Abstract: What can Systems Engineers learn from an IceCube? In this case, a lot! 

Randall C. Iliff

The South Pole is now home to IceCube, the world’s largest and arguably most unusual telescope. There are no mirrors or lenses to point, instead this telescope can observe in all directions at once. It is taller than the largest building, but almost completely hidden beneath the surface. The neutrino particles it “sees” are invisible, and virtually undetectable except in the extraordinarily rare event of a collision with the nucleus of an atom. IceCube occupies roughly a cubic kilometer of ice, and the thousands of devices within that ice must perform at spacecraft reliability levels. Construction and deployment took place in one of the most difficult working environments imaginable. 

IceCube is a true “Discovery Class” research instrument capable of totally redefining our sense of the physical universe, but presented the design team with many unique challenges. How do you design a system today to examine things in the future you don’t even know exist yet? How can you inexpensively achieve spacecraft level reliability using mostly off the shelf parts and inexperienced assembly labor? How do you validate and verify system design when the final deployment environment is so unique? How do you accomplish an engineering and program management feat of this magnitude using an international collection of academic resources, all brilliant physicists, but with little or no large project experience?

Join us and we’ll share a true insider’s view of how the power of Program Management and Systems Engineering, working together in a process uniquely tailored for IceCube, enabled all of this to happen.  This is a rare opportunity to observe the logic, tailoring strategy, and artifacts from one of the most remarkable development programs ever to take place.

Speaker: Mr. Iliff has over 40 years’ of PM and SE experience on developmental efforts ranging in size from a few thousand to billions of dollars, and has built a solid record of disruptive innovation in aerospace, medical, commercial and consumer markets.

Randy works with Project Performance International as a Course Presenter / Principal Consultant and is also founder of his own consulting company - Eclectic Intellect.

Prior to that he was Vice President at the award-winning product development firm bb7, served as Systems Engineering Manager for IceCube - a University of Wisconsin led cubic kilometer scale neutrino telescope at the South Pole, an Engineering Manager at Motorola Government Electronics Group, a Program Manager / Senior Systems Engineer at Martin Marietta Denver Aerospace, and a junior member of the “skunkworks” Advanced Development Group at McDonnell-Douglas Astronautics.

Mr. Iliff holds a BS in Engineering / Industrial Design from Michigan State University, and an MS in Systems Management, Research and Development from the University of Southern California.

Door Prize: 

All registrants will be provided a number - which will be entered into a random number generator in order to select the winner.

Integrating Program Management and Systems Engineering: Methods, Tools, and Organizational Systems for Improving Performance

By Eric Rebentisch (Editor)

Cost: Free.

Agenda:

• 6:00 – 6:45 pm SE Table talk

• 6:45 – 7:00 pm Chapter Business Meeting

• 7:00 – 8:00 pm LECTURE