Boeing move to Texas hurt shuttle analysis-report
Some 80 percent of the 500 Boeing technical engineers in Huntington Beach, California, declined to move to Houston with the NASA program, requiring Boeing to hire and train engineers locally that lacked the experience of the existing team, the [Los Angeles] Times reported.
The Boeing team’s assessment that Columbia was relatively intact helped NASA leaders decide to continue with normal landing procedures.
According to the Times, Boeing engineers in Huntington Beach have said they would have reached a different conclusion, which Boeing denied.
“The Huntington Beach engineers were part of the analysis, so it would be hard to come up with a different conclusion,” Memi said. “If there were engineers at Huntington Beach not involved in the analysis who felt otherwise, they never made their concerns known.”
An interesting story to follow to see if the lack of continuity doomed the crew of Columbia . . . .
But it does raise the old question about work, even knowledge work, requiring one’s physical presence. What would the costs have been to keep the team together, despite the distance between management and the engineers? And if all the engineers stayed within Boeing, that sounds like the replacements were hired as additional staff — 80% of 500 is 400, so something doesn’t make sense.