Risk Management

Our staff supports JPL efforts to mitigate the high risks of developing and operating one-of-a-kind interplanetary exploration missions. Our support staff has received training in Active Risk Manager and in the SAPHIRE risk assessment tool, and we are actively engaged in preparing spaceflight project Significant Risk Lists, assigning risk ratings, and preparing mitigation plans. A major NASA and JPL risk management thrust is improving the documentation and use of lessons learned. Northrop Grumman serves on the JPL Lessons Learned Committee and is responsible for drafting most JPL lessons learned that are submitted to the NASA lessons learned system. A Northrop Grumman staff member helps coordinate a portion of JPL's ongoing efforts to control risk by enhancing JPL-wide engineering processes. For example, we are tracking the progress of JPL engineering Process Owners in incorporating lessons learned recommendations into engineering procedures and training, and we led a 7-person team that audited 64 JPL laboratories' compliance with safety requirements.

Our staff also participates in risk management research sponsored by NASA headquarters. Under an R&D task, we drafted Risk Balancing Profiles that identify the residual risk to spaceflight projects of omitting sets of mission assurance activities, and we coordinated NASA Center review of the profiles. The Principal Investigator on the Reliability Preferred Practices R&D task is a Northrop Grumman staff member who also serves as the JPL delegate to the NASA Reliability and Maintainability Steering Committee. Performing a major risk assessment role on a previous research project, we recommended improvements to NASA test programs based on patterns of in-flight failures. Another area of research we supported sought to identify methods for selecting the most cost-effective suite of engineering analyses and tests for identifying "tall pole" risks in a budget and schedule constrained environment.