Sydney Consultancy Services, Tender Writing and Project Management Training

Flight Simulators and Synthetic Trainers Integrated Project Team                                 

Project and people management including responsibilities for 2 professional technical officers and 12 projects totalling £5M budget; procurement and support of rotary wing simulators and synthetic trainers for the Army, Navy and Air Force within contractual, financial and procedural constraints.  Scheduling, Earned Value and accrual responsibilities.

The Flight Simulators and Synthetic Trainers (FSAST) Integrated Project Team was one of the first to be created with the Defence Procurement Agency (DPA) and was unique as it was a cluster IPT (i.e. concerned with a multitude of different platforms) and was a cross-organisation as it spanned both the DPA and Defence Logistics Organisations.  The IPT was responsible for all aspects of all flight trainers in all three Services.

My role

As a higher professional technical officer, I was responsible for the maintenance, repair, upgrade and modification of all part task trainers, radar simulators and motion simulators for helicopters for the three Services.  The two major procurement projects that were my responsibility were:

Lynx Mk 8 full mission simulator for the Royal Navy.

Sea King Mk 3/3a full mission simulator for the RAF ST Mawgan Search and Rescue squadron, with the associated radar trainer.

I also had two staff, both retired RAF officers, who provided invaluable help and expertise in the field of simulation.  There were many challenges with the role, from technical aspects of conducting factory and then full acceptance testing, but also in managing a team on a spilt site basis, and in a very new management organisation.