Multidomain Situational Awareness: KBR COPERS

“Where’s my stuff and what’s its status?!” These are common questions asked by KBR customers and potential clients from the public to private sector and across various industries. Not knowing the answer is out of the question. Fortunately, KBR has a solution for that. Host John Arnold is joined by Preston Hoeve, KBR contract principal investigator and program and project lead, to talk about COPERS — a next-gen situational awareness platform that puts critical information at the customers’ fingertips to enable more effective decision-making — and that has the potential to be a true game changer.

Transcript

IN ORBIT A KBR PODCAST

Season 3, Episode 1

Multidomain Situational Awareness: KBR COPERS

John Arnold

Hello, I'm John and this is In Orbit.

Welcome one and all, it's the season three premiere of the podcast. I cannot believe it. And we are thrilled that you've decided to spend part of your day with us. Whether you're a regular Orbiter or a first-time listener, we thank you for joining us. It's a New Year, and as with so many things, we've had some changes in the life of the podcast and I have some announcements to make about that. But first, a little housekeeping here at the beginning of this brand-new season. As you're probably aware from the title, this podcast is produced by KBR. Now, if you're unfamiliar with who we are and what we do at KBR, you can hit that pause button and go check us out at kbr.com, or on any of our social media accounts to learn more. But while this podcast is produced by KBR, it's really for everyone inside or outside our business.

The information we talk about is usually presented through a KBR lens, but we always try to talk about things as they pertain to the rest of the world, our various industries, our communities and our amazing people. And we do that, my friends, to keep us all connected and in each other's orbits. So if you're interested in the latest in science, technology and engineering — if you're interested in hearing about the work we're doing as a leader in sustainability — if you're interested in learning about how we're helping solve the great challenges of our time, all while striving to be the best company to work for, then, well, you're in the right place.

All right, now, I said I have announcements. The first is bittersweet. My friend Lubna Salim, who helped get this podcast off the ground and has been co-host extraordinaire the past two seasons, is transitioning to a different role on the In Orbit team. So while you may not be hearing from her directly, she's still working with us to tell these stories and we couldn't be prouder of or more grateful for the work she's done and will continue to do.

The second announcement then means that, for the time being, I will be flying solo on hosting duties. I hope that's not a deal-breaker for you. I promise I'll endeavor to carry on telling these stories as best I can and highlighting our amazing people as well as they deserve.

TRANSITION

Every day, KBR people are delivering solutions that are contributing to a more sustainable, more secure and safer world. That is definitely true of our first guest of the new season, Mr. Preston Hoeve. Preston is contract principal investigator and program and project lead with KBR's National Security Solutions business unit, which rolls under KBR Government Solutions. He came to KBR as part of the Centauri acquisition in 2020, and he is here today to speak with us about a next-gen solution that helps collect critical data and puts it right at customers' fingertips so it can be used to make better, more informed decisions. Welcome to the podcast, Preston.

Preston Hoeve

Thanks, John. Thanks for having me.

John Arnold

Yeah, absolutely. So we're going to talk about some specifics about this solution, but first I wonder if you tell us a little about yourself and how you got into software development.

Preston Hoeve

Well, actually, I blame my aunt. I was about 12 years old, and she came to me and my parents and said, "Hey, there's a introduction to programming course for young people at the local community college, and we think PJ," that's what I went by as a kid, "might be interested." And I was. From there, it turned into a degree in management information systems from Cal Poly Pomona and a career in commercial and DoD [Department of Defense] space. And now I'm here with KBR.

John Arnold

Well, thank goodness for the aunt.

Preston Hoeve

Yeah, really.

John Arnold

So you've been at KBR by way of the Centauri acquisition for a little over three years now. What's your role been in that time?

Preston Hoeve

Well, my role really in some ways hasn't changed and in other ways, has grown substantially, mostly because nature abhors a vacuum. I've been a primary investigator on a couple of major programs, both of them R&D [research and development]-type software programs, hence the background and providing the interface between the government customer, the actual user group and whatever their domain is. And then the people I consider my team, which is the software engineer side that makes all my promises happen.

John Arnold

Outstanding. So one of the solutions that you and your team have been working on is called COPERS, which stands for Common Operating Picture for Event Response Situation awareness. Will you tell us about what COPERS is and does and maybe start by telling our listeners who might not know what we mean when we say common operating picture?

Preston Hoeve

Sure. But I don't know what you want to do with this in the world of podcasting, but actually we're in the middle of a KBR initiative to change the acronym. COPERS will always be there. The acronym update now is “Command Oversight for Personnel Equipment Response and Situation.” And some of that will become clear as we continue to talk. Yes, COPERS started in the emergency response domain, but it has grown to become significantly more than that.

So what is COPERS, what is a COP? A common operating picture is, or a COP is an acronym and a term that is widely used within at least the Department of Defense that I've been involved with. And it references some form of a user interface via software that is providing a picture to the domain experts, the people that are working in that environment. And it's usually thought of as being containing live data. That's usually pretty important and a shared experience in that more than one person can be viewing that information at the same time.

Now there is a COP for everybody and everything. And to think there is just one, people over accentuate the common part. So there are a lot of different ones for different domains. Think of someone who does meteorology. Their view of the world and their expertise in domain is probably very different than your local firefighter. And COPERS is part of providing a highly integrated situational awareness tool for lots of domains at this point.

John Arnold

Excellent. So yeah, what was the impetus behind COPERS development?

Preston Hoeve

So you mentioned that I came to KBR via the Centauri acquisition, and we were part of Centauri for just a very brief period of time, eight months actually. The start of COPERS, originally the program was called MOLES, it started with a small business called the Design Knowledge Company that I worked for. And it was pretty interesting. So it started as a three-month effort through the Air Force Research Lab. They had a little money and they said, hey, let's go do something interesting. And there was some conversations come along and they said, hey, there's a fire chief and a captain in security forces over at Wright-Pat Air Force Base that they've expressed a need and we think this would be a good place to go show some proof of capability and develop some quick term technology in this summer effort. And being that Design Knowledge was a software R&D company, fast turn from ideation to something you could actually show and let a user touch and feel is what we did.

So at the end of that three months, we were part of a proof of capability showing at the US Air Force Marathon. I think that was 2015. We sat in the back of the room and said, hey look, this is what the environment of this response type situation for fire and security forces looks like on a live moving map with live updates of data in a shared experience. And they went from using Post-it notes on a cartooned map of the marathon to standing over our shoulders in less than an hour. And we've been under near constant funding through AFRL since then growing to what COPERS is now, which is a full-fledged product with a lot more than just what's necessary for fire and security forces.

John Arnold

And that's the Air Force Research Lab, right?

Preston Hoeve

Yes, sir.

John Arnold

So you've already mentioned this a little bit. Well, first of all, I want to take a moment to express how crazy it is that within three months — quick turn is to say the very least — from idea to actually having the thing ready to show someone. That's incredible. You've already mentioned first response, meteorology, firefighters. What are some other of the use cases and what are some of the ways that these potential customers would be able to access or see their data in the ecosystem?

Preston Hoeve

So the use cases go anything from special events where it's a short timeframe, so like a marathon. We've been supporting the U.S. Air Force Marathon ever since that time. There was just a big 10-mile race at Cape Canaveral and Patrick Space Force Base. Through word of mouth and seeing its capabilities, we participated down there. Those are discreet events. It is also super applicable to fast developing large types of responses. So think major weather events, earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes, those kinds of things. COPERS can be spun up, made available to the people who need that right now highly integrated picture of what's going on, what are they trying to help with.

And then from there it's truly meant to be a day-to-day solution for any kind of a base or facility operations where you've got a campus that has everything from traffic control to some sort of security response, building status and status of major equipment on the facility, things like that where you're needing that overall picture. It's meant to be day to day, but as we've moved along and put it out there and gotten feedback over these years of continual development, we've taken it into a number of cross-domain situations, working with a navy postgraduate school, a program that actually, it has a new name, but it used to be called Stiletto. That's a test and experimentation vessel that goes out the East coast. But also pre-planning, right?

If you can respond to an event, but you're going to use this day-to-day, the ability to plan things like evacuation routes or how you're going to respond in the worst-case type scenarios, it can be used for that. It can be used for what's called LVC. Yeah. So LVC stands for live virtual constructive. So that is a training and practicing simulation kind of concept where there might be some live assets moving around in an environment. You might be simulating some things like red, sometimes called red teaming, and there might be some things where you're spooling up. That's the constructive part. How do we bring more forces to the fight or to the response. And when you start to look at COPERS from the, hey, we can do this for pre-planning and simulation and training all the way through day to day, it really starts to address the concept of “Train the way you fight,” and we fit in all of those areas.

John Arnold

You've spoken a little bit about this. I mean, you're getting real-time feedback and then adjusting as necessary. What's been the response from the test cases that you've had so far?

Preston Hoeve

So I'm probably one of the luckiest PIs or principal investigators to have a program for a number of different reasons. But this is one of them. COPERS demos so well that, I've been taken into a lot of briefing situations where I don't know a lot about the audience. It's a very different domain than I have experienced to, get said, hey, there's some guys from the chem bio environment. They think this is cool. I don't know anything about chem bio response.

But what I've learned is COPERS out just out of the gate satisfies 80% of what everybody I stand in front of is looking for. And I can sum it up really quick: it’s “Where’s my stuff and what's its status?” And when you leave stuff wide open like COPERS is capable of doing, could be aircraft, could be people, could be sensors, it could be right down, well, it could be subsurface, maritime stuff all the way up to airborne assets — “Where's my stuff and what's its status?” is 80% of it. And I get in some of these briefings and my favorite, and it's happened a number of times, is standing in front of a group and start talking about the COPERS and what its capabilities are to bring together everything that makes up the context of whatever their role or need is. And lots of map-based stuff. Lots of live.

And about 20 minutes into those briefings, they'll be side conversations start and I pause, I just wait because what's inevitably happening is they're saying, “Holy cow.” And then a moment or two later they'll look up and they'll go, “Can you add this data source or this type of sensor because it's the only thing that's missing?” And you get in those meetings and people get excited about what you're showing them. It's the best way to be. Are they all sun shiny? No, sometimes they're like, “That didn't work,” but that's where, coming from a culture of R&D, where you're looking for that feedback and our customer at AFRL expected that — “Go out and field it, get that feedback because you will make it better.” And because this team can do that very quickly, we've solved most of the issues that we've been presented with to date.

John Arnold

That's outstanding. You mentioned before some use in cross-domain situations, and we've already covered that there are clearly a lot of possibilities from government to commercial use, even chem-bio to first response. So is this something that could be deployed — we talk all the time in the [KBR] marketing group about how complex KBR can be to talk about with so many different facets of the business. Is this something that could be deployed even across KBR?

Preston Hoeve

Yeah, actually. So Centauri from my perspective is much, was very much an intel-based organization and we really didn't fit it because COPERS at the time and what we were doing was more domestic ops kind of scenarios. And we flew under the radar mostly because we were a well-funded program. So you're making money, leave them alone.

And when we came into KBR, it was actually for my programs both COPERS and another program I ran called ICEE, which is a civil engineering environment. We recognized right away that KBR and what it did with the big boss contracts and things like that really had much more use and probably therefore more contacts and more customers that might benefit from what we were building. And that has proven to be the case. COPERS has been socialized by previous BD [business development] personnel that we've worked with and made connections for us.

For instance, KBR in the UK, they got wind of COPERS, and they are now actively pursuing it as the tip of the spear for their solutions set to their customers over there. In another branch of the space and science group here at KBR, there is a cloud-based capability. COPERS can deploy in the cloud, it can deploy on-prem, at the edge, whatever. That's trivial to me, but for some people that might be important. Anyways …

John Arnold

Yeah, absolutely.

Preston Hoeve

The VaaultSM [KBR cloud-based platform] environment, which has a set of Army customers, they were super excited to find out that, “Holy cow, there's this highly integrable, highly adaptable operational picture that we own the IP for, and we can therefore market and continue to develop.” So anything beyond that, the ports of call — nuclear facilities, airports, any large campus, federal, local DoD and now we're doing commercial and international stuff that we've got a pretty broad aperture around where we can put this capability out to benefit the customer and KBR.

John Arnold

Fantastic. Tremendous opportunities on the horizon, we hope. Well, and that leads me to my next question. What's next for COPERS? What's going on right now?

Preston Hoeve

So I mentioned we've been under almost constant funding through the Air Force Research Lab, and we still have a contract vehicle with a ton of ceiling. But this particular task order is winding down, and we're starting a new chapter, to be honest with you. I've spent the last couple of days doing deep dives with the business development and the strategic leadership here in my organization saying, “Hey, this is where we've had traction. These are the contacts we've made, the places we're being seen.” And it's KBR's turn now to take the helm and start to really direct and focus where we're putting COPERS, what we're adding to COPERS, how we're investing in it to our greatest benefit, but also to its longest extent. This is a program that I think's got some pretty long legs and we've got some people that are going, “Hey, we know the people. We now can direct that focus more pointedly.” And I'm pretty excited about it.

John Arnold

It sounds like it. Well, who should listeners or anyone interested in COPERS reach out to to learn more?

Preston Hoeve

Well, there's me, of course. There's gentleman by the name of Joseph Amon. He goes by Joe because that's the name of the day. Everybody should called be Joe. If you're interested in stuff going on in the UK, that's kind of the Nathan Horsman world. He is leading up business development for COPERS in the UK and those are probably your main touchpoints. Of course, anybody at Vaault in [sic] Space and Science [KBR’s Science and Space business unit ] over there with Tom DeScisciolo in that group, Doug Hayes. Those are all people. And it's a lot of names, but it's very, like I said, we've touched a lot of places and we've got a lot of excitement going right now.

John Arnold

Excellent. Is there anything else you'd like to add before we let you go?

Preston Hoeve

So yeah, I guess I've talked about, it's a cool program. It's been a great opportunity to take it out in the field and show it to new people, always getting great responses. But I think that the people that really need to get the credit are the very small team of engineers that has built this. It's really a team of three, outside of me, that are doing it.

My right hand, a senior software architect, a guy who has taken stuff from R&D all the way up through program of record with the Air Force — John Leininger. Couldn't do without him. Ty Hayden, one of the moving forces that began at the beginning of the Design Knowledge Company and is still the guy you go to when you need really solid stuff and you need it yesterday. And one of our newest members of the team is Keith Ambrose. Super-solid player, knows the backend stuff, and is doing a lot to help us refine what we've built and make it a more solid capability that we can shrink wrap and put out there. So those are the guys that really need the credit for allowing us to sit here and say, “Wow, KBR's got this really cool thing.”

John Arnold

Yeah, we talk all the time about the amazing people that we have doing great things that matter. This is yet another example with potential to do a lot of good for a lot of people. So yeah, that's COPERS. Preston, thank you so much for taking some time out of your day. I know you've been busy this week, but we really appreciate you being on the podcast with us.

Preston Hoeve

Not a problem, John. I appreciate the opportunity to share with it. And who knows, maybe my phone will start ringing.

John Arnold

I hope so. Yeah, you guys get Preston on the phone.

TRANSITION

A big thank you to Preston Hoeve for speaking with me and helping us kick off our third season of the In Orbit podcast. That's the first episode, folks. I hope you enjoyed it and maybe learned a little something or are maybe now aware of a capability that can help you or your business. Be sure to reach out to Preston if you want to learn more about COPERS. Also want to say thanks to my excellent colleague Shannon O'Connor for her help in getting this episode off the ground. And as always, thanks to our amazing producer, Emma.

If you liked what you heard today or you think you might have an idea for an episode, let us hear about it by emailing us at inorbitkbr.com. We try to be timely responding and would love to hear from you. And again, if you want to learn more about KBR, go check us out on our website, kbr.com or on any of our very active social media sites.

If you're interested in learning about exciting career opportunities available at KBR, you can check out the careers page on the website or go do an old-fashioned search on the LinkedIn. We're always advertising open positions there as well. KBR really is a great place to work. Seriously, we're certified as a great place to work in countries all around the world. And I can say officially today that we've been named for a second straight year to Fortune Magazine's World's Most Admired Companies list. So if that's all tantalizing, check us out. In the meantime, stay safe out there and be sure to tune in a couple of weeks for episode two of season three of the In Orbit podcast. Thanks for listening.