New contract aims to keep Space Force’s multi-billion-dollar projects on budget

As the Space Force takes on new, multi-billion-dollar national security programs, the service has awarded a new contract to keep those projects on track and on budget, Defense One has learned. 

The service’s Space Systems Integration Office awarded Integrate, a Seattle-based firm, a multi-million dollar contract for its AI-enabled project management program. Last year, the company netted a $25 million contract with the Space Force’s Mission Manifest Office to manage the service major multi-payload launch operation project. Now, as the service embarks on massive programs such as building the Space Data Network and the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator, the service is expanding its use of the company’s software to help keep program managers on the right track.

“SSIO serves as the central nervous system for the Space Force and the singular integrator

across the majority of the national security space enterprise,” Integrate told Defense One. “To maintain the U.S. advantage in space, the office is actively pursuing technological advancements to ensure programs are executed within cost and schedule constraints, and to provide leaders with real-time visibility into the entire Space Force portfolio.”

The Space Systems Integration Office, which is within Space Systems Command and oversees its acquisitions programs, has a growing list of national security projects. So far, seven of the nine newly-established Space Force Portfolio Acquisition Executives are using the program, with the others to be onboarded in the near future. The service’s $71.3 billion budget request this year, if passed, would mark the largest percentage increase for any military branch since 1952, according to Aerospace America. Service leaders say the new program is necessary to keep everything on the right track.

“As the speed of acquisition becomes increasingly critical to the success of our programs, the

Space Force is prioritizing technologies that equip our leaders with more timely, data-driven

decision-making capabilities,” Helen Ying, the Space Force’s system of systems engineering lead, said in a statement. “Integrate’s project management platform strengthens our capacity to visualize the minute details and track broader objectives within the Space Force’s programs.”

The existing—and antiquated—project management system can lead to mismanagement, miscommunication, and missed deadlines, the company said.

“They might get a hand-drawn PowerPoint with triangles on it sent over in an email or a table in an email with Gantt bars colored in, literally to show this is happening in September and this is happening in August. They don't have any granularity. It's like the minimum that meets the contract requirements in some cases,” John Conafay, Integrate’s CEO, said in an interview. “The most advanced is Microsoft Project Server, which, Microsoft Project was released the same year as Tetris.”

Conafay said his program differs from the current workflow dominated by sending emails and downloading files, and instead offers a clear single schedule that is modified in real-time and across multiple organization levels and classification levels to easily manage sprawling national security work.

Integrate’s contract with the Space Systems Integration Office comes as one of the Trump administration’s major programs, the Golden Dome missile defense shield, is facing budgetary headwinds. Gen. Michael Guetlein, the program's direct reporting program manager, warned attendees at the Space and Missile Defense Symposium in Huntsville, Alabama, this month that if Congress doesn’t sort crucial supplementary funding, the program will be in dire straits.

Golden Dome is not a Space Force program, but the service is helping develop key technology for the architecture. Conafay said Integrate’s system helps in budget-controlled environments to ensure "things are done on time and within budget” and holds contractors accountable. He said the service’s adoption of an upgraded project management system shows they’re taking those budget constraints seriously.

“It shows an incredible amount of responsibility to the taxpayer to use a software that can fundamentally modernize something that hasn't been since 1984,” Conafay said.