Cybersecurity
Problem
A U.S. Department of Transportation agency required expertise in providing information security engineering support to ensure that its information systems adhered to formal and established security requirements via the Certification and Accreditation (C&A) process mandated by the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA).
Solution
Metters provided information assurance services to maintain the C&A of 23 designated systems. These systems required continuous monitoring and audit. A Security Certification and Authorization Package (SCAP), which is a comprehensive security assessment, must be completed on each system every three years or when there are major changes to a system. As part of a continuous monitoring process, an annual security assessment must be performed on each of these systems. Metters teamed with the Agency’s certification team and the information systems owners to perform all necessary reviews and develop all required documentation in support of the C&A process. Metters’ support of the C&A life cycle process has contributed to the development and execution of the Agency’s information security program, which assures the protection of systems and data.
In addition, Metters provided remediation and security engineering and analysis support to the FAA information security systems and made recommendations for improvement.
Result
The Metters FAA contract was approved for Option Year 1 in December of 2009, to include the additional scope of remediation and developing a remediation database. The customer has praised the Metters team for their support.
Enterprise Information Technology Solutions
Metters Enterprise Decision Portal
Metters Enterprise Decision Portal (EDP) improves productivity and project performance, provides transparency in workflow and saves cost for our client in a Federal civilian agency.
Problem
Through our face-to-face weekly and monthly meetings, Metters saw that our client continually encountered problems in decreased productivity among his staff and delays in project implementations. Metters employees analyzed historical documentations and identified several causes to our client’s problems.
The client was a COTR in an Operations and Maintenance (O&M) function of the Agency overseeing five disparate projects and 20 employees with no centralized method for tracking the process flow and project status. This caused redundancies in task performance, because there was no documentation of when and who performed each O&M task. In some instances, there was no reporting tool in place to track cost, project schedule and resource allocation. Our client also lacked a centralized document repository, which resulted in loss of pertinent historical data, misalignment of project objectives and inconsistencies in processes and procedures.
Solution
Using a systematic approach based on Project Management Institute’s (PMI) principals and guidelines, Metters employees identified that our client needed a centralized tool that could track all project activities, budget and schedule, and provide a document repository that would be accessible to the members of his project teams. We proposed a Microsoft SharePoint-based solution which met all the needs of our client.
Metters Enterprise Decision Portal (EDP) was designed to provide leadership with the ability to make decisions quickly and confidently, based on empirical data and common precision systematic automated approach in response to changes in mission requirements, political climate, budgetary constraints, and technological development. It provides a management integration center and helps in balancing capacity with demand throughout all aspects of a project and/or program. Specifically, EDP delivers enterprise model planning and implementation, resources management, acquisition management, and enterprise change management and configuration control.
With EDP, managers can nurture a more agile, transparent, and innovative way of managing multiple projects. Managers can coordinate and integrate with various projects and contracts thorough their organization and access real time information that provides true enterprise view of each of the projects and or tasks under their direction. It also enables managers to complete more projects on time and on budget with fewer resources.
EDP is designed to provide the following value-added capabilities to an organization:
- Project Support: Provide project management guidance to project managers in business units.
- Portfolio Management: Establish a staff of program managers who can manage multiple projects that are related, such as infrastructure technologies, desktop applications and so on, and allocate resources accordingly.
- Document Library: Centralize project documents and keep track of document history with version control.
- Project Reporting: Automate and customize project reporting mechanisms and generate on-demand status reports. Interactive reporting is provided through SharePoint Web Parts.
- Project Tracking: Track project schedules, control changes, and manage project risks. Changes are controlled through SharePoint Workflow functionality.
- Resource Planning: Provide visibility on resource availability across projects. Alert managers on over or under allocation of resources across projects sharing a resource as a result of changes in one project.
- Acquisition Management: A central place of all contract documentations. Allows tracking acquisitions status of a chosen endeavor.
- Team Collaboration: Enable Document Management solutions and facilitate team collaboration through document workspace
- Project Management Tool Integration: Integrate project management tools such as Microsoft Project, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook to maximize interoperability.
In addition to the capabilities listed above, EDP helps eliminate duplication of data entry, data inconsistency, and data incompleteness. Consequently, EDP provides accurate data in a timely and user-friendly manner making it ideal for Enterprise-wise management operations.
Results
Through Metters EDP, our client can now view project information for all five projects that they oversee simply by going to one web address, accessible from any computer with a secure connection to the Internet. The client can view staff work assignments and schedules, create change requests, and track and analyze project budget. They can update project status through EDP and allocate and redistribute resources where and when necessary. Our client now also has a central document repository that maintains all weekly and monthly reports, standard operation procedures and other project-related documentations.
The ability to see project activities and status in real time improved the productivity of thier entire staff, and provided transparency in all phases of workflow, as well as cost savings through elimination of redundancies. By having one single solution, we also reduced the need for multiple infrastructure and consolidated the time and resources required for our client to make enterprise decisions. Our client’s staff is alerted each day regarding their work assignments and deadlines, thus eliminating delays in project delivery due to misalignment and miscommunication of objectives. The repository also allowed for a level of document sharing and collaboration that did not exist before.
Logistics and Systems Engineering
Problem
The U.S. Army Joint Munitions Command (JMC) Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) modernization, under the current Logistics Modernization Program (LMP) limitations and cost constraints, found it to be impossible to develop point-to-point interfaces for all of their 400+ identified objects by the scheduled deployment of October 2010.
Solution
Metters developed a data warehouse and business intelligence strategy for data publishing/subscription techniques to share critical data among these critical objects. This strategy led to a far more cost effective approach to data sharing. This strategy has extensive flexibility for adding additional data objects and for easily making changes to user-required data delivery. This strategy substantially reduced data preparation time and easily used the current user processes. There is the added benefit of the flexibility to use tool suites such as MS Office.
Result
The Metters JMC LMP contract was approved for Option Year 1 in March 2010, to include additional provisions/funding for more consultation services in support of data identification and migration for business intelligence and data warehousing environment. Metters has been praised for its diligence and progressive recommendations and serves as the JMC single integrator for their ERP migration initiatives.
Simulation and Training
Common Organizational Level Tester
Metters was contracted to perform the assembly, test and integration for the Common Organizational Level Tester (COLT) by Lockheed Martin STS. The COLT is used to perform the weapon’s system test and readiness on the F-22 and B-2 aircrafts.
Problem
Lockheed Martin was struggling with the quality and responsiveness of their existing supplier. The Air Force required a minimal of 50% of the scope to be performed by a Small Business. As a result of our program success on numerous other training and simulation programs, Lockheed Martin partnered with Metters Incorporated on this aircraft test equipment. The reliability and timely delivery of the test equipment is critical to the availability of the aircraft. An aircraft will be grounded if the test equipment fails to operate properly or is unavailable to perform the system diagnostics.
Solution
On a very short development cycle, Metters fabricated an assembly area to support the critical components. Elements, such as five micron air filtration, static dissipative flooring, and dedicated electronics benches were employed to ensure that an appropriate environment was created for the assembly and test. Metters Incorporated developed detailed process plans and inspection processes to control the assembly of the systems. Throughout the program, Metters Incorporated engineers worked closely with Lockheed Martin to identify opportunities for improvement in design or manufacturability. Using the experienced electrical and mechanical staff at Metters Incorporated, coupled with the expertise and experience of Lockheed Martin, simple solutions were quickly implemented that had significant impact on producing the product efficiently.
Result
Metters received a Small Business Supplier of the Year award as a result of our performance on the program. This award is reserved for the elite and preferred Small Businesses that support Lockheed Martin on major programs. Metters successfully delivered all of the systems over the 14-month program life on schedule. Metters received a 100% supplier quality rating on the program.