Original Date: 07/08/2002
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

The Directorate for Missiles and Surface Launchers established a STANDARD Missile-3 Collaborative Engineering Work Environment to better manage program information and increase communication across the contractor/government team. The Collaborative Engineering Work Environment is a web-based collaborative workspace with secure, password protected access to the most current STANDARD Missile-3 Program information available twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.

The complexity and configuration of the STANDARD Missile-3 (SM-3) requires the integrated effort of numerous contractor, supplier, and government teams. During 1998/1999, the Directorate for Missiles and Surface Launchers (PEO TSC-M/L) was faced with an increasingly difficult problem of coordinating and communicating programmatic information among the large numbers of contractor, supplier, and government personnel supporting the development and production of SM-3.

Other factors added to the complexity of managing the SM-3 Program, which included physically dispersed contractor and government locations with multiple time zones, large volumes and currency of information, and timely access to information. To assist in resolving these issues, PEO TSC-M/L developed a web-based collaborative site called the Collaborative Engineering Work Environment (CEWE). CEWE provides a secure (128- bit encryption) twenty-four hours-a-day forum for users to post and view program-wide status reports, financial information, and calendar events on a web browser anywhere. It also contains the latest version of common software, such as Microsoft Office, to ensure document sharing is feasible across platforms and sites. The site and user access is controlled from the Program Office. Limited access sub-groups can be created, and these groups can use the website to transfer large or sensitive documents between the individual group members, with team distribution via e-mail done by the CEWE. This relatively simple solution has improved information flow between the contractors, suppliers, and PEO TSC-M/L; fostered the sharing of information; increased communication; fostered a sense of teaming among the contractor/government teams; provided real-time access to information; eliminated currency issues; reduced e-mail activity; provided PEO TSC-M/L with more flexibility in terms of access to program information anytime/anywhere; and reduced much of PEO TSC-M/L’s administrative burden associated with managing and synthesizing reports.

CEWE provides a space for all government and contractor team members of the SM-3 Program to post reports, meeting minutes, meeting notices, and share pertinent programmatic information. The site design makes it easy for users with appropriate privileges to post content to the site without third party intervention. CEWE provides a flexible and easy way for SM-3 Program team members to access programmatic information on a timely basis, assuring them that the most current information available is being accessed. Features of CEWE include a document repository, discussion threads, calendar function, and a “what’s new,” which lists all new items posted since the user’s last login. CEWE is an innovative approach to traditional program management in that it provides greater access to program information for all team members. This open philosophy provides greater benefits to the program by fostering communication and leveraging the intellectual assets of the entire team. By implementing CEWE, PEO TSC-M/L has moved toward a paperless environment.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.