Transportation Safeguards and Surety Program prototypes new storage solution

Sandia’s Transportation Safeguards and Surety Program design team has developed a modular vault inside a 20-foot shipping container to store and protect critical assets in austere environments.

The team accomplished this in response to a challenge by the NNSA Stockpile Responsiveness Program to provide a capability for temporarily deploying assets and technology that require secure storage to places where permanent storage is not available.

Typically, sensitive technology and assets are stored in permanent, high-security facilities, bunkers and vaults that can take decades and hundreds of millions of dollars to build. When the Exploratory Systems and Special Projects group asked to use a secure transporter for a demonstration of rapidly deployable high security storage, surplus transporters were not available without taking them off the road and interrupting work.

Stephen Neidigk, manager of the Access Delay department, suggested a new approach and challenged his team to design and build a functioning prototype within six months.

“The first vault prototype was a 1-to-14 scale model of a shipping container with a vault, ramp and weapons inside. This model, costing less than $500, was instrumental in gathering feedback from customers and potential end users and it facilitated design meetings,” Stephen said. “I brought the model to every design meeting during the six-month effort. Fifteen subsequent models are now on the desks of decision-makers at U.S. Combatant Commands, the Pentagon and U.S. Strategic Command.”

The vision

To motivate the design team at the beginning of the project, Stephen created a mock Labs Director update, modeled after James Peery’s monthly email but dated it six months in the future, and crafted a success story highlighting the accomplishments of the Mobile Vault project. He sent it to the team and Gary Laughlin, the center director at the time.

In response, the Access Delay team turned the traditional engineering method upside down and adopted an approach to swiftly design, fabricate and demonstrate a high-security mobile storage vault.

“In the first two weeks of the project, we collaborated with the Advanced and Exploratory team to establish key requirements. Our focus was on defining high-level requirements to provide sufficient guidance for the design team without overly restricting their creativity,” Stephen said. “For instance, rather than specifying a fixed delay time, we agreed on a requirement to maximize delay performance within the volume and weight constraints. These constraints were determined by the need to be C-130 transportable and weigh less than 30,000 pounds.”

Prototypes for faster design

Once design requirements were defined, Stephen asked the team to submit design concepts within two weeks. The team submitted 10 ideas, selected a winner and got to work. Engineers began by developing a functional prototype, rather than a white paper or analysis. Despite working in an environment often constrained by red tape, the team was focused on reaching tangible outcomes in a short timeframe.

“Several years ago, I took a design thinking course as part of Sandia’s Strategic Engagement Training, where the ‘Build to Think’ methodology that emphasizes creating low-fidelity tangible prototypes, quick iterative learning and user-centric focus, resonated with me. It aligned perfectly with my practice of moving quickly from whiteboard to prototyping,” Stephen said.

To support rapid fabrication of the full-scale vault, the team followed this model-based manufacturing approach. A mechanical engineer on the team developed a solid model, and before the design was complete, the team started working with the fabricator to begin procuring long lead time materials such as the semi-custom vault door and plate stock materials.

Bring in more experts

Engineers from the team traveled to the vendor in the early stages of manufacturing and helped ensure the fabricator had what they needed to be successful and meet schedule. As the model was completed, a build specification document was provided to the manufacturer further defining build requirements that could not be communicated through the model.

In addition to vault structure, the electrical functionality of the prototype was critical to gathering feedback from end users. An electrical engineer, who led the design of the access control system, battery backup, sensing unit and alarm systems, applied additive manufacturing, design reuse and development boards to achieve a functional prototype effort in half the time.

As hardware was completed and shipped to Sandia, the Transportation Safeguards and Surety Program tapped Sandia staff in other areas for fabrication expertise, including sheet metal forming, welding, machining and rapid prototyping skills. The team used large overhead cranes and the biggest forklift at Sandia to meet the demanding time constraints.

Innovation continues

The effort is continuing by building two more full-scale prototypes that expand on the “Build to Think” methodology. These builds were completed with support from the Sea Launched Cruise Missile – Nuclear program. The team has been accepted to participate in the prestigious Grey Flag 25 exercise, a joint DOD exercise to assess and improve the operational readiness of critical hardware, ensuring it can respond to real-world events. The team aims to transfer this capability to industry for larger scale production to support warfighters.

“Executing the Mobile Vault project has been the most rewarding and exciting project I have worked on in my career,” Stephen said. “When we demonstrated the full functionally of the vault to the customer in six months to the day, I went back and checked my emails and almost couldn’t believe that we did it. The drive and passion the team has had for this project is like something I’ve never seen.”