rapid prototyping | The Contracting Education Academy

November 13, 2020 By cs

Army awards 10 prototyping contracts under small business pilot program

The U.S. Army is using a special topics pilot program to shorten the life cycle of military technology development.

The U.S. Army selected 10 projects addressing military technology gaps for prototyping under a small business pilot program meant to speed the development life cycle, according to a press release.

The awards were made using an Army Small Business Technology Transfer, or STTR, pilot program, according to the Nov. 5 announcement. The 10 projects from nine small businesses and partner research institutions were selected from a pool of 22 proposals.

Most of the projects address the Army’s network modernization priority and cover seven special topic areas including position navigation and timing, or PNT, without GPS, edge sensor processing, and interference and jamming of high frequency radios.

The prototyping is the second phase in a three-step pilot program for identifying and addressing warfighter technology gaps that requires small businesses to partner with research institutions like universities or nonprofits, according to the statement. The pilot is meant to get new technology solutions in the hands of warfighters faster, according to a broad agency announcement outlining the program.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/it-modernization/2020/11/army-awards-10-prototyping-contracts-under-small-business-pilot-program/169898/

May 12, 2020 By cs

Cyber and other transaction agreements

Rapid acquisitions for prototypes and experimental technology will be subject to the Defense Department’s unified cybersecurity standard, according to Katie Arrington, DoD’s chief information security officer for acquisition.

Arrington said DoD’s upcoming implementation of its Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification will apply to other transaction agreements — a rapid contract mechanism frequently used to help develop and field prototypes.

“In an OTA, in the technical specs, they can actually call it out and say what they want,” said Arrington during an April 29 NextGov webinar on CMMC.

OTAs are meant to speed the government buying process and allow DoD to buy new capabilities faster by allowing officials to sidestep competitive bidding in certain cases. But there’s ample worry of potential overuse, which could invite congressional scrutiny.

Arrington’s comments come as DoD has begun pushing for the use of OTAs to find and execute on solutions that can help treat or prevent the spread of coronavirus. Ellen Lord, DoD’s acquisition chief, issued a memo in early April to ease the OTA process by delegating contracting authorities to heads of agencies and combatant commanders during the pandemic.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2020/04/30/cmmc-ota-cyber-williams.aspx

The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech has established a webpage where all contract-related developments related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are summarized. Find the page at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/coronavirus-information-for-contracting-officers-and-contractors/

April 8, 2020 By cs

What are prototypes?

There is considerable excitement, interest, attention, angst and what have you in Department of Defense (DoD) Acquisitions about new programs’ use of prototypes, prototyping, and rapid prototyping.

In June 1940, with World War II on the horizon, the U.S. Army solicited bids from 135 automakers for a 1/4 ton “light reconnaissance vehicle” tailored to Army specifications. Only three companies responded — Bantam, Willys, and Ford — but, within a year’s time they collectively produced the template for the vehicle known worldwide as the “jeep.” — Source: Jeep.com

There also are some serious workforce misconceptions about what prototypes are and, most important, what they are not. Let us provide some context and expectation management about prototyping and prototypes as increasingly employed in early program stages.

Prototyping Defense Systems

The concept of prototyping defense systems is not new. The Army required delivery of prototype vehicles (called Pilot Models prior to World War II) for a competition that eventually resulted in the venerable “Jeep” vehicle. The prototypes delivered for that program in 1940 — the “1/4 ton, 4×4 utility trucks” — bear only a general resemblance to the Willys MBs and Ford GPWs that were mass-produced as the standard Jeep design during the war. There were significant requirements changes (such as vehicle weight) and redesigning to move the Pilot Models to a producible wartime configuration. Fast forward to a more recent example, the Advanced Tactical Fighter (ATF) program also required delivery of two prototype aircraft from each competitor for a fly-off to decide the winner. Those two prototype aircraft, the YF-22 and YF-23, were evaluated by the Air Force and the YF-22 team was selected and proceeded to design and deliver the present-day F-22A.

So then what exactly is a prototype? Is the Bantam Reconnaissance Car the same as a Jeep, or the YF-22 the same as an F-22A? Not exactly. Prototyping is a part — but not the end state — of the design process. A prototype, or “first type” is the preliminary type, form, or instance of a system or system element that serves as a model for what comes later. Contractors, industry, and research organizations develop prototypes for many reasons. Prototypes are used to reduce technical risk, validate designs or cost estimates, evaluate manufacturing processes, refine requirements, or even explore new operational concepts. Risk reduction prototypes materially decrease Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) risk at an acceptable cost. They can be a system such as the YF-22, or can focus on subsystems or components.

Prototypes may not, and in most cases, do not, have all the features or capabilities of the fully designed system. They may not need to have all the features of the final system. Predominantly they are used to demonstrate the ability to achieve certain critical performance parameters, validate computer models or explore improved manufacturing processes. Prototypes are viewed as only a “temporary” step or to serve a specific purpose in the full design process. After they are fabricated, the design process continues evolving until the completed system is verified. Competitive prototypes are produced by two or more companies or teams competing for a contract award. The enduring problem with competitive prototypes, as many industry officials and financial analysts see it, is that the companies are required to spend huge sums of money upfront without any guarantees that they will be able to recoup their investments. So when they explore prototyping, companies limit their work to fabricating a system with the key features necessary to win a contract to proceed to the next acquisition phase.

Pre-Prototyping

Considerable design work is required before a prototype can even be constructed. The systems engineering process already is fully under way: Requirements generation and analysis, architecture design, functional baseline determinations — all must be done before even a prototype design can be communicated to a group that will fabricate the prototype. This process involves in-depth modeling and simulation in particular or what we now refer to as Digital Engineering. Design changes, particularly to facilitate manufacturing, are a normal outgrowth of the prototyping process. Prototypes basically are things you learn from, not things you go to war with.

In the case of the ATF, the Air Force wanted demonstration of some key features through the prototype delivery and subsequent flight evaluations. Those features were stealth, super-cruise (ability to fly above Mach 1 without using an afterburner), maneuverability, handling qualities, and the ability to serve as test-beds for two different prototype engines. Conversely, there were many features that the prototype ATFs were not demonstrating, such as avionics maturity. These first aircraft were constructed with only enough avionics to ensure safety of flight. They did not incorporate fully mature and integrated avionics, but they didn’t need to do so at that point in the design process. The prototypes delivered to the Air Force were sufficient, as intended, for selecting a design team to proceed into EMD.

Small Subsystems

How does prototyping actually work in practice for smaller subsystems? During my private-sector university research days, I led a team working on a design for a small internal-combustion engine for an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that would run on so-called “heavy fuel” or JP-8. The Army was looking for a heavy-fuel engine to replace the 38-horsepower (hp) gasoline power plant on the Shadow UAV. Under a grant from the Army Research Lab, my research team set about to find such an engine—or see if one could be modified to meet the Army requirements.

When no suitable off-the-shelf replacement engine could be found, we partnered with a small company that had an idea for converting small internal combustion engines from operating on gasoline to heavy fuel but had not yet proven the concept. The initial phase of our research was focused on the key Army requirement of demonstrating heavy fuel operation on an engine in the same power class as the existing engine. We selected an existing 20-hp, two-cylinder aircraft engine that we felt was adequate to use as a prototype testbed to validate the company’s conversion process from gasoline to JP-8. If that initial demonstration succeeded, we planned to scale up the conversion to a larger, four-cylinder prototype version. The conversion parts were designed, fabricated, and installed on the 20-hp version at the same time an engine test stand/test cell was developed and constructed. My team demonstrated JP-8 heavy fuel operation on the 20-hp engine using the conversion design. We then migrated the concept to the four-cylinder, 40-hp prototype and again validated the heavy fuel operation and sufficient engine power for this to be considered as a suitable candidate replacement for the existing Shadow engine.

Although the two prototyping efforts were successful in the two key areas that the Army focused on, there were many other important design features and requirements we were not then able to explore during this early risk-reduction prototyping phase of the program. For example, while operating our test engines, our team experienced the difficulty of trying to tune four independent carburetors on the cylinders and began conceptual design of a fuel injection system that would replace the carburetors.

Limitations

There were other limitations to what we could do with our prototypes. During further engine testing we experienced a failure of the main engine bearings due to the different orientation of the engine on a UAV versus a manned aircraft. We had no opportunity to do any detailed platform integration or installed performance testing with the Shadow itself, which would be an important next step after demonstrating the stand-alone engine performance. Important design considerations such as engine aerodynamic cooling, low-temperature or high-altitude performance could not be tested in our test cell.

We did not do any characterization of the acoustic or infrared signature of the modified engine. During testing, we realized extra warm-up and start time would be required by the use of heavy fuel intended for turbine or compression-ignition engines. Although we were able to achieve the required engine operation time to pass a Federal Aviation Administration qualification test specified by the Army, there was no opportunity to evaluate the long-term reliability and maintainability of the engine and propeller in field conditions. Also no consideration was given to production of the future engine or eventual unit cost.

None of these system features and attributes were settled through the early prototyping, nor was that intended. Instead these requirements could be characterized or optimized only by system-level platform integration and a complete design and verification process. Our engine prototypes did their job as intended — they demonstrated key system capabilities — but they were only an intermediate step to a final design. The prototypes as we operated them would never be accepted as the configuration of the completed engine design. They were truly the first of their type, and much more work lay ahead.

Early Decision-Making

So what are the full-up system articles used for development test and verification at the end of EMD? They are not, in the true sense, “prototypes.” They are, in fact, full-up test articles that have all the features of the system design, but may not necessarily be made using mature production processes. These systems go by several names: qualification test articles, first articles, engineering development models, or EMD test articles. They are much more than prototypes and calling them that is a bit of a misnomer. As shown with previous examples, prototypes were used to demonstrate some, but not all, system requirements. In contrast, these EMD test articles must, by definition, meet all the requirements of the specification(s) in order to verify the final system design. In a perfect world, they would be made on the same line as the production articles, but they need not be. The key condition is that they need to work like production articles to be verified against the specification. The next step after verification is the fabrication of Low Rate Initial Production articles to be used for operational test. Those must, also by definition, be production representative.

Prototyping and competitive prototyping are very useful tools in design and acquisition, particularly for early decision making, but there are many other tools in the system-development process.

The author of this article, which first appeared in the March-April issue of Defense Acquisition magazine, is Brian Duddy, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, now a professor of Program Management at the Defense Acquisition University, where he teaches Program Management and Systems Engineering. The author can be contacted at Brian.Duddy@dau.edu.

April 1, 2020 By cs

Today’s complexities demand more chefs, fewer cooks

If you’re a cook, you had better become a chef!

Do you know the difference?

A cook can follow a recipe and prepare a nice meal, but a chef can take a variety of wide-ranging ingredients, understand how they complement each other, and create a gourmet feast.

Have you ever watched “Chopped” on the Food Network? Each chef contestant is given a basket of eclectic ingredients and a challenging schedule to fix an epicurean dish that their customers, the judges, will fawn over.

Sound familiar? We live in an increasingly complex acquisition world where just following a Department of Defense Instruction (DoDI) 5000.02 recipe will not suffice to provide your customer, the Warfighter, with the “dish” needed for success. For example, if you were to have taken the Defense Acquisition University’s Intermediate Systems Acquisition course 10 years ago, you would have been shown a single, phased-approach model, the Defense Acquisition Management System (shown below in Figure 1).

Five years later, with a recognition that software is developed and procured differently than hardware, DoDI 5000.02’s refresh would have exposed you to six different models, a combination of hardware and software-dominant paths. An appreciation that the break between phases is not a smooth process led to the revamping of the hardware model, as well (Figure 2).

Today, our acquisition world’s complexity has expanded even more, recognizing that different situations require different urgencies, tools, and solutions. This has resulted in the Adaptive Acquisition Framework, whose latest draft includes the 2019 DoDI 5000.02 process as only one of the six potential paths to acquiring the best Warfighter solution (Figure 3).

You need to become a chef! Gone are the days of being able to simply follow the prescribed Milestone A, B, C recipe. But how to make the change? First, you need to understand the circumstances presented to you. What is the “speed of relevance” for your program? How flexible and/or stable are the requirements? Have you established an enduring conversation with your customer to discuss requirements options? Then you will need to apply a thorough understanding of the major ingredients that will spell success or failure for any program. What are they? Let me suggest the following as a start.

Acquisition Pathway

Where does your effort fit into the new Adaptive Acquisition Framework? Are you trying to exploit some new innovative technology and provide the Warfighter with residual operational capabilities? Explore the Middle-Tier Acquisition (MTA) Rapid Prototyping path. Is there some proven technology, perhaps exploiting a commercial use, that you can produce quickly and field within 5 years? If so, then, MTA’s Rapid Fielding path might be right for you. Is software the major acquisition product, perhaps an upgrade to a command and control product? Why not follow the Software Acquisition path? Of course, there is nothing evil about the traditional Major Capability Acquisition path, which can and should be tailored to meet your specific needs. But it is crucial that you understand the requirements and benefits, along with the risks, of taking these different acquisition pathways, and then choose the pathway most appropriate for your program.

Contracting Strategy

Congress recently expanded some tools for finding and getting the right defense industry contractor on-board for our programs. Beyond traditional contracting vehicles based on the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Other Transactions (OTs), and Commercial Solutions Openings (CSOs) have provided some great additional options. Are they right for your program? Does your program meet the Three Ps of OTs — purpose, prototype, and participation? Many of your colleagues have embraced these contract vehicles, as evidenced by a rapid increase in OT use over the past several years. However, beware of statements that imply one contract vehicle is superior to all others. Some dishes need salt, and some need sugar. Just because both flavorings are white granular substances doesn’t mean it is appropriate to use them interchangeably. A good understanding of contract strategy differences can mean the difference between success and failure. If risk is too high and you’ve demanded a fixed price contract, industry proposals will reflect that. In such a case, you can likely gain flexibility and save money using a cost-reimbursable vehicle. You can often save time using an OT, but not always. The experts say that if you’re using OTs for the sole purpose of saving time, don’t! Always remember the reason you choose a particular contracting vehicle is to properly incentivize the contractor to provide your end users with the product they need, when they need it.

Funding Strategy

How will you get the money to run your program? Beyond the traditional Planning, Programming, Budgeting and Execution (PPBE) system that requires 2 years of foresight for acquiring funds, are there other sources of more immediate funding? Are you aware that the DoD has a Rapid Prototyping Fund administered by the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering? Could that bridge the 2-year gap between a great technological opportunity now and establishing your long-term funding line through PPBE? If you can go faster via additional funds, have you explored getting on your service’s Unfunded Requirements List or pursued Reprogramming Requests? You need a thorough grasp of all of your options to get the required money, in the right appropriations, at the right time. Depending on your total budget, you will have a variety of reporting and accountability requirements. Have you accounted for those in your timelines? Can they be waived, when appropriate? Understanding your program deeply enough to predict the funds needed, in the appropriations category needed, will allow your team to ensure the money is available in time.

System Engineering, Metrics, and Risk/Opportunity Management

What is your path to getting the technical solution to work? Are you prototyping the hard stuff first — i.e., “the quickest path to failure,” as Dr. Bruce Jette, the Army’s Acquisition Executive would say. One of the most important system engineering tasks is to develop and maintain a rigorous risk and opportunity management plan. With today’s need for products to be delivered at the speed of relevance, it is essential that your team thoroughly recognizes the risks facing the proposed solution. How can those risks be mitigated? Will they be assumed, transferred, controlled, or avoided? And don’t forget about opportunities. Are any available that would increase speed or performance? What resources are needed to enable pursuit of those opportunities?

This risk/opportunity management plan is not to be built and put on a shelf, but to serve as a steady guide as the product matures. If your product is software, do you understand the Risk Management Framework and how to best exploit its virtues to improve your software product? Is agile software development the right methodology for getting your software matured and in the users’ hands? If not, why not? A good strategy for developing the technical solution for the warfighter’s requirement is essential to your program’s success.

Integrated Testing

Employing a collaborative effort with the warfighter and tester, have you established a test and evaluation plan to ensure that your product meets that customer’s needs? What type of testing does your product and chosen acquisition path demand? A program manager’s worst nightmare is to contract for a product and successfully execute that product, only for the warfighter or tester to find it inadequate. If you follow a rapid prototyping pathway, you should engage in a test-learn-fix-test approach with multiple user test points in a series of small, targeted events, while maximizing modeling and simulation to increase your speed. A Test and Evaluation Master Plan will be required for the traditional Major Capability Acquisition approach; however, you should tailor it to increase testing’s influence on your development efforts. Like many of the functional offices, these vital activities can appear to program managers as impediments. However, they serve a vital role. Engaging with them early and developing a common understanding of schedule and technical requirements can foster an environment of mutual support toward the common goal of getting war-winning technology faster into the hands of the warfighters. Still, you also need to ensure that it stays in their hands. So, it is crucial that you track sustainment and producibility, starting early in the design process.

Sustainment and Producibility

One of the potential pitfalls of the rapid prototyping path could be the neglect of production and sustainment costs in the effort to ensure that the product reaches residual operational capability within the 5-year window dictated by Congress. Studies have shown that, by the time the Preliminary Design Review is conducted, approximately 80 percent of the program’s life-cycle cost (LCC) is determined, even though only a small percentage of the program’s cumulative costs has been spent. This early design work is the place where the team has the best opportunity to impact LCC. By the time of the Critical Design Review, the LCC commitment is approximately 90 percent (Figure 4).

Production, logistics, and other considerations must be exhaustively understood and prioritized early or your program could easily become unaffordable. Prototyping emphasizes an experimental philosophy in order to get innovative technology to work. Without a strong program manager emphasis, there is little incentive to focus on future LCC drivers — i.e., production, operations, and support. Also, award fee contracts, which allow for profit margins to be influenced subjectively, and to include consideration of items such as affordability and sustainability, are highly discouraged. This may dissuade the government/contractor team from paying much heed to these longer-term factors. Like a chef who has visualized the flavor and presentation of the final dish early in the cooking process, your team must emphasize sustainment and producibility early in the design process to ensure that the final product is technologically superior, producible, and affordably sustainable.

As a former senior manager of manufacturing at one of our industry partners, which produced the interiors of the canceled VH-71 Presidential Helicopter, I can testify how early design decisions can subvert manufacturing’s ability to produce an affordable product.

Yes, a number of other factors must be decided on, managed, and tracked in order to produce a successful product for our warriors. Your team cannot forget to ensure the myriad other elements—such as environment, safety, and occupational health, spectrum certification, airworthiness, unique identifiers, energy policy, etc.—that must all be addressed for the program to succeed. However, the thorough understanding and vetting the above six major ingredients will allow you to master the complexities of today’s acquisition world. With that mastery, you will no longer feel the need to open up the DoDI 5000.02 cookbook to find the recipe for creating a good product. Instead, when you open up the basket of ingredients that the requirements and acquisition community has handed you, you’ll be able to create a gourmet, masterful acquisition strategy. Bon Appétit!

David Riel is the author of this article, first published in the March-April 2020 issue of Defense Acquisition magazine. Riel is professor of Acquisition Management at the Defense Acquisition University in Kettering, Ohio. He formerly had a 20-year career with the U.S. Air Force, including work with industry. The author can be contacted at David.RIel@dau.edu.

January 24, 2020 By cs

Leaning forward into the new year

In this article, originally published in the Jan.-Feb. 2020 issue of Defense Acquisition magazine, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition & Sustainment Ellen Lord talks about her reorganized department’s quest to use innovative techniques to expeditiously and cost-effectively deliver the goods and services needed by U.S. warfighters.

A new year has begun for our team. We continue using the momentum built thus far to propel us forward. Take a look at where we have come from. On Feb. 1, 2018, we stood up the new Acquisition and Sustainment (A&S) organization as mandated by Congress — and on Sept. 4, 2018, we had our first official day as a reorganized department. Of course, we used this opportunity to better shape our organization and acquisition system to meet the demands of the 21st century. Even while leadership has changed, our mission endures: Enable the Delivery and Sustainment of Secure and Resilient Capabilities to the Warfighter and Internal Partners Quickly and Cost Effectively. Our National Defense Strategy was instrumental as we built departmental norms and strategy.

A&S employees at all levels are driving the organization forward together, full speed ahead with several significant projects.

Adaptive Acquisition Framework

For starters, the Adaptive Acquisition Framework has been introduced, along with a rewrite of what had become a cumbersome document, the Department of Defense (DoD) Instruction 5000 Series. This way forward removes a longstanding system of bureaucracy and red tape by turning the procurement process into one that empowers users to be creative decision makers and problem solvers. The acquisition workforce will choose between a set of established pathways and timelines — specifically designed for a diversity of purchases — requiring different levels of urgency. Using the new policy, acquisition professionals will be given autonomy, within legal parameters, to churn up tailored solutions. All of these revisions should allow for DoD partnerships with commercial industry in real time, enabling the DoD to keep products up to date with emerging technologies, and delivering capabilities “at the speed of relevance.”

Program Sustainment

Improving program sustainment outcomes for the F-35 fighter jet is another top priority for A&S. Developed to replace multiple U.S. fighter jets with a platform that maximizes commonality, and therefore economies of scale, the DoD has fielded three configurations to satisfy United States Air Force, United States Marine Corps, United States Navy and multiple international partners’ tactical aircraft requirements. A&S is dedicated to achieving the DoD’s aim for an 80 percent mission capability rating by defining performance imperatives, metrics, establishing detailed success elements and applying commercial best practices. These efforts help ensure a ready and affordable fleet of fifth-generation fighters critical to preserving air dominance both for the United States and our allied partners in this era of strategic competition.

Software Development

Like anywhere else, DoD systems are enabled by hardware but are defined by the software used. With the technology industry innovating quickly, the DoD must figure out how to keep up with fast moving software development and life cycles. By engaging Agile and DevOps methods for more iterative processing, end users will be involved earlier and more often, enabling continuous integration and helping the DoD meet its goal to develop and sustain software simultaneously. Based on recommendations by the Defense Innovation Board, a new software acquisition policy of approaching the challenge from the business side is being finalized to allow for these more rapid techniques. Pilot programs are rolling out to define corresponding procedures even further. Along these lines, the DoD has asked Congress to specifically appropriate money for defense software and is awaiting budget review and National Defense Authorization Act spending decisions.

Cybersecurity

The Cyber Security Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) was developed (using the best industry standards) to ensure the cyber hygiene of the Defense Industrial Base is complete and protects critical information in the DoD. As part of the CMMC, a consortium of unbiased parties will oversee the training, quality and administration of a third party that will certify that industrial base partners uphold accepted standards. This effort was spearheaded by our Acquisition team in working to roll out version 0.6 of the model by November 2019 and version 1.0 by the first of this year. The consortium is to begin training and accreditation of certifiers with certification beginning by June. Contracts will be required to include this certification in their evaluation criteria, beginning this October.

Chemicals

Chemical agents Perfluorooctane Sulfonate (PFOS) and Perfluorooctanoic Acid (PFOA) are part of a larger chemical class known as Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). Following a health advisory issued by the Environmental Protection Agency that warned against PFAS chemicals in drinking water, studies discovered the presence of the harmful agents in many industrial and consumer products, including nonstick cookware and microwave popcorn bags.

In DoD applications, the chemicals have been found in firefighting foam used to rapidly extinguish fuel fires. Although successful in protecting against catastrophic loss of life and property, it is now known that the release of PFAS can potentially contaminate private wells and public water systems. A national committee and a task force were established to provide an aggressive, holistic approach to find and fund an effective substitute for firefighting foam without PFAS, develop and implement cleanup standards, make lasting policy change, and coordinate across federal agencies. The DoD discontinued land-based use of the firefighting foam in training, testing and maintenance. Now, when the foam is used in emergencies to save lives, releases are treated as a chemical spill. Affected soil is contained and removed, to ensure that no additional PFAS pollute the groundwater. The DoD has identified 36 drinking water systems containing unsafe PFOS and PFOA — some of those systems are servicing military installations and surrounding communities. In an effort to protect these areas, A&S is using investigative data to prioritize the U.S. Government’s actions in appropriately addressing drinking water issues caused by DoD activities.

Alignment

Going forward, the A&S organization will continue aligning itself to support the DoD’s top priorities. These projects, and many others, are critical pieces that fit together into the much larger goals of defending the country and arming the Warfighter.

Source: https://www.dau.edu/library/defense-atl/DATLFiles/Jan-Feb2020/DEFACQ%20Jan-Feb%202020.pdf