FAQ

Currently, we are in a pre-funding stage of development. Our aim is to use a mix of government funding and impact investments from “social VC” firms to fund the startup of the CAC Foundation. We are exploring a range of options to secure sustainable funding for the CAC Foundation while at the same time ensuing that access to the digital models for sustainability and climate resilience remain free.

NOTE: The CAC Foundation is an organization that is established with the sole purpose of maintaining the library of open-source digital models for different types of sustainability and climate resiliency projects. Actual execution of Concurrent Design activities, building facilities, training and other elements of our solution are provided by our industrial and academic partners.

Most organizations that currently undertake Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) already have the tools required to do this. To make these processes concurrent and collaborative requires the addition of a “model-of-models” tool such as RHEA Group’s Comet / CDP4 that is currently in use at ESA.

The good news is that the Comet Community Edition is free and open-source, which significantly lowers barriers for organizations that wish to get started with Concurrent Design (CD). Similarly the models curated by the Climate Action Center Foundation are also free and open-source, thus allowing organizations to derive incredible value with very limited investment.

For organizations that have undertaken several CD activities and are becoming comfortable with concurrent / collaborative MBSE, we recommend that they explore purchasing a Comet / CDP4 Enterprise License, which offers premium support and first-in-line opportunities to submit new feature requests.

There are two reasons for having the models be open source:

Widest possible use: We want to ensure the maximum benefit to people and the planet resulting from our models. The best way to ensure their widespread use is to make them free. Making this argument even stronger, the software that hosts the models is also free and open-source thus removing a key barrier of entry to those who want to join the CAC Community.

Building a collective knowledge base: If the models were “closed source” and proprietary (even if we were to give them away for free), there would be little incentive for members of our community to enhance the models and contribute their knowledge into the ecosystem. By providing the models using an MIT license, we encourage not only the free use of the models, but also we encourage members of our community to enhance the models and contribute those enhancements back to central repository thus helping all other members of our community. As has been demonstrated at ESA, digital models can be an extremely effective way of sharing knowledge across a large number of projects.

Yes, if you are currently not using these techniques, costs will go up in the short-term. Naturally, any change program comes at a cost. However, in the mid-term and especially in the longer term these techniques and technologies open up exciting new avenues for many different types of cost savings, including the following:

Acceleration of projects: It is logical to conclude that when a project can be executed in a shorter timeframe, the overhead costs associated with project management will be lower. This is one of the first ways that organizations can see cost savings when switching to Digital Engineering / Concurrent Design.

Reuse of assets and knowledge: In many organizations, projects start from a “zero baseline” where project management and technical teams have to “start from scratch” in the design and planning of implementation of new systems. As has been seen at ESA, planning for a new space mission begins with a rich set of digital models that have evolved over years to capture nearly all of the common elements required to put a capability into space. This gives engineers and other project team members a “70% starting point” from which they can build upon to reach a final high level design. In the Climate Action Center we want to take this concept one step further and freely share our underlying digital models globally, thus resulting in cost savings at a massive scale.

Improved quality: At ESA, a study was conducted that concluded that projects employing Concurrent Design from the outset produce higher quality specifications to be included in public tenders resulting in more than 30% fewer engineering changes after contract award. The significance of this should not be underestimated: engineering changes after contract award incur not only a financial cost (sometimes substantial cost) but also costs in terms of time and quality. By reducing engineering changes after contract award, projects can deliver with lower risk and a higher degree of determinism.

Cost of Risk: Any good project manager knows that it is important to assign a cost to key project risks. As risks materialize in nearly every project, this is a real cost that must be taken into account when estimating project budgets. As was stated in the previous bullet on quality, the use of Digital Engineering / Concurrent Design will result in projects with a lower risk, which will ultimately be reflected in a lower overall risk cost for projects.

Opportunity cost: There are numerous documented cases where projects enter the Concurrent Design process and after closer examination by the multidisciplinary team it is determined that the projects were not required because there were other better ways to address the problem. While some may view cancellation of a project to be a failure, it is actually a great success because it frees up limited human and financial capital to work on other higher priority projects.