About Persides > Capabilities > Support Solutions > Through-Life Support

Through Life Support is the project management discipline that applies a Whole Life approach to managing system support and sustainability. At the front end it encompasses the Supportability Engineering that designs the support system, ensuring that the long term supportability, sustainability and cost impacts are accounted for, and then throughout the system life it continues to monitor, improve and adapt the support to the changing threats, operational requirements and environments.

Through Life Support can be applied to legacy systems as well as to new programmes, changing the support arrangements to suit new doctrines, e.g. the MODs Defence Logistics Transformation Programme (DLTP) that is moving the focus from traditional contracting for repairs and spares to contracting for availability and capability. 

Planning and managing Through Life Support is challenging due to the pace of change, the complexity of both the systems and the stakeholder communities, and the need to understand how to offer availability or capability that can be assessed for contractual performance. Managers require an understanding of topics such as Contractor Logistic Support (CLS) operations, Service Delivery and Evaluation, Defence Supply and Support Chains, and Operational Surge, in order to assess the levels of risk and the business opportunities within commitments to programmes. In addition, Through Life Support requires an understanding of organisations and functions in order to fit logistic support and sustainability into the operational environment.

Initiatives such as the DLTP have placed the risk on non-MoD organisations for the delivery of support services.  In order to respond industry has to develop a far greater depth of system and process knowledge of the key support cost drivers of their systems, to mitigate the risk that poor supportability will reduce profitability.

Persides recognises the issues in supporting systems through life, and is successful in identifying, quantifying and managing the risks and opportunities associated with implementing innovative support system design solutions.  Persides has developed processes to monitor in-service support performance e.g. availability, and to seek a continuous improvement through life in profitability and operational effectiveness.

Due to its in-depth involvement in the supportability aspects of defence programmes, both with the MOD and with industry, Persides offers a trusted capability to design support solutions that are robust, sustainable and doctrinally compliant, and to follow through to manage the through life support programme. Persides can produce effective and comprehensive Through Life Management Plans, support the creation of viable “contracting for support” proposals, develop incentivised continuous improvement programmes and commit to long term involvement with a programme.

Examples that demonstrate Persides capability in Through-Life
Management include:

• ASTOR - Raytheon Systems Ltd Airborne Stand Off Radar. Persides provides full ILS management including LSAR management, technical publications management, and training management and the establishment of the Contractor Logistic Support (CLS) programme.

• FIST - Persides are responsible for Definition of the FIST Through Life Support Solution as well as delivery of the innovative FIST UOR support solution

• Lydian - Persides are involved in the Project Management, Supply Chain Management and Service delivery management for this service based programmme.