Article submitted by Jorg Largent

The tremendous technological advances in the aerospace industry necessitated the recognition of systems engineering as a process — a process needing definition and the rigors of academia. Regardless, systems engineering, as a discipline, is a process that can be and has been applied to successful projects throughout the ages. Consider three examples from outside the world of aerospace engineering.

A popular example is the pyramids. Requirements development was simpler, “Pharaoh said…” being the top-level requirement. The producibility aspect of building was a massive undertaking involving logistics and the development of systems to quarry the building material, move it to the site, and then to assemble the pyramids themselves. A subset of the processes was a challenge dealing with the properties of materials and, according to some analyses, figuring out how to finish the blocks so that they would not fail under load.

In another example of “beyond-aerospace” systems engineering, representatives from Southern California Edison spoke to our October 2007 speaker meeting and described their application of the systems engineering process to proposed improvements.

A third example is the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad $90M project to increase capacity in the San Bernardino Mountains. The BNSF route through Cajon Pass is one of the busiest rail routes in the United States, connecting southern California with two major arteries: one to Utah and then to the northern Midwest and the east, and the other to New Mexico and thence to the central Midwest and the east. This work was accomplished with minimal impact to the ongoing traffic.

Railroads have a history of de facto systems engineering and being one of the first “systems of systems.” An article in Trains magazine (Kalmbach Publishing, April 2008, written by David Lustig) described the project in concepts that reflect the systems engineering process.

The project in the San Bernardino Mountains was done in three segments — an incremental life cycle.

The most visible aspects of the project were civil engineering — earth moving and grading, tunnel removal, etc. However, other disciplines were involved in designing the track work, the signaling, and the control and communications network; diverse disciplines and their respective subsystems functioning together. According to the article, a key element to success was the planning and coordination: “One of the reasons… the project has gone so smoothly is the tremendous amount of planning before physical construction began.” Civil engineers and environmental consultants were among the many disciplines consulted. A major consideration was traffic flow, the analysis of which resulted in identifying the need for crossovers, their number and location. Rephrased: up-front requirements development and management and team building.

Railroads are concerned about environmental impact, and the from-the-beginning involvement of environmental experts was risk management. One member of the leadership team was quoted as saying, “If we can avoid potential environmental impacts….” He then described a series of “if-then” scenarios with the final alternative being “looking at how the impacts can be mitigated: risk analysis and mitigation. According to the article, “...the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers indicated that the typical timeframe for a linear transportation project of this sort was 6.4 years. BNSF obtained its permit from the Corps in 14 months.” In systems engineering words: managing cost and schedule.

The term “systems engineering” per se may not have been used by either the pharaohs or the railroad, but the success of their respective projects reflects the process and its benefits.