Schedule Overrun | The Contracting Education Academy

February 21, 2018 By AMK

A baby-step solution for improving the defense acquisition system

It’s not the hard solutions to problems that tie bureaucracies in knots. It’s the simple solutions that bureaucracies make hard.

For example, there is a very simple step that could boost the efficiency of Defense Department purchasing of weapons, equipment and services. Its most important characteristics are that 1) it is doable, and 2) it relies on normal order. In other words, the acquisition community can embrace it without legislation or policy adjustments. Furthermore, it can be applied to small acquisition programs as well as large.

The solution is to establish a source selection schedule and keep to it. Simple. Right? Program leaders must merely think through carefully what it will take to publish a Broad Area Announcement or Request for Information or Market Survey, a Draft Request for Proposal and a Final Request for Proposal. Refine a draft schedule until you are confident it can be met. Then publish the schedule and stick with it. I know what you are thinking: “Isn’t that what the program manager or Program Executive Office is supposed to do?” Yes, of course, that is what the program manager or PEO is supposed to do. But, nine times out of ten the schedule is never executed as published, if the schedule is published at all.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2018/02/baby-step-solution-improving-defense-acquisition-system/145945

September 22, 2015 By AMK

Army Corps of Engineers paid $2.2M for half-finished building, audit shows

The Army Corps of Engineers paid more than $2 million for a half-built facility in Afghanistan that it has plans to complete, according to an Aug. 25 Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report.

In 2012, a Kandahar Airfield Infrastructure Planning Board official proposed construction of a command and control facility at Camp Brown to support missions in southern and western Afghanistan.

The USACE awarded the contract for the facility in June 2012, and the facility was supposed to be completed by July 2013, SIGAR says in the report.

From November 2012 to August 2013, USACE sent more than a dozen letters to the contractor pointing out issues with the work site, including safety hazards, poor quality and lack of timely design submittals as well as construction schedule slippage, the report says.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/army-corps-engineers-paid-22m-half-finished-building-audit-shows/2015-09-02

April 29, 2013 By AMK

Space acquisition no longer broken, getting better, says GAO

Less than five years ago, almost every major unclassified space program was grossly over budget and behind schedule.

The rock stars of rottenness were the weather satellite program known as NPOESS and the missile warning satellite program called SBIRS, but they were not alone. These problems ate at the soul of the Air Force and the space community, which had both been justifiably proud of the remarkable accomplishments they had wracked up during the first quarter century of the space age.

Now the Government Accountability Office — which most people in industry and many in the Pentagon will tell you never met a program it liked — has given its tentative stamp of approval to space acquisition with a report bearing this euphonious title: “DOD Is Overcoming Long-Standing Problems, but Faces Challenges to Ensuring Its Investments Are Optimized.” It sounds as if space acquisition is halfway out of the woods.

Here’s the nub of the GAO testimony delivered before House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee:

“For the portfolio of major satellite programs, new cost and schedule growth is not as widespread as it was in prior years, but DOD is still experiencing problems. For example, total program costs have increased approximately $180 million from a baseline of $4.1 billion for one of two satellite programs that are in the earlier phases of acquisition. Though satellite programs are not experiencing problems as widespread as in years past, ground control systems and user terminals in most of DOD’s major space system acquisitions are not optimally aligned, leading to underutilized satellites and limited capability provided to the warfighter.”

Keep reading this article at: http://defense.aol.com/2013/04/25/space-acquisition-no-longer-broken-getting-better-says-gao.

It’s not the hard solutions to problems that tie bureaucracies in knots. It’s the simple solutions that bureaucracies make hard.

The Army Corps of Engineers paid more than $2 million for a half-built facility in Afghanistan that it has plans to complete, according to an Aug. 25 Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction report.

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