Determining the Optimal Work Breakdown Structure for Defense Acquisition Contracts

Abstract

The optimal level of Government Contract Work Breakdown Structure (G-CWBS) reporting for the purposes of EarnedValue Management was inspected. The G-Score Metric was proposed, which can quantitatively grade a G-CWBS, basedon a new method of calculating an Estimate At Completion (EAC) cost for each reported element. A random programgenerator created in R replicated the characteristics of DOD program artifacts retrieved from the Cost Analysis DataEnterprise (CADE) system. The generated artifacts were validated as a population, however validation at thedemographic combination level using an artificial neural network was inconclusive. Comparative WBS forms were createdfor a sample of the generated programs, and used to populate a decision tree. Utility theory tools were applied usingthree utility perspectives, and optimal WBSs were identified. Results demonstrated that reporting at WBS level 3 is themost common optimal structure, however 75 of the time a different optimal structure exists.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 24, 2016
Accession Number
AD1008478

Entities

People

  • Brian J. Fitzpatrick

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Energy and Power Technologies
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Human Systems
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Aircrafts
  • Business Administration
  • Computational Science
  • Contracts
  • Cost Analysis
  • Data Science
  • Databases
  • Department Of Defense
  • Governments
  • Information Science
  • Information Systems
  • Management Personnel
  • Network Science
  • Organizational Structure
  • Systems Engineering
  • United States Government

Readers

  • Computer Vision.
  • Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery.
  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis

Technology Areas

  • AI & ML
  • AI & ML - Bayesian Inference
  • AI & ML - Neural Networks