Management Consulting

Based on commercial market impacts on the space launch industry, the Air Force Undersecretary and NRO Director was concerned about DoD’s assured access to space. We were engaged to deconstruct the business models of the two contractors providing launch services to understand the magnitude of investment made, the robustness of their combined DoD and commercial businesses, and scenarios that would impact their ability and desire to continue launching national security satellites for DoD/NRO. The analysis assisted USecAF/DNRO in his negotiations with the two contractors, and precipitated the formation of the United Launch Alliance joint venture as a stable launch services provider to ensure assured access to space.

An $8B business unit of a major defense contractor needed to improve its efficiency and effectiveness as its business evolved and DoD budgets were projected to flatten. Focusing on overhead costs, we used multiple approaches to assess the organizational structure and activity focus to identify gaps between actual expenditures and where value is created. Recognizing the inherent difficulty in assessing each individual activity, we decomposed overhead spending into “asset classes” to determine where spending was out of line with benchmarks and corporate strategy. Result was a comprehensive set of recommendations around organizational redesign and budget reallocations.