Projects with which we have been significantly involved with include:


Defence quantitative risk analysis (QRA) Individuals now working for Andcer have determined the likely cost outcomes and associated cost risks for many major projects. Some of the larger... see below Defence Fixed High Frequency Radio Replacement (cost modelling, and data discovery) The New Zealand Defence Force (NZDF) is replacing its legacy domestic high frequency radio system. This system... see below Defence light aircraft Beechcraft 200 (economic cost studies) The New Zealand Defence Force had a fleet of B200 aircraft (more). These aircraft were leased, and were mainly used for aircrew... see below
NZDF sizing of aircraft engine inventory (QRA-logistics) High end military aircraft engines are expensive. Too many engines on inventory incurs excessive costs and creates a capability that... see below Telecommunications (regulatory cost model) Telecom New Zealand (TNZ) (now Chorus and Spark) provided their regulator, the New Zealand Commerce Commission, with a cost model showing the costs of... see below NZDF high capacity mobile communications (demand and economic cost model) WGS (Wideband Global Satellite communications) is a high capacity communications system owned and controlled by the... see below
Defence policy (optimisation) Policy and policy related discussions are often performed without the benefit of quantifying the economic cost and benefit of numerical optimisation. Policy is... see below Statistics: tools to detect fraud [the value is in the detail] Curiosity is probably the analyst's best friend in examining data for fraud or in any modelling. Analysis of data is about finding... see below ACC organisational performance measurement At the time of this study, ACC (the Accident Compensation Corporation) had approximately 33 main branches. Each branch was largely autonomous in its... see below
Police-organisational performance measurement The New Zealand Police have many Policing Areas distributed around New Zealand. This study examined the contribution of each Area to the overall... see below Department of Labour (currently MBIE) Immigration Office Performance Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) was used as the base technique to assess Immigration Office organisational performance. ... see below

NZDF sizing of aircraft engine inventory (QRA-logistics)

High end military aircraft engines are expensive. Too many engines on inventory incurs excessive costs and creates a capability that is unlikely to be used. Too few engines, and a very expensive asset (an aircraft) missing an engine is unable to fly. There is an optimum number of aircraft engines to balance service objectives and the capability's whole of life cost.

The project consisted of:

  1. constructing an application in C++ to simulate the proposed pool of engines. The engines were tracked through their life stages"on the wing" ie deployed; on inventory (available for deployment); dispatched to a repair/refurbishment processes. Each of these states had its own delays, triggers to change state, and activity costs. For instance, an engine that had failed was removed from an aircraft, taken to an offshore repair depot, queued for repair then eventually returned to inventory as a logistics spare. The model we created simulated and tracked each engine by day over the course of the aircraft's expected service life. C++ was used as the preferred modelling language as Excel was limited in its capability and was neither able to cope with the range of data required, nor provide timely responses.
  2. producing statistics for each of multiple runs of the C++ model. The statistics were used to inform questions of the number of engines that should be held as logistical replacement spares so that the fleet of aircraft would have a required availability.

Current status - the Cabinet has committed to replacing the P3 Orion fleet with P8 Poseidon aircraft.


The top three skills required and used for this project: