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January 26, 2017 By AMK

GAO ruling lets GSA buy the USDA steak, not the mystery meat

The General Services Administration (GSA) may have just put the first nail in the coffin that eventually will bury the widespread use of lowest-price, technically acceptable (LPTA) contracts for services.

The Government Accountability Office’s decision to deny four protests of GSA’s Alliant 2 contracts for IT services could end up being a landmark ruling that is that first nail.

“Lowest-price technically acceptable has been disfavored among contractors for putting price over innovation. Now we have protesters who in essence claim that cost was only nominally and improperly considered in the Alliant 2 evaluation,” said Barbara Kinosky, managing partner of Centre Law & Consulting LLC. “We have seen DoD move away from LPTA. This is the first major requirement coming out of a civilian agency that is clearly saying, ‘Contractors, we are looking for smart over cheap. Give us the USDA steak, not the convenience store mystery meat.’ I am confident this is a trend we will now see more of since GSA has taken the lead in the technology area where we definitely need to excel.”

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2017/01/gao-ruling-lets-gsa-buy-usda-steak-not-mystery-meat/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Alliant, bid protest, DoD, evaluation criteria, fair and reasonable, GAO, GSA, low bid, lowest cost technically acceptable, lowest price, LPTA, proposal evaluation, quality

November 17, 2016 By AMK

When and when not to accelerate acquisitions

Why don’t we do all our acquisition programs faster? What keeps us from having all acquisition programs be “rapid” acquisitions?  The short answer is that, if we choose to, we can trade quality for time.
Sometimes that is smart, and sometimes it isn’t.
Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.
The author of this article is Frank Kendall, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics.

Often, and for good reasons, we demand high quality, and that takes more time. What I mean by “quality” in this case is the suite of features we want in the equipment intended for a large fraction of the force and that we keep in our inventory for a long time — 30 or 40 years, in many cases. Quality includes high reliability, maintainability, operation in a range of climates and terrains, modularity and upgradability, well-designed user interfaces, cybersecurity, robustness against responsive threats, and effective training and logistics systems. None of these things is free, and they all take time to design for and test.

For most so-called Programs of Record, we do take the time to design and build products of the quality desired by the customers, our operational communities. If you want something quick, it is generally going to be of lower quality — but that may be perfectly fine, depending on what you want. This is the operator’s call; the acquisition system responds to operator requirements. As acquisition professionals, we do want a two-way continuing discussion about requirements throughout the design and development process — and beyond. That conversation is necessary because design and development always involve a voyage of discovery. And because many desired design features have to be traded off against each other and against cost, those trade-offs should be operator/customer decisions, but should still be decisions informed by acquisition professionals.

To do anything, we need money and a contract. There are vehicles that let us spend some money quickly, particularly for early stage prototypes, and there are some contract types that allow us to move out quickly, but they have limitations on scope, purpose, and amount we can spend.  Lead time can be close to zero, or up to 2 years if we have to wait for a budget to be prepared, submitted and funded by Congress. We can work contracting activities (preparation of the request for proposal or even source selection) and milestone review processes (Defense Acquisition Board document preparation, as required) in parallel with the process of getting money — and usually we do so. If we already have the money, then some time is needed to have a contract. Again, for some limited purposes, this can be fast — but for major competitive awards this now takes about 18 months, close to the time it takes us to get funding from Congress. That’s twice the time it used to take a couple of decades ago, and one of the actions we are working is to reduce this lead time.

Experimental Prototyping

If we just want a small number of prototypes for experimental purposes, and we only care about some key features and not the overall quality of the product, we can deliver in a matter of months or a few years, depending on how much new design work has to be done and the lead time for building small numbers of items or acquiring any needed subsystems from the manufacturers in the supply chain. If we want to try out a new kind of capability, to experiment, and don’t care about long-term ownership quality quality-related features, then rapid prototyping is the way to go. We can do this sort of thing fast, and the technical community loves to work on projects like this. However, some quality aspects such as safety must be dealt with when we work with energetics such as munitions and rocket propellants. We can do experimental prototyping without having a program of record, so no acquisition system bureaucracy overhead need be involved in an experimental prototype program. The product you will get from an experimental prototyping program is unlikely to be one you can just replicate and field in large numbers—it wasn’t designed for that. Sometimes we have liked the key features of experimental prototypes and just bought more of them. Because of their poor quality for long-term ownership and use, this has often been a disaster (see Global Hawk and the Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle, as examples).

Assembled Items

Next up on the quality hierarchy are assembled items that focus on one or two key performance parameters that we do want in larger quantities, but where we are willing to sacrifice some aspects of quality in order to have an important operational capability fast, usually for operational reasons or maybe because we’ve been surprised by a threat. Think Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected MRAP (vehicles), which were pulled together from existing automotive components. The goal was to get more protection to the field and to get it fast. MRAPs were a big success. We saved a lot of lives. MRAPs are relatively simple designs assembled from existing components and designed for low-end threats. They lack a lot of the features needed or desired by the Army, however, and almost all of the 30,000 or so we built are going out of the inventory now that the major counterinsurgency campaigns are over.

New Designs

Next on the quality scale are new designs that take into account all the things the customer wants.  These are high-quality products, and they take longer, but that’s because we ask for more of them and have to do more work designing, building and testing. We want integrated designs that have many features desired by the customer (again requirements). Think of the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV).  The JLTV is a much higher-quality product than any of the MRAPs. It will be in the Army inventory for decades, and most of the cost will be in maintenance and sustainment. The Army wants a highly reliable, maintainable design that will operate in a wide variety of terrain and in any climate. This is very different from what we did with MRAPs. JLTV is still a relatively simple design, but it has taken several years to mature the designs and pick a winner. For most of these systems, we do use the standard acquisition system milestones associated with decisions to start risk reduction (if needed), design for production and production itself. When the acquisition system’s set of milestone decisions is needed, we do this in parallel with the actual work so we don’t slow programs down. The decision process adds overhead, but it generally does not add time.

Highest Quality

Highest of all in terms of quality are systems like the F-35 fighter jet. These are designs that integrate the newest technology, have the highest possible performance, and that we count on for a significant, decades-long military advantage. We want quality features like high reliability, maintainability, upgradability for tech insertion, well-designed user interfaces, cybersecurity, anti-tamper, resilience against jamming and responsive threats, and a host of other things our operators understandably desire. These systems are the Formula 1 race cars that are going to win against the best there is and do so for years, not just for one racing season. They are not Chevies. These are our highest quality and most difficult products, but these are also the ones that often make the most difference in terms of technological superiority and operational dominance. They take several years in development, and often we need to do a risk-reduction technology maturation phase before we start designing for production. That adds 3 years or more if we build risk reduction prototypes before we start designing for production. For these systems, you do have to wait about 10 years, but they are what populates most of our force. Think F-18 combat jet, Aegis missile defense, DDG-51 destroyer, the Virginia SSN submarine, F-15 and F-22 fighter jets, C-17 military transport aircraft, AMRAAM air-to-air missile, Abrams tank, Bradley fighting vehicle, Patriot missile, and Apache helicopter. Notably, every one of these high-quality systems struggled to get through development and into production. Most were close to cancellation at some time in their development cycles.

The acquisition system can produce experimental prototypes quickly, but if our customers want a high-quality product that we will have in the inventory in large numbers for a lot of years, that takes longer.  Many of the demonstrations we have funded in the budget are experimental early prototypes. We are effectively buying options to do lower risk follow-on Engineering and Manufacturing Development phases leading to production. The ability to afford those follow-on programs, or even a subset of the concepts we will have demonstrated in the next few years, will be problematic. Unfortunately, the threats we are most worried about are not low-end threats — we are going to need high-quality robust designs.

This article originally appeared in the November-December 2016 Defense AT&L Magazine now available at: http://dau.dodlive.mil/category/defense-atl/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition planning, buying options, cybersecurity, design, DoD, F-35, JLTV, lead time, MRAP, prototyping, quality

July 8, 2016 By AMK

Don’t learn the wrong lessons from rapid acquisition

Our enthusiasm must be tempered by an understanding of the wartime circumstances that made it work and the downsides that were accepted.

Johnathan WongEvery time the Marine Corps sent me back to Operation Iraqi Freedom, new and better equipment awaited: radios, armored vehicles, electronic jammers to foil roadside bombs. It was clear that the rapid acquisition policies created or updated for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars were sending high-performing, technical systems to the battlefield much faster than conventional acquisition could. They helped me do my infantryman’s job better, and helped our force adapt to evolving threats in months rather than years or decades.

Sensibly, policymakers are trying to figure out how rapid acquisition ideas could help the conventional acquisition system perform better. Early this year, the Pentagon enshrined rapid acquisition by including a dedicated section on it in the latest regulations governing acquisition. The Air Force recently announced that it is procuring its new B-21 bomber through its rapid capabilities office, and the Navy is setting up a similar office to speed up acquisitions.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2016/06/dont-learn-wrong-lessons-rapid-acquisition/129332

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Afghanistan, Air Force, DoD, Iraq, Marine Corps, Marines, MRAP, quality, rapid acquisition, testing, transparency

February 16, 2016 By AMK

No agility without stability in acquisition reform

In early January, the House Armed Services Committee held a hearing to gather suggestions for reducing acquisition cycle times through experimentation and prototyping.

Their hopes for increasing agility were delivered in testimony from three armed-forces acquisition leaders: Lt. Gen. Michael E. Williamson, Army Director for Acquisition Career Management; Mr. Sean J. Stackley, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development & Acquisition; Mr. Richard Lombardi, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition.

5 Key Elements of the Acquisition Process

The embrace of prototyping is a smart move and echoes other approaches to increase agility by the federal government, the private sector and other public sector organizations. Innovators such as Google have adopted and adapted prototyping to their innovation efforts to increase success of project and program outcomes in a process Google calls “pretotyping” which is now appearing in many industries globally.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/management/blog/2016/02/03/no-agility-without-stability-acquisition-reform/79761480/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition reform, acquisition strategy, acquisition workforce, agile, collaboration, competition, NDAA, procurement reform, project management, prototyping, quality

January 8, 2016 By AMK

Shared services save money, with one caveat

Interagency pooling of routine purchases under the rubric of shared services saves money and improves quality, according to a survey of 300 public and private-sector organizations, newly published in a trio of reports from Deloitte and the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service.

Acquisition Shared ServicesMore than 90 percent of those interviewed about shared services saw cost reductions from the practice and 70 percent witnessed sharper service, according to the researchers, who surveyed acquisition officials in government concentrated in six agencies.

The reports reinforce the Obama administration’s move this October to create a new centralized body to coordinate shared services at the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration. That is projected to save $1 billion over the next decade.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/12/shared-services-save-money-one-caveat/124638/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: acquisition reform, GSA, OMB, procurement reform, quality, shared services

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