Risk Management at Nasa

After numerous design options were considered, NASA selected the final configuration for the National Space Transportation System (NSTS) in 1972 otherwise known as The Space Shuttle. In the following years contracts were awarded with managerial responsibilities divided between three field centers; Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas was assigned orbiter oversight, Marshall Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama was assigned the orbiter main engines, external fuel tank and solid rocket motors (SRMs), Kennedy Space Center would be responsible for final assembly, check out and launch execution. With the successful completion of the fourth orbital test flight (STS-4) in 1982, NASA declared the space shuttle program ‘operational’ where by the reusable launch vehicle in which two of the three major design elements would be recycled, (the orbiter and its main engines and the solid rocket motors) was ready for the continuing business of bringing astronauts and payloads to/from orbit.
An area of concern which will be explored is the rapid transition from a ‘pure project’ i.e., the NSTS R&D phase (which encompassed 10 years) to one of operations management where payloads take precedence which started five months after the operational declaration with STS-5. The core issue is that there are two types of work performed by organizations - project work and operational work. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) defines a project as, “a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service, or result” and also defines operations as, “permanent endeavors that produce repetitive outputs, with resources assigned basically the same set of tasks according to the standards institutionalized in the project life cycle.” With this in mind, the critical factor in managing operational work is to limit variation. Like variation in operations, the project manager’s goal is not to eliminate uncertainty which is unattainable, but to reduce and control it.