Operations 2013 Brief

Introduction

See Executive Director's Statement for an overview of a 9 year critical path.

See also this video to Shuttleworth Foundation, our main funder as of 2/2013.

OSE Project Outline 2012-2013. from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

Infrastructure

Built Environment

We currently have a 4000 sf workshop and a 3000 sf living unit (HabLab) for 10 people. The workshop features 20 kW of inverter power at 240V, 10kW of inverter power at 120V, a welder generator (8kW), and a PTO generator (20kW). These have been built using our Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) press. We also have 2 natural buildings in 'livable' condition with a stove in each. Further, we have a 6 year old greenhouse and 5 year old original workshop, "Old Workshop".

Utilities

We are an off-grid facility. We have a 1000W solar panel system with a 1000AH battery in the Old Workshop. We have a 500AH, 72V battery bank powering the main workshop. We power the main workshop with a 2kW Honda gasoline generator.

We have 2 shallow wells, one a 4" diameter well at 20' depth and another 42" wide bore well at 35 deep. The latter was dug in 2012 and has a storage capacity of about 1000 gallons reserve and a recharge rate of about 1-2 gallons/minute. We also have rooftop catchment from the greenhouse, about 800 gallons in interconnected 55 gallon drums.

Our current grid connection includes municipal water and 2 fast internet lines (4M each).

Agriculture

We have a 300 tree orchard and 27 acres of space total. We have a dozen or so chickens, and 4 grafted walnuts in our treeline. There is no production agriculture occurring today.

Roads

We have a gravel road going to the house and workshop, and our frontage on the south side is a gravel road.

Infrastructure Needs

Site Cleanup

Since the site began in 2006, it has been under construction. Since we have stabilized our main working infasturcture - house and workshop - we are in need of a 7-year 'spring cleaning.'

Staff Housing Plans

We are planning to build 4 staff housing studios - away from the working/living area for privacy. This is intended to address the much called-for separation of work and living areas for staff.

Utility Improvements

Grid

We are currently considering an underground electrical grid connection to address off-grid power instabilities. While we found that we can run 4 welders to complete machine builds successfully in 1 day with our off-grid capacity, careful power management is required to do this.

Biogas

We are considering a biogas electric system fueled by grass clippings as our first step to off-grid industrial-scale power. This is proven technology, and we have access to expertise to help us deploy this on the 1 kW continuous scale.

Improvements to Existing Structures

Workshop

The workshop needs additional shelving to be installed and general organization/labeling for easy access to tools, and the ridge cap needs to be mounted. Stuccoing has to be finished on the remaining exterior half.

Living Units

The HabLab requires addition of proper shading for the summer, addition of air circulation for the long-wood stove, and installation of a hydronic heating system for the 4 disconnected rooms of the house. There are finishing details required, such as fixing several nonfunctioning power outlets, finishing stuccoing 2 inside walls, and adding a thermal enclosure/break for the front door.

Natural Buildings

The natural homes are in rough living conditions, but they can be finished on the inside to make them airtight, bug-tight, and dust-free. The stoves work, so these may be used comfortably year-round.

Waterworks

While the 1000 gallon wide-radius well has been dug, the 240V- 1/4 hp submersible pump, electrical connection, and pressure tank system for this well remain to be installed. The 4" diamater shallow well currently has a 24VDC submersible pump, but this well ran dry last season (it was a drought, and we don't know if it runs dry every year).

Erosion Stabilization

We plan on digging a 1/2-1 acre pond for water capture, and berms need to be installed throughout the sloped areas.

Organization

Structuring

Organizational Form

We are currently incorporated as a nonprofit organization in Missouri, and we intend to add a production branch to our operations to provide bootstrap funding to the nonprofit research and development. We are currently under 501(c)3 fiscal sponsorship by the Terra Foundation of California.

Financial

We are currently missing financial/legal audit compliance. We are installing book-keeping, accounting, payroll, and audit compliance systems. We need to acquire site and D&O insurance. We do not have any benefit programs for staff and hires.

Legal

We currently do not retain any legal services, but have access to legal advice through Shuttleworth Foundation.

Executive Team

We have the Executive Director only (Marcin), and we are Currently Recruiting an Operations Manager, Product Lead, Community Manager, and Documentation Manager. Our proposed Org Chart is here.

Resource Development

After organizational structuring for audit compliance and attractiveness to funders, we aim to install resource development to get us to the million-dollar scale in money raised.

Development

Video Production

We will be working with local and remote video editors to deliver a regular video production schedule for instructionals and information videos. We have offers for video production with H2 channel and others which we are considering pending delivery of certain milestones.

Design

One route of producing machine designs for the GVCS is to hire dedicated machine designers on a contractual basis. Public requests-for-bids may be used. Effective contract negotiation of clear specifications is required, and scopes of work must be clear to mitigate risk.

Collaborative Design and Hackathons

The main part of our work for 2013 is design and build of the GVCS machines.We are developing methodology to host effective hackathons as a rapid design platform to match our recent achievement of 1-day production runs of Collaborative Production.

Collaborative Production

Collaborative Production is our rapid, 1-day build method for machines. The production run typically achieves the 1 day time frame via module-based machine design - which allows for multiple parts of the machine to be built at one time) and IKEA-like fabrication diagrams - which are a culmination of an extensive CAD design and documentation preparation period.

Documentation

Documentation is the key deliverable in our program, as it allows for replication by others. We are developing standards for effective documentation, and we are working with the greater OSHW community on broad adoption of standard documentation protocols.

Production

Economic significance of our machines is one of our key tangible outputs. We are building and disseminating for-profit production of machines via our practice of Distributive Enterprise. To do this, we will recruit a production manager.

Expansion

We are currently developing a New York City branch of OSE for design and development work on the GVCS, while retaining Factor e Farm as the test bed for our machines.