Engineering Support Services

We provide Engineering Support Services to Program and Project Engineers and Program Management Offices.

1.0 Program/Project Management Support Activities

  • Schedule Development and Tracking
  • Create high level and detailed Engineering, Procurement and Test Schedules and contribute to the overall development of master Program Schedules
  • Monitor and report Project Schedule Performance in terms of the TERRA Project’s and the RUS’es needs and expectations
  • Ensure that there are plans that ensure that the system continues to support existing customers across all the phases of the project
  • Develop Schedule workarounds to ensure that TERRA success criteria are achieved
  • Help create and track program budgets.
  • Monitor Procurement activities, review RFPs and other documentation for completeness and adherence to the needs of the TERRA Project and the agreement with the Rural Utilities Service (RUS)
  • Schedule meetings with vendors; and support the project engineer in responsibility of evaluate their technologies and capabilities to deliver and to support proffered hardware and software products and services
  • Perform a Quality Assurance function by reviewing deliverables against task order agreements, SOWs and other contractual and technical requirements documents
  • Perform technical issue resolution and technical and management liaison; provide direct support to TERRA’s Project Engineer, and perform whatever tasks are required as a member of technical and management teams and committees
  • Help provide technical and program liaison between all the TERRA entities including UUI, GCI and the major contractors
  • This includes communicating technical issues and attending project review meetings

2.0 Requirements Development and Traceability

  • Monitor Activities of contractors, GCI and UUI organizations under existing and future Task Orders to ensure the contractors decisions reflect the best interests of the TERRA (and do not de-scope their activities without reducing their work effort)
  • Perform a Quality Assurance function by reviewing any contract or task order deliverables against contractor SOW requirements
  • Perform technical issue resolution and technical and management liaison
  • Ensure high-level requirements have been developed and documented for all aspects of the TERRA project including Network Management Systems and Operations
  • Ensure traceability of all aspects of Design from Requirements
  • Create a Requirements Traceability Matrix (RTM) this ensures that high level requirements are implemented in the design and verified in testing

3.0 Procurement Support

  • Monitor Procurement activities, review Request for Proposals (RFPs) and other documentation for completeness and adherence to the needs of the TERRA.
  • Support vendor meetings; evaluate their technologies and capabilities to deliver and to support proffered hardware and software products and services
  • Participate in vendor reviews to ensure that the proposals meet the TERRA’s requirements as furnished in the RFP

4.0 Design Specification and Support

  • Review all ‘design specifications” against requirements to ensure traceability of design from Requirements
  • Ensure high-level requirements are constrained by detailed analysis of TERRA’s Concept of Operations (This helps to avoid scope creep)
  • Ensuring selected products’ ability to meet design requirements
  • Review performance analysis to ensure design will meet performance requirements
  • Ensure that the design is feasible, accessible, installable, supportable and maintainable
  • Documenting all aspects of the design including its reliability, maintainability and ability to be supported by the Network Management Systems and other Operations Support Systems

5.0 Configuration and Control Management

  • Work to ensure that the documentation provides cohesive non-redundant coverage of the technical requirements of the project.
    • Problem/change description

6.0 Test Management

  • Create a Program Test Plan for all elements and all phases the TERRA Program that includes:
    • Link, segment and Element Testing
    • End-to-End Testing
    • Acceptance Testing
    • Work with the Project Engineer to ensure that the test plan incorporates the Program’s test philosophy
    • Ensure that the program and project schedules include adequate time for the required testing
    • Work with the Project Engineer to define the required test procedures with pass/fail criteria,
    • Plan for test tool selection, procurement and training.
    • Ensure the creation of test procedures
    • Help create test results database
    • Help coordinate testing activities: Test Execution Management
    • Conduct pre-test and post test reviews of major segment and end-to-end tests
    • Manage the collection, validations and archiving of test results
    • Ensure that test results are reviewed and anomalies reviewed.

7.0 Operations, Logistics and Maintenance

  • Monitor changes for their impact on “Concept of Operations
  • Create plan for spares and spares positioning
  • Ensure that there is a plan for field installation, upgrades and modifications and for tracking the as built baseline
  • Depot-level technical support

8.0 Training

  • Work with the Project Engineer to create a training plan for all phases of the project including training for installation and test engineers
  • Advanced customized technical curriculum development and training: VSAT, MESA, TETRA, Project 25, GSM, CDMA, SIP
  • Training: Classroom, on-the-job, computer-based, and Web-based

9.0 Deliverables

  • Program Plan: A written description of the Program from beginning to end.
    • Scope, roles and responsibilities, high level technical overview, high level schedules and budgets, high level risk assessment. the sites, the high level technology description – like bandwidth
    • Program Test Plan
      • Test Plans/ Test Procedures
      • Schedules: High Level Program Schedules, Engineering Activities Schedules, Test Schedules, Work Around Schedules.
      • Issue Tracking and Resolution System
      • Engineering Task Order Management Process
      • Engineering drawings
        • Design Specifications
        • Document Trees
        • Drawings Trees
        • Requirements Documents
        • Requirements Traceability Matrix
        • Quality Assurance Process
        • Special Analyses

10.0 Other Tasks:

  • Knowledge Capture and Transmission

(Create a process to ensure that the program knowledge gained from development through deployment, test and operations is documented in a way as new people as people leave the program as new people join the knowledge will be available from the old to the new.)

  • Cost trade-off analysis
  • Failure investigation