The SSDC Challenge

WELCOME!

You and your colleagues have been invited to this activity because your company is planning to bid on a major contract to design, construct, and plan the operational strategy for an ambitious project on the surface of the Earth's moon. The organization that will award the contract is the Foundation Society, a private organization founded for the specific purpose of establishing settlements of its members at various locations in space.

Your task and challenge this weekend is to design facilities for a Space Settlement where thousands of people will live on a location yet to be announced. Your company must agree on a design that satisfies a set of requirements specified by the Foundation Society in its Request for Proposal (RFP). You will prepare a 50 page written proposal document defining all aspects of your proposal, which complies with the RFP requirements fully. You will also prepare a 35 minute presentation for a team of executives from the Foundation Society (Judges) which will be presented by one or more members of your company. The presentation must include dimensioned drawings of your design, and define areas designated for specific activities. You will be expected to justify facility sizes and locations, explain how the facilities will be sequentially built and populated, estimate costs and schedules for construction, and describe systems that will enable the residents to live and work efficiently and comfortably in their new community. At the conclusion of your presentation, members of the Foundation Society will have the opportunity to ask questions about your design and plans for 10 minutes. They will then evaluate your design versus those of the other three companies competing against you, and will choose a winner for the contract.

Successful development of your proposal will require coordination of design details with engineers from the four major technical departments in your company, as well as with your company's marketing department and your senior managers. Your company's management has the responsibility to ensure that communication is both effective and timely, in order to assure that all of the RFP requirements are met, and that all parts of the design and proposal are internally consistent and compatible.

Your company will receive the complete RFP on Saturday morning at 10:30 a.m. after you have completed orientation and training. Your proposal and presentation are due to be submitted to the Foundation Society at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday morning. Your working time is 21 hours!

You have a very intense and challenging job awaiting you!

GOOD LUCK!