The challenge
The US Air Force has one of the largest real estate portfolios in the world, with 185 installations encompassing 700 million square feet of facilities, more than 500 miles of runways, and 10 million acres of land. A team of 66,000 Air Force Civil Engineers manages these assets to ensure that the infrastructure is in place to support the evolving needs of warfighters. The Air Force needed to consolidate ten legacy software programs onto a single platform that could provide an integrated view of all its facilities to do this efficiently.
Our solution
Serco has taken the lead in implementing the most extensive implementation ever of IBM's TIRIGA integrated workplace management solution. Previously, the Air Force had made extensive investments into developing and customizing the TRIRIGA platform, but the rollout of the new system had stalled for several years at only a few sites. Serco's team committed to completing the rollout to all 185 locations within three years.
The new platform provides civil engineers with a powerful tool to manage the maintenance and operations of the runways, facilities, equipment, and testing grounds that warfighters rely on to prepare for missions and test new weapons and tactics. It also provides a comprehensive view of operating costs and planning capital budgets, and making forecasts based on changing mission requirements.
The outbreak of COVID-19 caused the Air Force to suspend rolling out the software to new sites for several months due to the requirements for in-person user training. Our client came to Serco with a new challenge: Could we accelerate bringing on new sites to meet the original date for full implementation? Using automation, Serco found a way to double the rate of implementations each week and complete the target date at no additional cost to the customer.
To comply with directives from the Air Force Business and Enterprise Systems (BES), Serco assisted our client in moving all pre-production to the secure cloud, which became a model case for other DoD cloud transformations. Serco has employed automated, over-the-air software updates to dramatically reduce the cost of adding new capabilities and maintaining cyber security.
Once the Air Force user community became familiar with the power of the TRIRIGA platform, they began to request new feature sets and modifications to meet the needs of specific installations and missions. By transitioning from waterfall to 100% agile development, Serco increased the pace of capabilities updates from once every six months to monthly.
At the customer's request, Serco also established a help desk that runs 24/7, 365 days a year, to support the worldwide user base, achieving dramatic improvements in issue resolution, escalation to senior experts, and quality of support. This model was so successful that it is now being evaluated for use on other critical software platforms used by the Air Force.
Outcomes that matter
The new resource management platform provides senior leadership with the data and automated decision framework they need to pivot to new mission requirements and drive change across the enterprise. Data on costs, utilization, and performance previously siloed in multiple systems are now readily accessible. A program that was once mired in delays and technical debt is now a showcase example of using the cloud, agile development, and automation to make enterprise software systems more efficient. In the future, TRIRIGA can serve as a hub for sustainability initiatives enabling the Air Force to track energy sources usage and environmental data globally and identify opportunities to improve the carbon profile of its facilities and missions.