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| PRESS RELEASE - Technomics Analysts Provide Five Presentations at DoDCAS |
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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Technomics Analysts Provide Five Presentations at DoDCAS
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Williamsburg VA - February 2009 Technomics’ employees made five presentations at the 42nd annual Department of Defense Cost Analysis Symposium, held Feb. 18-20 in Williamsburg, Va. The annual theme was, “Improving Acquisition Outcomes.” The four concurrent sessions that ran at the symposium were: Improving Acquisition Outcomes; Acquisition Cost Estimation; Life Cycle Cost Estimation; and Software Cost Estimation.
The presentations covered an eclectic group of topics and included:
Simple Parametric Model for Estimating Development (RDT&E) Cost for Large-Scale Systems was presented by Paul Hardin, Bob Jones and Anna Irvine. Irvine provided the following synopsis of the presentation:
“This paper summarizes OSD sponsored research regarding the development and implementation of a simple approach for estimating RDT&E cost. The approach is based on the systems engineering analysis data that is resident in system architecture products. The approach uses authoritative data that is normally available for ACAT I, II, and III programs, i.e., Information Support Plans (ISP), Department of Defense Architecture Framework (DoDAF) views, Selected Acquisition Reports (SARs), and Budget Exhibits.
The paper addresses the concept of interdependence and the architecture products, i.e., Nodes and Links, which capture the effects of interdependence. It describes the Nodes and Links modeling taxonomy, the selection of DoDAF views which provide the required data, the extraction of data, and the validation process used to insure data consistency. The initial relationships of Nodes and Links to RDT&E cost are demonstrated. The concept of equivalent Nodes or Links, i.e., eNode and eLink, is presented. Finally, the improved relationships provided by eNodes and eLinks versus RDT&E cost are shown."
Initial Results Building a Normalized Software Database using Software Resource Data Reports (SRDRS) was presented by Mike Gallo. Gallo's abstract follows:
“The SRDR provides DoD cost analysts with a primary source of comprehensive, objective, and model-independent sizing, effort and schedule data on large DoD software programs. The SRDR does not rely on rigid, standardized data fields for collecting software effort and sizing information (a feature advocated by Government, industry, and academia during the design of the SRDR). This flexibility lessens the reporting burden placed on industry and reduces ‘data synthesis’ errors.
Consequently, this flexibility creates the need for developing and using sound techniques for analyzing and interpreting, and ultimately normalizing data from multiple DoD weapon system contractors, each of whom use different terms and definitions for software sizing and effort. This need for sound techniques to normalize software data from multiple developers will become more critical as the amount of data available to DoD analysts from SRDRs grows over the next decade. Analysts must properly analyze, interpret, and, ultimately, normalize the data before drawing any ‘industry-average’ conclusions such as average productivity.
This presentation updates our investigation for the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army - Cost and Economics on the methods and techniques for building a normalized software database. We used SRDRs, supplemented with data separately collected for the Army. We believe these techniques discussed in this presentation can serve as a basis of best practices for analyzing SRDR data (and other data collected separately) in the future.”
A New Era in DoD Acquisition Competition was presented by Technomics CEO Rick Collins and Senior Cost Analysts Jim York and Mike Beltramo. Collins synopsis of the presentation follows:
“As George Santayana noted in 1905, ‘Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.’ Beginning in the late 1960's and continuing through the 1980's the DOD cost analysis community published a wide variety of studies and analyses that sought to quantitatively and qualitatively assess the impact of competition in defense acquisition. With the recent interest in competitive procurement, the OSD CAIG has initiated a contract effort to compile, review and highlight the salient aspects of these studies/analyses and extract the underlying historical data. The primary objective of this ongoing effort being performed by Technomics, Inc. is to create the authoritative source of past work that DOD cost analysts can employ in understanding past competitive acquisition programs and advising acquisition decision makers on current and future programs. OSD CAIG experience indicates that, quite often, acquisition program proponents make unsubstantiated claims regarding the ‘savings’ accruing to weapon system program competitions. This contract effort should provide cost analysts and other acquisition program stakeholders with the definitive compendium of information required to understand what happened in the past and what could/should happen in the future. In short, the intent is to facilitate more informed acquisition decision making.
Technomics, with the assistance of several DoD organizations, has collected, reviewed and summarized more than 200 studies related to competition. The presentation will discuss:
• Competitive approaches that have been taken during development (e.g., competing prototypes funded by DOD as well as COTS programs).
• Means of establishing alternative production sources (e.g., form, fit and function (F3) design, build to print or technical assistance from initial source to second source)
• Types of production competition (e.g., split buy or winner-take-all)
• Ground rules for assessing the effects of competition on cost.
• Factors that have often not been considered in analyses of competitive benefits (e.g., added non-recurring costs (both government and contractor) of establishing a second source)."
Cost Reporting for Contractor Logistics Support Contracts was presented by Rick Collins, Technomics CEO and Jim York, Senior Cost Analyst. The following is York's abstract:
“This presentation describes an ongoing initiative to systematically collect cost data and explanatory metrics for weapons systems sustained through a Performance Based Logisitics (PBL) or some other Contractor Logistics Support (CLS) approach. The ongoing evolution from organic-to-contractor sustainment systems has generated a demand on the part of the DOD cost analysis community, as well as the contracting and logistics communities, for data that will facilitate understanding and management of weapon systems operating and support (O&S) costs incurred by industry. This initiative is intended to satisfy this demand and the data collected will supplement the Service’s robust Visibility and Management of Operating and Support Cost (VAMOSC) repositories of cost data for systems that are principally organically sustained.
The initiative has been conducted in two phases. The first phase was conducted by the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) and jointly sponsored by the Office of the Director, Program Analysis and Evaluation (OD/PA&E) and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics (OUSD(AT&L)). The ongoing, second phase of this initiative is being conducted by Technomics, Inc. under contract to OD/PA&E. "
Integrating Performance and Schedule Analysis with Acquisition Costing was presented by John Horak, Technomics Vice President. Horak provided the following synopsis of the presentation,
““DoD cost organizations are increasingly interested in developing tools that integrate system engineering, schedule analysis and system of systems integration and test with acquisition cost estimating methodologies. Tools that integrate engineering, schedule analysis and integration and test with cost can 1) support the identification of affordable designs, 2) identify realistic program schedules and funding profiles early-on in the design process, and 3) better address the cost implications of the growing number of large complex system of systems. Technomics has developed for DoD cost organizations various types of cost methodologies, systems engineering relationships, schedule estimating relationships (SERs) and system of system integration & test cost methodologies and is currently integrating many of these analyses in support of its DoD customers.
Cost methodologies that can be linked to systems engineering analysis can support trade analyses that help identify affordable system designs by trading-off requirements and system costs. Mission requirements with key design parameters are used to calculate the range of the sensor. By inputting design parameters combinations and mission requirements into sensor range equations, sensor performance can be calculated. These same design parameters can be put into cost equations that yield hardware, NRE and support costs of the sensor development. A cost effective design can be synthesized using various design parameters that meet the mission requirements (e.g. range) and choosing the design set with minimum cost. Technomics has developed engineering linkage relationships for a variety of EO/IR/RF and laser sensors, integrating them into cost-engineering models on the Air Force’s SBIR efforts.
The designs that are synthesized in the system engineering analysis and meet program cost objectives can be tied to development schedules where duration, level of expenditures and major schedule milestones can be estimated. SERs have been developed for various types of EO/IR/RF sensors estimating the length of development, the level of expenditures (i.e. funding profile) and major schedule milestones based on technical characteristics of the sensor design and program type. These SERs estimate schedules and their characteristics but also indirectly produce a second program cost estimate. Technomics is currently developing SERs for ground-based radars for the Air Force Cost Analysis Agency (AFCAA).
The engineering design synthesis and schedule estimation process can be performed for a variety of sensor types. In order to estimate increasingly prevalent large complex systems where individual sensors are integrated together in a system of systems multiple levels of integration and test need to be addressed. In many of these large complex programs, sensors are developed by a group of contractors and then integrated maybe several times into a larger system. For Future Combat System C4ISR, the integration and test process consists of sensor integration, sensor suite integration, platform integration and system integration. Technomics has developed for DASA-CE a set of CERs that estimate many types of integration and test costs based on the number and types of sensors integrated and program type. "
About Technomics, Inc.: Technomics is an employee-owned consulting company with a strong foundation in weapons systems cost estimating and research. The company has grown consistently over the past decade and has offices in Virginia and California.
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Contact Information:
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Cathy Ferguson
cferguson@technomics.net
571.366.1437
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Technomics, Inc.
201 12th Street South, Suite 612
Arlington, Virginia 22202
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Legal: All content (c) 2001-2009 Technomics, Inc. This material may not be reproduced without express written consent from Technomics, Inc. You may not modify, publish, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, reproduce, create derivative works from, distribute, display, remove the copyright or trade mark notice from any copies of the downloaded material or in any way exploit all or any part of the downloaded material (including use as part of any library, archive or similar service) without prior written permission from Technomics, Inc.
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