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The Square Kilometre Array (SKA), with its geographically distributed telescopes in Australia and South Africa, faces unique challenges in achieving and maintaining high availability. This paper explores how Engineering Management plays a critical role in overcoming these challenges in remote environments. Meeting ambitious availability targets is impacting design, investment, and ongoing costs. Precursor telescope data informs reliability and maintenance strategies, while a digital twin concept is introduced for proactive decision-making. Extreme temperatures necessitate meticulous design considerations, and remote operation demands a non-traditional, precisely organized maintenance model with optimized staffing. Cost-effectiveness and technological currency are key drivers, achieved through integrating Reliability Availability and Maintainability (RAM) analysis with logistics and configuration management. This paper discusses the challenges of ensuring high availability of remote telescopes located in Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) sensitive area.
Cornelius Taljaard (Thu,) studied this question.