CAREER: Accidental Knowledge: Using Accidents and other Systems Engineering Failures to Inform Research and Education in Systems Engineering

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The objective of this Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program research project is to explore the causes of systems engineering failures in large projects in a three-step process: (1) Detailed analysis of past system engineering failures to identify deficiencies in systems engineering; (2) Investigations of systems engineering in practice at industry and government organizations to challenge or validate these findings; and (3) Use of these findings to improve systems engineering curricula and delivery methods. Despite best efforts, projects fail in ways that systems engineering is intended to prevent. The rate of failures shows no sign of decreasing. Therefore, current approaches based on methods, tools and processes are not working. We need to do more than propose better processes -- we need a foundational basis that is informative and can be adapted to a broad range of circumstances and industries, such as mining, oil and gas, chemical, and aerospace, to guide design and operational choices that prevent or mitigate failures.If successful, this research will contribute to reducing failures of engineering projects and form the basis for sound, data-informed improvments to the fundamentals of systems engineering. The educational component of this work combines research-based course improvements with rigorous assessments of actual student learning (as opposed to self-reported data) across a longitudinal set of courses. The findings will be used to improve the systems engineering curricula and delivery methods.