Antarctic Support Associates

"The NSF is most impressed with ASA's continued management training for existing project teams. ASA is apparently committed to the success of these teams and the projects that they are working on by providing added tools to enhance their output. The use of Theory of Constraints project management methodology appears to have been successful with several projects." - quote from one of the National Science Foundation's performance evaluations of ASA

Antarctic Support Associates (ASA) is a $100 million government service provider. Its purpose is to support work sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to expand the horizons of science in one of the most extreme environments on earth.

The research conducted in and on Antarctica is done under a 42-nation treaty signed to allow research to be performed in a peaceful way. There are three types of research done on this icy continent:

• On the continent of Antarctica itself
• What effect systems in Antarctica have on the global process of the world
• Astronomy and space

ASA supports three research stations in Antarctica (including one at the South Pole) and two floating stations - the Research Vessel (R/V) Laurence W. Gould and the R/V Nathaniel B. Palmer - which circumnavigate the continent.

In 1997 ASA was introduced to Theory of Constraints. Core employees took the Management Skills Workshop and Project Management program. Upon returning from the Project Management program in October 1997, the challenge of bringing in on-time a project that was at that stage four months behind schedule was undertaken.

The R/V Laurence M. Gould was scheduled to begin its maiden science support voyage no later than January 15, 1998. In October 1997 the project was already several months behind schedule. ASA was going to put TOC Project Management/Critical Chain to work.

The initial challenge was to assemble several key staff members to create a network and schedule for getting the science support equipment on-board the Gould and operational in time for its first mission.

It took six people four days to develop the network. Initially, more than 400 tasks were identified. Those tasks were reduced to less than 200 for the schedule. The Critical Chain was less than 100 tasks. It was determined that the equivalent of 20 full-time people would be necessary for this project. The project buffer was 15 days, the feeding buffers 12 days. The tools used to schedule and manage the project were MS Project and ProChain. A due date for this phase of the project was set for December 15, 1997.

On October 20, 1997 new challenges were identified. The team had to create and fill five additional temporary job openings in less than a week. Procurements, which numbered more than 100, had to be centralized and assigned to the task leader for monitoring and tracking. ASA's logistics and purchasing divisions were each required to assign one full-time person to support procurements from the ASA offices in Denver. An on-site task leader and team were appointed and deployed to Louisiana and had to operate within an extremely narrow time horizon for this job.

The next set of challenges (November 2 - December 12, 1997) included unplanned disruptions in ASA's schedule caused by contentions for space and shipyard personnel to support science equipment and installation (e.g. the shipyard installed flooring or cabinets when ASA scheduled installation of instruments).

The Results

By using Critical Chain scheduling, the ASA project team enabled the R/V Laurence M. Gould to pass the sea-trial tests and be ready to embark on its voyage to Antarctica on December 11, 1997 - in time to arrive and prepare to take its maiden science voyage in January 1998 - on schedule, rather than four months late as had been anticipated in October.

The Benefits

The ASA team met its customer's requirements. Finishing on-time meant enabling science throughput - the science cruise could sail - and several hundred thousand dollars in profit were retained for ASA.

A representative of ASA presented the company's story at the Jonah Upgrade Workshop in July 1999. That presentation is available on video (JCI-3).