Concept Exploration

Defining project missions and validating approaches through stakeholder participation

In the Concept Exploration (CE) stage of development, Metron Aviation starts with a well defined mission and finishes with a clear, validated approach for a solution. Throughout this process, Metron Aviation works closely with stakeholders, reviewing their ideas for new approaches to the mission and presenting and explaining candidate concepts for their review. This review process includes organized walk-throughs of alternative concepts, storyboard exercises, use cases, interaction diagrams and activity diagrams. Each potential approach is evaluated through quantitative analysis and subject matter expert review. Evaluation criteria include effectiveness, cost to deploy, cost to support, workload, risk the aviation community’s ability to absorb change and whether this approach aligns with the FAA’s long term strategic objectives. Metron Aviation maintains a state-of-the art research infrastructure that supports the evaluation process, including a multi-year archive of historical aviation data, a number of specialized simulation environments, commercial statistics, mathematical and data analysis tools and a set of specialized analysis tools designed and built expressly for aviation research and Concept Engineering and Development (CED).

The CE stage terminates when Metron Aviation has reached a consensus with the operational community on a solution approach that meets the needs of all parties and provides cost-effective improvements to the National Airspace System (NAS) operations. The final product of CE includes a detailed description of the selected concept, an initial concept of operations document and a blueprint for how to proceed with the CED process.