Supervisor:

 

Professor Philip John

Professor of Systems Engineering

School of Engineering

Cranfield University. Cranfield.

Bedfordshire

 

T: +44 (0) 1234 754706

E: p.john@cranfield.ac.uk

 

Duration of award:

3 years

 

Award type:

PhD

 

 

 

The Twenty-first Century has been called “The Systems Century”.  In an increasingly highly-integrated, technological world the nature of Systems Design and its conduct within engineering projects is also increasingly complex.  Complex systems products cannot be designed in isolation and decisions must be made in the face of increasing complexity, uncertainty and rapid change.  At the same time the expectations of stakeholders are becoming more demanding and wide ranging, including demands for system development to be “Faster, Cheaper, Better” and for systems to be operated as Systems of Systems, with high degrees of adaptability, interoperability and safety.

 

Faced with such increasing complexity and stakeholder expectations such as safety, rapidly changing requirements pose a major challenge.  Traditional approaches to complex system development take years and all too often the delivery of such systems is late and over budget.  In the military environment there are often “Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs)” which are driven by operational imperatives and there has been some success in delivering effective solutions to meet them.  There are similar urgent needs in non-military sectors. However, such solutions are often local and short term in nature and are achieved only by relaxing key aspects of the normal development practices.  They therefore represent pragmatic compromises that may not be acceptable or affordable in the wider context or in the longer term. With rapid change becoming the norm there is an increasing need to achieve rapid solutions that fully meet the full range of stakeholder expectations and that can be managed throughout a suitable lifecycle.

 

This research presents an exciting opportunity to investigate key aspects of this challenge and to define approaches for understanding and defining suitable enterprise, development and system characteristics to enable UOR-type responsiveness to become the norm.  The outcome of the research is of direct interest and importance to industry.

 

The doctoral research student will work under the supervision of Professor Philip John, Professor of Systems Engineering and Head of the Department of Systems Engineering and Human Factors and will work closely with other researchers within the Systems Engineering Group.  Engagement with industry and Government agencies will also be an important feature of the research.

 

Background

 

An increasingly important characteristic of successful system development, acquisition and operational delivery is the ability to respond to change, both in the development and procurement requirements and in the operational requirements (Ref: T.C.Mackley, S.G.Barker, P.John).  The procurement actions implied by an Urgent Operational Requirement are very demanding (i.e. rapid action needed, with an assurance of product integrity, safety and performance), since by definition the equipments subject to the UOR are to be used in situations where it is paramount to ensure:-

 

    * Safety of the operators

    * Acceptable risk levels to third parties

    * Provision of the required effectiveness

 

However it is also noted (T. Taylor, P. Tatham and National Audit Office) that in the defence context, the same overall Enterprise (user, system customer and industrial supplier) which can rapidly and effectively put forward a UOR solution is also apparently unable to achieve success (i.e. on time, on budget) in routine procurement when time is not so pressing. This has been very recently extensively commented on in a review of UK Defence Acquisition (Kincaid).  In his recent book Kincaid poses a critical question, “How are we to account for the difference in culture between UOR procurement and normal procurement?” and asks “Why can’t “normal procurement” be driven by dynamic interaction, concurrent activities, high commitment and flexibility characteristic of UORs?”

 

This background thus poses the following research questions:-

 

What are the elements of system development and organisational behaviour that have allowed the rapid and successful UOR response?

 

    * How does this contrast with practices in “normal system procurement”?

    * Are there aspects of large organisations which can encourage or prevent success in UOR response?

    * How should system development and enterprise practices be changed in order to make rapid response the norm?

 

Subsidiary questions then arise:-

 

What are the necessary human behaviours to drive the overall process?

 

    * In the context of UOR response/rapid response, what are the successful project management attitudes to Risk and Cost?

    * How has the overall engineering process been deployed to suit rapid reaction tasks and how does the scale of successful UOR delivery compare with full system projects?

    * How can the process be adapted to cope with projects which do not have a tangible deliverable i.e. a service or a capability enabler?

 

Objective

 

Research into enterprise enablers for more rapid acquisition and development response including:

 

    * Identification of the engineering and management organisational attributes which enable rapid and effective acquisition response to Urgent Operational Requirements in the wider Enterprise.

    * Research into methods for embedding those attributes in routine Lifecycle Management.

    * Identification of parallels from different organisations and application sectors that illustrate the challenges of effective, rapid delivery of capability in a complex environment and the attributes needed in order to successfully respond to changing requirements and situations.

 

Entry Requirements

 

Applicants for the studentship should have a first or upper-second class degree in an engineering or related discipline. 

 

Funding

 

A fully funded PhD studentship is available for EPSRC-eligible candidates.  This includes student tuition fees (approx £3950 per annum) as well as a tax-free maintenance stipend of approximately £13920 per annum.

 

How to apply

 

Applicants should make initial enquiries, or send a CV with details of two referees, to Professor Philip John on p.john@cranfield.ac.uk