The Impact of Changing Requirements

Abstract

The fundamental purpose of an Engineering Change Proposal (ECP) is to change the requirements of a contract. To build in flexibility, the acquisition practice is to estimate a dollar value to hold in reserve after the contract is awarded. There appears to be no empirical-based method for estimating this ECP withhold in the literature. Using the Cost Assessment Data Enterprise (CADE) database, 533 contracts were randomly selected to build two regression models: one to predict the likelihood of a contract experiencing an ECP, and the other to determine the expected median percent increase in baseline contract cost if an ECP was likely. Results suggest that this two-step approach works well over a managed portfolio of contracts in contrast to three investigated rules-of-thumb. Significant drivers are the basic contract cost and the number of contract line items.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Mar 23, 2018
Accession Number
AD1055951

Entities

People

  • James C Ellis

Organizations

  • Air Force Institute of Technology

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Air Platforms
  • Autonomy
  • Biomedical
  • Ground and Sea Platforms
  • Space
  • Weapons Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Air Force
  • Airborne Warning And Control System
  • Aircrafts
  • Anti-Radiation Missiles
  • Business Administration
  • Contractors
  • Contracts
  • Control Systems
  • Cost Analysis
  • Data Set
  • Databases
  • Department Of Defense
  • Engineering
  • Fighter Aircraft
  • Governments
  • Information Science
  • Law
  • Life Cycle Management
  • Military Acquisition
  • Munitions
  • Organizational Structure
  • Procurement
  • Satellite Guided Weapons
  • Standoff Missiles
  • Systems Engineering
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Readers

  • Government Contracting/Procurement.
  • Life Cycle Cost Analysis
  • Regression Analysis.