[Chris Fultz]

Thursday night (29 January), Cyber Blue completed their Critical Design Review with the Technical Advisory Team. This review was a bit more formal than the previous ones and was completed at the Rolls-Royce Training Center. The parent crew provided dinner for the students, reviewer team and other guests.

The agenda included presentations on the team history, previous awards, the PR team and community activity, schedule, Risk, a game description and the Animation team. Following this information, the team presented their 2004 strategy and design to the reviewers.

Every student had a speaking part during the 2-1/2 hour review.

The sub-component teams detailed the design and functionality of their portion with drawings, words, pictures and either actual parts or mock-up pieces.

The review team asked several questions and confirmed in their own minds that the design was acceptable and the risks manageable for Cyber Blue to continue.

There was a considerable discussion on Risk Identification and Mitigation activity. Cyber Blue has initiated a risk management process and provided the review team with some samples of identified risks.

The process Cyber Blue is using is an “IF, THEN” identification. In use, the person defining the risk states that “IF this event happens, THEN this will happen”. Next, a likelihood of the event happening is assigned (High, Medium or Low), then an Impact (H, M, L) if it does occur. The next step is to identify Mitigation actions to reduce either the likelihood of the event happening or the impact if it does happen. The team then puts the risks in a rank order (High, High are at the top, Low / Low at the bottom) to determine what risks need to be worked on – there is usually no way to address every one.

One of the review team members suggested that we also add a column to the matrix to identify the ‘cost’ of implementing the mitigation. The cost might be dollars, time or an increased risk to other robot functions. This suggestion was adopted and added to the risk matrix.

An example of a Risk:

IF there is a pneumatic air leak, THEN our gizmo will not work properly.
Likelihood: Medium.
Impact: High.
Mitigation: Make new, clean cuts on all pneumatic tubing.
Use Teflon tape on all fittings.
Use leak check solution and test the complete system.
Cost: Low cost and minimal time to implement Mitigations.


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