Revisiting future-proofing for large-scale acquisitions

ABSTRACT

Growing global uncertainty has become a key issue for major projects with longer lead-in, delivery, and projected serviceability timeframes. Future-proofing seeks to ensure that systems are both resilient to unexpected events and adaptive to the ever-changing needs required of an uncertain future. Future-proofing seeks to offer improved sustainability and value. This paper views future-proofing as requiring sufficient requisite variety to deliver ongoing capability for value sustainment. The concepts of future-proofing and changeability are identified in this paper and how they interlink with the systems acquisition lifecycle. These are highlighted to demonstrate how early cost trade-off decisions impact future-proofing options, and thereby the through-life value of the acquisition. Methods for future-proofing assessment will cover the probability of future threats, the probability of future systems developments, and the use of options to drive acquisition trade-off decisions. This paper contributes to the discussion of an acquisition framework for design evaluation.

KEYWORDS:

• Future-proofing
• resilience
• system ‘ilities’
• requisite variety
• systems engineering

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Peter de Haan

Peter de Haan is a PhD candidate at the University of South Australia where he is conducting research into the effects of uncertainty on large-scale acquisitions. After graduating with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computing, Peter worked for a decade on a variety of defence projects in areas of software/systems engineering and project management and overseeing the evolution of development environments for large projects. After completing master’s degrees in both Entrepreneurship and Project Management, Peter became a business consultant and a sessional lecturer in the project management program at the University of Adelaide, where he taught systems engineering, project management and tailoring of project management techniques for new venture creation. On completing his MBA, Peter conducted a research project into the application of complex adaptive systems to understand the dynamics between organisations and their operating environments.

Mahmoud Efatmaneshnik

Mahmoud Efatmaneshnik is program director for Master of Systems Engineering program at the University of South Australia. He has a PhD in Complexity Management of Design Process (2009), and a ME in Manufacturing Engineering (2005) both from UNSW. He has a BE in Aerospace (1999) from Tehran Polytechnic University. He is a member of INCOSE and IEEE. He is the editor in chief of Australian Journal of Multidisciplinary Engineering. His research interests are: Systems Engineering, Model-based Systems Engineering, Systems Modelling and Analysis, Complexity Modelling and Complexity Measure, Decision Analysis and Support, Capability Modelling and Acquisition Support.

Ady James

Ady James is an Associate Professor at the University of South Australia where he teaches Systems Engineering, Space Studies and Space Science. He is Co-Director for the Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program and the Director of Education & Training with the SmartSat CRC. He obtained a Ph.D. in Space Science at University College London’s Department of Space and Climate Physics in 1997, where he developed a fast ion spectrometer for the Russian Mars 96 spacecraft. After completing his PhD, he worked on various space programs including Mars 96, Cluster II, XMM Newton, MOSES and, most recently, Solar-B (Hinode) launched in 2006. He then spent 4 years as project manager for the Basic Technology Smart X-ray Optics program up until October 2010 and then as Systems Engineer for the VIS instrument on the ESA Euclid Space project until early 2012. In early 2012 James moved to Australia to establish a local node of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL), during this time he has taught Project Management and Systems Engineering as well as supervising numerous MSc and PhD student. From 2013 until its closure in 2017 Dr James was Academic Director for the UCL Australia campus. Dr James has been involved in the Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program since 2012 and was co-Director for the 2018, 2019 and 2020 programs.