Io (ICT) Consultancy (Des Flanagan) - Technical Programme Manager (YahSat)

Al Yah Satellite Communications (YaSat), is a satellite communications company wholly owned subsidiary of Mubadala Development Company, the Abu Dhabi Government's strategic investment company.

Technical Programme Manager for the YahSat programme a $1.8 billion joint venture between Astrium & Thales (Astrium Prime Contractor) to deliver an end-end commercial & government secure satellite communication solution, including; satellites, ground stations, flight & payload control systems, communication networks & services, management systems and 63 Land & Maritime terminals.

Technical Programme Manager for the overall contract, with the exception of the satellites
Prime contract breakdown distibuted across Astrium & Thales under joint venture work share agreements
As prime contractor, Astrium were responsible and accountable for all systems delivery, integration, verification including acceptance & contract compliance
Complex portfolio of large supporting programmes & projects distributed across the partners
Development and implementation of TOM, including; organisation, resource matrix and applicable resource profiles
Astrium in-house Management System software development project with 150 developers and a development budget of £50M using Agile & DevOps methodology
Design & build of £10 million Systems Test Facility (STF) in UK
Global vendor contract management with integrated supply chains between both external suppliers and partners. Extensive import/export regulatory compliance management; EC 428/2009, 2009/944, ITAR & EAR etc
Add-on £20+M sales with 3rd parties for the provision of additional Land & Airborne terminals

Accountability & Responsibility

Overall Programme
Technical Programme Governance, Controls & Reporting, including all aspects of Change & Risk Management
Development & implementation of Programme Strategy including delivery management and phase technical baseline alignment
System Design Authority; Systems Design & Engineering
Stakeholder Management and Engagement across partnership & customer
Contract fulfilment, compliance and acceptance

Astrium Programme
Programme Governance, Controls & Reporting, including all aspects of Change & Risk Management
Accountable for the programme financial management including; margin preservation, working capital profile, EAC & CTC compliance with an operational budget of €500+M
Portfolio of 8 programmes & projects, with a dedicated PMO and a matrix organisation of 300 personnel, including manafacturing facility
Vendor sub-contract management; negotiation & compliance

Key Achievements

Successfully defined the programme strategy and managed a European joint venture partnership between two competitors
On appointment initiated and managed the review of the Management System development project due to its un-acceptable performance, following which it achieved its targets on time to cost
Successful acceptance and contract closure from the customer with full instantiation of operational commercial and military services

Delivery & Deployment Management

Systems delivery governed by overall Programme Strategy, which defined the phased deployments, construction and acceptance, including all dependencies
Global; Pan European, Middle East & US logistical and strategic asset and resource management
In country (Middle East) Systems Delivery team of 30+ personnel, responsible for all aspects of infrastructure build, systems deployment, integration and verification, including delivered terminals and operational services
In country teams comprised primarily of international assignments augmented with local technical resources through service contracts
Systems Delivery were responsible for Quality Assurance of all deliveries and installations, applicable regulatory compliance including European & UAE Health & Safety
Complex European, UAE & US employment and wealth care regulations and compliance

Systems & Software Development

Systems Engineering team of 30 personnel, responsible for the overall system design and specification, including; System Requirement Specification and generation of derived detailed development requirement specifications flowed across partners and suppliers
Adherence to SDLC with full integration of Agile & DevOps methodologies used by development and deployment teams
The system design provides full fault tolerance and high availability at sub-system, software & service layers with fully synchronised ground stations providing geographical redundancy for operational and contingency fail-over
Major software developments included the overall integrated Network Management System (NMS - Astrium) and the Radio Frequency Planning (RFP - Thales) system for payload configuration
The NMS was a £50M development with 150+ developers using Agile & DevOps methodologies, a fully integrated service planning, provisioning and monitoring system, including element managers for baseband, modem & transmission segments, supporting full automated provisioning and monitoring at ground stations & terminals
A distributed federation Active Directory architecture design implemented to provide IAM security layer across ground stations and extended to terminals integrated into AAA system for infrastructure IAM
System design also included the RF sub-systems (Ground station & Terminals), including Antenna Farms for C, Ku & KA and space craft control (SCC) systems, using C-Band with Ka as fall-back
Security model implementation of multilevel security domain architecture was also applied to the physical infrastructure builds with zoned and isolated data centres, SoC & NoC's

Networks

Designed, developed and implemented a Data, VoIP and Multi-Media communications network (Baseband) enabling end-end provisioned communication services over satellite channels
Network architecture design provided fault tolerant, high-availability with full load balancing at sub-system and geographical across ground stations
Integrated mobile UMTS base stations installed in land terminals, with backhaul links provisioned through the global network
Security design, implemented a multilevel security domain architecture supporting data classification & isolation, using high grade IP Crypto and certificate secured VPN tunnels for channel isolation and segregation
Ground station & terminal baseband hardware architecture; used Cisco & Juniper core routers, switches & access gateways, and for VoIP Cisco CUCM
VoIP architecture based on CUCM was a complete fault tolerant, high availability across the ground stations, including deployment of CUCM in ground terminals to support strategic deployments
VoIP solution provided a dynamic global VoIP mesh network with full integration into terrestrial services either from the ground stations or at points of access in deployed CUCM nodes
All network elements (Ground Station & Terminals) configured and monitored by a Baseband Element Manager using provisioning plans generated by the Management System

Infrastructure

Design and build of multiple isolated security domain data centres 400²m within each ground station including dedicated SoC's, including supporting infrastructure installation; Timing & Frequency, Power and Cabling
Antenna farms; dual C, Ku & Ka band at primary ground station, including all ancillary RF sub-systems and support infrastructure installation; Timing & Frequency, Power and Cabling
Design and build of Operational & Mission Control centres including all furniture's, systems and infrastructure cabling
Installation & commissioning of all systems hardware & software
All installation conforming to regulatory standards,BS 7671, LDV etc, including issuance of DoC's for all installations and a CoC for the overall system with a Systems Design Certificate

Virtualisation

Hybrid VDC (Virtualised Data Centre) implementation for operational critical systems providing fault tolerance and high availability at sub-system and across data centres
All federated Active Directory and control & monitoring systems virtualised
VDC (Virtualised Data Centre) implemented using VMWare product suite

Integration, Validation & Verification

Integration & verification strategy was based on phased deployments and capability using DevOps methodology
Verification Cross Reference developed against SRS and element level derived development and production requirements
Design & built a £10 million Systems Test Facility (STF) in UK with complete multi-channel satellite simulator, terminal systems & replica dual site architecture; used for integration, verification and support
System validation & verification against system level requirements derived from and mapped to contractual requirements was distributed across the in-house test facility and in country in UAT scenario based verification & inspection compliance as applicable
In country UAT & OAT comprised of complex deployment scenarios and service combinations using physical terminals

Support & Training Services

Extensive Integrated Logistics organisation providing global shipment, import/export, sparing, support & maintenance services
In country teams provided on-site 24/7 support and maintenance (level 1 -3) services during contract phase, including operational support
Developed & produced all system documentation, manuals & training material; including: maintenance & support level 1 - 3
Provided all training courses for all users & maintenance personnel (Commercial & Government)

Terminals

Design and manufacture of land, mobile and maritime terminals
Land based terminals ranged from multi terrain to high bandwidth large truck terminals for strategic deployments, with a mixture of on the move capabili
Mobile terminals included man-pack tactical and rapid deployment strategic terminals
All terminals supported automated provisioning over the air and secure high bandwidth communications
Maritime terminals designed for frigate class and above, communication systems integrated into tactical and strategic systems

Satellite

Two satellites were designed & manufactured (Y1A & Y1B), the spacecraft buses were built by Astrium & the payloads by Thales with C, Ku & Ka Band transponders
Y1A:- C & Ku band transponders are commercial payload & Ka Band Transponder Government payload
Y1B: - Ka Band commercial payload & Ka Band Government payload

Technical Programme Manager

Airbus (Astrium) -- YahSat ProgrammeJuly 2009 to Nov 2013