Orion Project

The Orion project

Executive Summary

Gary Allison is an engineer renowned for his skill, talent and dedication to his field of professional specialization. Gary has been employed by the Scientific Engineering Corporation or the SEC for a period of over 14 years: there he reputed himself as a highly competent project engineer. His immediate supervisor, Henry Larsen took note of Gary’s remarkable talents and opted to reward him by allowing him to work as a project manager as opposed to merely a technical specialist. Larsen justified his decision by claiming that unlike “other ethical guys”, Gary was very much a pragmatic thinker who was willing to do what was necessary in order to successfully complete the project. Larsen further expressed confidence his Gary’s ability to make practical, hard-nosed decisions by encouraging Gary to suppress his technical findings that the project’s operational capacities do not seem to match up with what was initially expected from it. Throughout the remainder of the scenario, Larsen repeatedly encourages Gary to do what is necessary in order to serve the financial interests of the organization, even if that is to be accomplished by withholding crucial facts from the client. The client who represented NASA repeatedly voiced concerns that Gary often proved to be unavailable and he neglected his administrative duties. Throughout the scenario, Gary Allison displayed a marked tendency to be excessively focused on technical aspects of his duties as an engineer and repeatedly neglected the administrative responsibilities of his profession. Gary’s administrative incompetence manifested in light of his poor planning that required the R & D department to provide additional resources and human capital on a very short notice. Eventually, the engineer’s inability to achieve a proper balance between administrative and technical aspects of work led to disastrous results. His team-members were forced to work over-time, they have become over-extended, exhausted and their morale was eventually depleted. Consequently, the final test-results proved to be inadequate and Gary attempted to buy time by concealing the results from Mr. Larsen. The latter interpreted that as an egregious error, terminate Gary from his position as a project manager and re-assigned him back to his technical position.

General situation

December 2nd, Gary identified one significant issue with the entire project that he deemed to be highly problematic. Specifically, the range of temperature under which the project was expected to operate was believed to be between -65 and 145. However, Gary discovered that in this case, the project would not be able to function adequately under a temperature that exceeded 130 degrees. Larsen exhorted Gary to suppress these findings and simply remain focused on making sure that the project remains