UK Chapter

In the lead up to the Olympics, Loughborough University hosted Team GB for their preparaton for what turned out to be a hugely successful campaign and a record medal haul. This involved 550 athletes, 450 coaches and 300 volunteers passing through the campus for a series of events including sports training camps, media days, Olympic torch relay and the kitting out of the whole team.

Bombardier has been employing System Engineering techniques for a number of years to bring improvements in the integrity of the design and ensure timely product approval.

This has been undertaken in an industry environment where customer needs and the regulatory framework have been subject to significant changes. This presentation will focus on some of SE techniques employed and challenges faced in their implementation. Charles and Paul will describe their practical experience of:

• Performing SE within short product design and build cycles
• Managing stakeholders: Customers, Infrastructure Managers, Regulators
• Implementing Requirement Management techniques

We thought that it was about time that we did something a bit more informal and, dare we say it, fun for the December event. Expect to have your systems engineering knowledge challenged and tested, compete to come up with the best techniques and processes to really screw up a systems engineering project, and on a more positive note, come up with suggestions for how to identify genuinely good systems engineers.

Prizes will be awarded, and there will be a free drink for every attendee.

This event will be held in the refectory next to the upstairs bar above the shop.

There is an emerging recognition within the project management and systems engineering communities that there is potential for putting the ideas of project management and system engineering to work better together. The Association for Project Management (APM) and the UK chapter of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE UK) intend to work together to help realise this potential.

So on Tuesday 15th January 2013, we are holding a joint workshop in London, places are limited

The workshop will be an early activity in an extended programme of co-operation between the two organisations; a programme which the workshop will help to shape.

The workshop is intended to help projects deliver better systems, more reliably, more quickly and at lower cost. The primary objective of the workshop will be to identify specific areas which the systems engineering and project management communities can profitably explore and to start to identify what needs to be done in these areas. The workshop will also promote communications and the sharing of ideas between the project management and systems engineering communities.

For more information and to register please visit the Association for Project Management (APM) website.

This event will feature Rick Adcock from Cranfield providing an in-depth overview of the BKCASE project.

The BKCASE project produced its final version of a guide to the Systems Engineering Body of Knowledge (SEBoK) in September 2012. This will become an INCOSE-hosted product. This presentation will consider what is covered in the SEBoK and will focus in particular on areas of contention or challenge. These cover knowledge areas in which a better shared understanding is needed and those where we need to improve current practice and opportunities for Systems Engineering to expand into new areas. This will help us understand where Systems Engineering needs to go to develop further its knowledge and relationships in the future.

Systems Engineering techniques are increasingly applied with success in rail engineering design. Rail operating professionals, seeing the advantages, have grasped the essentials with alacrity.

Nigel Murphy and Steve Roberts set out some examples of such applications, illustrating how time, cost and risk have been reduced and performance and operability improved, in ‘softer’ operational design of the rules, methods of working and competence management systems necessary to deliver the railway for customers. They will draw upon examples over the last 12 years in the UK, and reference global examples for further illustration. They will argue that SE practitioners should view railway operations professionals as advocates, champions and co-practitioners and that System Engineering must embrace operational design in a systematic way rather than as an afterthought. The presentation will show that use of SE approaches by operators is a successful model for others to adopt and provoke debate on practical steps that SE practitioners should consider when developing new projects.

The INCOSE International Symposium is the premier international forum for Systems Engineering. Participants network, share ideas, knowledge and practices, and learn more about the most recent innovations, trends, experiences and issues in Systems Engineering.

The call for presenters has been issued. People who wish to submit papers, panels and tutorials must do so by the 8th November deadline. For more information use the following link http://www.incose.org/symp2012/ and then go to the Submissions page.

Tutorial days provide an opportunity for INCOSE members to explore new topics and extend their knowledge of Systems Engineering practice.

Places are limited, so to book your place, please click here