Chapter 1: Case Study

Aerospace Canada Corporation Project Selection 

You work as a Human Resources Manager for Aerospace Canada Corporation (ACC).  Your company is a Canadian nonprofit corporation that operates federally funded research and development.  You provide technical advice on space missions to the Canadian military. You work closely with the ARC Space Force and the National Space Office.  You provide technical analysis and assessments for space programs that serves Canada’s interests.

The company has 5 Chief Executive Officers, 10 Board of Trustees,  8 Research and Development employees, 20 Space Systems employees, 15 Performance Engineers, 20 Classified IT Design Engineers,  10 Electrical engineers, 7 Information Systems Security Officers, 5 Technical Software Engineers, 14 Cyber Systems Engineers, 10 Buyers, 5 Systems Directors, 12 Program Assistants, 8 Quality Assurance Engineers, 4 Remote Sensing Scientists, 20 Project Leaders, 12 Human Resources Specialists, 5 Administrative Accounting Specialists, 32 Administrative Support employees.

ACC has over 400 projects that are funding each year.  They have used several models in the past for project selection to meet their goals and respecting their budgets and resource constraints, and minimizing risk. The business development and research team are responsible for reviewing all the projects and selecting the optimal portfolio for the upcoming year. In the past, the focus has always been on maximum returns on the budget and to remain at or above the market norms.   These decisions reflected a priority based on sales only.

ACC is looking to implement a new strategy for project selection. It has been discussed that the business development and research team should not be involved with the project selection.  However, no one knows exactly who should be involved, how to set up a new system, or who should be making these important decisions for ACC.