very good at promoting what they do so we’ve learnt some lessons there.”
RPDE also continues to provide input to the Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) on its proposed establishment under Project Accord of a RPDE-type program. A Canadian team visited RPDE late last year and operational capability is currently set for 2014.
More than six years’ worth of Quicklooks and Tasks means RPDE has amassed a considerable archive of technical data and lessons learnt, and since last November these have been available to its industry stakeholders via the program’s internet-based Participants’ Portal. This provides access to abstracts of RPDE activities, internal information, and allows ready identification of forthcoming opportunities.
“We’ve got 208 participants, more than we’d ever dreamed off, but we wanted to check on whether they were using RPDE, accessing RPDE and how many were just sleepers,” Layton explained to ADM. “So we looked at the past 12 months and found that 85 per cent of our members had participated in RPDE activity or events during that period – I can’t take the credit for that figure but I find it quite impressive.”
This result also confirms what, in Layton’s view, is probably the major lesson learnt by RPDE to date and that is “Communication. Early engagement with the sponsor, early engagement with all the key stakeholders and these include the DSTO, academic areas and industry.
“If we get that early engagement with the problem, the outcome is much better”.