Defense Acquisition Research Journal Issue 95

Use of Factors in Development Estimates: Improving the Cost Analyst Toolkit

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Defense [OSD], n.d.). CAPE initiated the development of the Cost Assessment Data Enterprise (CADE) system to help achieve its mission. CADE serves as an integrated web-based application for defense acquisition program cost, schedule, and technical data (OSD, n.d.). Within CADE are Cost Data Summary Reports (CDSR), which contain the data used in this analysis. EMD data were chosen as the only life-cycle phase to be analyzed based on the identified literature gap. Contractor submittal of CDSRs is mandatory for all major contracts and subcontracts (regardless of contract type) valued at $50 million or more in programs designated as Acquisition Category I (DoD, 2011). The threshold for Acquisition Category I designation is total expenditures of $480 million in Research, Development, Test and Evaluation (RDT&E) fiscal year 2014 constant dollars or $2.79 billion in procurement (DoD, 2015). Due to these thresholds, no contracts under $50 million are used in the analysis. Cost information in CDSRs is reported through a standardized WBS as gov erned by MIL-STD 881D. The level two WBS elements include system-level services applicable to the program, including elements common to most programs as shown in Table 1. These eight “common” WBS elements in Table 1 are the focus for analyzing factors in this article.

TABLE 1. WBS ELEMENTS

Level 2 Common WBS Elements Systems Engineering/Program Management (SE/PM) System Test and Evaluation (ST&E) Training Data

Peculiar Support Equipment (PSE) Common Support Equipment (CSE) Site Activation Spares

The final dataset consists of programs spanning from 1961 to 2017, rep resenting a broad range of programs across numerous commodity types and military services. The common WBS mandated by MIL-STD-881D enables consistency in data collection and normalization. The complete dataset within CADE contained 189 programs; however, only 102 of those programs fit the criteria for inclusion in the final dataset (see Appendix A for final program list). Table 2 depicts the exclusion criteria and remaining programs utilized for factor development.

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Defense ARJ, January 2021, Vol. 28 No. 1 : 40-70