Various articles in newspapers have painted different pictures of the project to replace Canada’s aging fleet of Sea King helicopters. The first article I saw was in the Toronto Star, by Murray Brewster published April 16, 2012. Mr. Brewster pointed the finger at the Harper government for “go(ing) easy on the maker of the air force’s long-delayed maritime helicopters after winning a series of economic concessions”, then explains that this project is over budget and behind schedule, and the manufacturer is at fault and the Canadian military is allowing Sikorsky to get away with it. Of course, there is always more to projects than simple explanations like this. The Canadian military is quite disciplined when it comes to contract management, so when I read that they have not threatened Sikorsky with application of the liquidated damages, I am suspicious of Mr. Brewster’s accusation that Sikorsky is at fault for the delays. Probing deeper it becomes evident that this is another project that is suffering from scope changes and “requirements creep” (Globe and Mail, Feb. 11, 2013 “Five decades, two contracts and still no helicopters for Canada”). Notice to journalists: Liquidated damages cannot be applied when the client is the source of the delays.

Speaking of clients being the source of delays, an excellent commentary on these types of projects was printed in the Toronto Star on February 19, 2013, by the same authors of the Globe and Mail article (Michael Byers and Stewart Webb). They suggest a lack of discipline in the management of requirements and scope changes in military projects. This brings me to question whether lessons learned from similar past projects are considered and applied. In the Project Management Journal of September 2002, Bud Baker wrote on “The Fall of the Firefly: An Assessment of a Failed Project Strategy”, a lessons learned summary of the US Air Force’s acquisition of the T-3A “Firefly” trainer. Some characteristics of this failed project are remarkably similar to the Sikorsky project. The T-3A trainer was also based on existing commercial flight trainers, with the thought that it would be more cost-effective to build on an existing design, then the Air Force decided to change the engine and a number of other client initiated changes were requested. Suffice it to say, that the project did not end well. I have asked this question of experts who are in this type of business, and the answer has been unanimous that changing an engine is a substantial change that effectively changes the fundamental nature of the product. So it brings me to wonder whether effective change management was implemented on this project with full understanding of the impact of changes.

Maybe I am simplistic, but faced with a fundamental redesign of a product, especially one that is well into its project life cycle, means going back to square one, pressing the reset button, or in our wonderful project management language, reassessing the business case, and developing new baselines of requirements, scope, schedule, costs. Of course, the contract may be structured with considerable costs to the Canadian government for this type of revision. Canada already paid once for cancelling the helicopter contract during Chrétien’s time in office. But contracts can be structured differently if scope change is anticipated.