Prime Government Contractor

Customer Case Study - Network and Security Topology Design

Business Situation

Prime Contractor was engaged by US Government agency to provide remote maintenance and monitoring of diverse equipment situation across the continental US. This monitoring system, to be built from the ground up, would provide for:

• Equipment in-service upgrades and automated data retrieval on equipment and screener performance to increase equipment availability, reliability, and effectiveness; improve performance management; and reduce overall operating and support costs
• Equipment replacement, reconfiguration, and deployment strategies to increase throughput, system capacity, and effectiveness while reducing screener staffing requirements, equipment footprints, and airport lobby installations
• Reduce downtime, extend service life, and eliminate safety hazards

The project was divided into three phases: Phase 0, which involved collecting various functionality and interface capabilities of the existing equipment to stage for requirements; Phase 1, which requires assimilating the data collected during Phase 1 and combining it with relevant client and regulatory requirements, and Phase 2, which involves building a test environment.

Challenges that existed to the project included:

• Collecting and distributing large amounts of performance and maintenance data in an accurate, timely, and cost-effective manner
• Tracking equipment location and movement
• Updating equipment software and configurations in a timely and cost effective manner
• Maintaining and repairing aging equipment and managing the equipment life-cycle
• Improving threat identification and management in a decentralized organization
• Creating strategic management capabilities for prioritizing services and directing resources from a national perspective

What We Did

Focusing on the Phase I requirements for the project, Loricca:

• Analyzed existing government requirements and regulations for compliance and regulatory issues
• Condensed existing Functional Requirements, Application Design, Interface Requirements, Operational Concepts, and government Management Directive documents into summary form
• Produced a system design document to support remote maintenance and monitoring initiative. This design included database design, data models, data dictionaries, defining communication protocols, and all architecture recommendations. Additionally, the design included necessary modifications to the existing equipment database
• Produced an implementation plan that could be enacted without disruption to the current operating maintenance services. This plan included updated procedures/work instructions, process maps from old to new, resource reallocation, training ,schedules, and required migration activities from the existing to the new support system
• Ensured the system design complied with IT security standards as outlined in current US Government management directives

Results

By employing detailed environment analysis, needs analysis, focus group studies, and end user requirements, and by incorporating regulatory, legal, and standards-based guidelines, Loricca delivered the following:

• An overall system design and supporting documentation that required the construction of a new Network Operations Center, multiple security levels to comply with government regulations, N tier to N tier architecture synchronization, interfaces with existing trouble-ticket system and dispatch system
• An implementation plan that included as is/to be process analysis and design, resource reallocation mapping, training plan with relevant guide and schedule, and a migration plan with timeline to move from the existing environment to the proposed environment.