ICEAA Greater Alabama Chapter Board of Directors 2021-2023

Elected Officers:
President – Christian Smart
Treasurer – Stephanie Warnes
Director of Publicity – Don Kimminau
Administration – Nicole Sullivan Hamilton
Certification – Paul Gardner
Industry Education – Teresa Brown
Past President – Billy Carson

Previous Meetings

Analytics in the Magic Kingdom with Ms. Randi VanNyhuis

Ms. Randi VanNyhuis is an experienced operations research and cost analyst, having worked for both the Department of Defense and industry in addition to serving as a Naval Reservist. She recently worked at the Walt Disney Company as a Commercial Intelligence Manager where she identified opportunities for revenue growth through advancing the measurement and use of commercial performance and guest valuation metrics. She will share her experiences with the company and how they compare and contrast to her analytic work with the federal government.

Attending this webinar counts as 1 hour of training or 0.1 points towards your CCEA recertification.

March 23 at 11am Central Daylight Time
PowerPoint Download

Dr. Christian Smart will discuss chapter updates and the latest goings on at ICEAA national.

Teresa Brown, Training Chair for the Greater Alabama Chapter, will discuss the plan for the upcoming chapter certification preparation training, which will be offered in a virtual format this year.

Dr. Joe Hamaker, Galorath’s Director for NASA and Department will then provide a presentation titled Galorath Small Satellite Cost Model (GSSMO):

At Galorath Federal, we have considerable experience estimating various types of space satellites using SEER-H, SEER-SEM and SEER-Space. Over the past several years, we have been increasingly asked to estimate the cost of small satellites.

At least one NASA definition of a small satellite is a satellite with a wet mass of 180 kg or less. As cost analysts, we more normally trade in dry mass. Wet mass to dry mass ratios for satellites ranges from one (i.e. a spacecraft without a propulsion system) to five. Thus, the NASA 180 Kg wet mass translates into a dry mass range of 36 Kg (assuming wet equals 5X dry) to 180 Kg of (assuming a satellite with no propulsion).

Articulating what a dry mass range of 36 Kg to 180 Kg infers is an appropriate range of masses for datapoints in a smallsat cost model is not so straightforward. Obviously, all models can be assumed to extrapolate beyond the range of the database (on both ends) by some amount but what should be the limit?

Galorath Federal has assembled a database of smallsats which happens to have the following dry mass characteristics:
• A minimum mass of about 30 Kg
• A median mass of about 250 Kg
• A maximum mass of about 500 Kg,
The 180 Kg statement from NASA (again footnote 1) goes on to say:
• Minisatellites are those with a mass of 100 – 180 kg
• Microsatellites have a mass of 10- 100 kg
• Nanosatellites have a mass of 1 – 10 kg
• Picosatellites have a mass of 1 – 0.01 kg
• Femtosatellites have a mass 0.01 – 0.09 kg

Therefore, we think that our model should theoretically cover 100 – 180 Kg minisatellites or smallsats down to maybe 10 Kg microsatellties. We would not recommend using the model below 10 Kg.

This talk will describe the database and the simple Excel cost model—working name GSSMO pronounced Gizmo.

Greater Alabama Chapter Meeting
February 23^rd at 11 AM Central Standard Time.

Dr. Christian Smart, ICEAA’s VP for Professional Development and a long-time board member of the Greater Alabama chapter, discussed current ICEAA initiatives related to professional development, including the online PCEA and CCEA exams, development of a Software Cost Estimating Body of Knowledge and an associated specialty certifications, and plans for the 2021 virtual ICEAA workshops.

Teresa Brown, Training Chair for the Greater Alabama Chapter, discussed the plan for the upcoming chapter certification preparation training, which will be offered in a virtual format this year. The chapter is looking for input from members on dates and times for the training.

Dr. Smart provided a presentation titled “Risk Management for Irregular Events – Handling Unknown Unknowns, Black Swans, and Other Rare Hazards”

Abstract:
Risk management for rare events that have significant negative consequences is challenging. Predicting the occurrence of such events is difficult but is critical for both national security and economic prosperity. For many events with extreme consequences, which have fat tails, there is no typical occurrence. These phenomena will likely have a few relatively mild outcomes, followed by an extreme occurrence that breaks all previous records. This presentation discusses methods for modeling these events such as extreme value theory, as well as the application of these techniques to COVID-19 and extreme cost growth and schedule delays.