FIELD JOURNAL

Reviewing and Improving Shuttle Recovery Procedures

Glen Davis has been very busy balancing his workload at Kennedy Space Center and working toward his personal goal of obtaining his Master of Science Degree in Technical Management at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU). Glen began his Masters work in October of 1999 and is scheduled to graduate in August of 2001. Glen has an ambitious work/school schedule working five days per week at Kennedy Space Center. Every other week he leaves work on Fridays to attend classes and is in class all day on Saturdays. Glen is still very involved in maintaining systems on the orbiters. To get an idea of what Glen and his teammates do when the orbiter lands view his four-part journal entry A Sunrise Landing: http://quest.arc.nasa.govindex.html

Glen and his teammates have also been tasked to review, re-write and transfer the technical operating procedures that are used to recover the orbiter after landing. Glen points out the importance of this action by relating it to safety and efficiency. An example of an improved safety procedure is that when the orbiter lands at the Shuttle Landing Facility (SLF), it is transferred to the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) where certain panels called carrier plates must be removed to service the orbiter. The problem with this is that dangerous gases such as hydrogen, hydrazine, monomethylhydrazine, nitrogen tetroxide or ammoniafrom used on the orbiter can be trapped in these compartments and must be cleared before it is deemed safe to work on. The old procedure instructed the technicians to remove the panel, and then and the use a tool called a sniffer to sniff for these toxic gases. Glen points out that as the technicians remove each screw that holds the panel in place, they leave a hole that may allow gases to escape and expose the technician crew to these gases. Because of this potential problem, the new procedure will be to remove the first screw and then place the sniffer through the screw hole inside of the compartment. If toxic vapors are present they can then remove these vapors before continuing to remove the panel. Glen and his teammates are experts in this area and that is why their expertise in reviewing these procedures is so critical. An example of an efficiency improvement might require more steps to be written into the procedure the technicians follow. An example of the old procedure would be for the technician to "open a valve - vent - close the valve". The improved procedure would be to "open a valve - vent until venting ceases - close the valve. This minor procedural change leaves no doubt that the pressure in the container must be fully released before closing the valve. Once the procedures are reviewed and improved, they will be transferred to a more modern word processing system. Joe Coughlin, Project Leader for PeopleSoft Implementation Horizontal Operations gives his perspective on the work of Glen’s team: CDER stands for Category one Document Evaluation and Re-structure.  What we are doing is working to implement several initiatives regarding the format and content of our work instructions.   One such initiative provides us with the guidelines we need to determine the correct packaging of a work instruction.  The initiative is an implementation of and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, this is a computer driven planning and scheduling tool that requires certain pieces of information to operate.  It is what we are using to define what our groups of work are.  Once we have re-packaged the work, we then schedule the new package for a review with our best technicians and engineers.  This team reviews the new document and changes anything that is not correct, such as part numbers or sequence of events, they also make improvements based on their personal knowledge of the work to be performed.  After this review, another team of specialist reviews the documents for requirements compliance, information, and other information they need to perform their work.  Following this review the new document is published for use the next time the work contained in it is performed.

Glen did manage to take some time to vacation in Michigan and found time to spend time with the local high school and elementary students explaining what it is like working on the Space Shuttles. In May of 2000 he was awarded to be Michigan's Weeks Iron County Native Person of the year.  He flew to Iron County and was treated to a good time by the local Kiwanis Club members.  Iron County has been honoring people for thirty years during Michigan Week.  This year Glen was honored to accept this award which was a gold pocket - complete with a gold watch chain and a glass globe show case engraved with his name and the honor bestowed on him! Awards come with a price though, this one was that he had to give the key note speech at the annual banquet.  Glen says he was terrified to get up in front of 200 people and give a speech.  When the time came though he found talking about his two favorite subjects (Myself and my job) made it a walk in the park.