Air Force to change acquisition practices. (Washington Pulse).The move away from fixed-price contracts has resulted in undisciplined programs with cost overruns Noun 1. cost overrun - excess of cost over budget; "the cost overrun necessitated an additional allocation of funds in the budget" cost - the total spent for goods or services including money and time and labor . For that reason, "We need more disciplined program execution," said Terry Little, head of the Air Force Acquisition Center for Excellence. The center was created to help the Air Force improve program performance and lower costs. The chief of staff, Air Force Gen. John Jumper The simplest form of an on/off switch. It is just a tiny, plastic-covered metal block, which is pushed onto two pins to close that circuit. It is used to select a myriad of functions on a printed circuit board or on a peripheral device. , said he was "sick and tired of study and process," Little said. He wants to see the acquisition center produce results, in the form of new weapon systems that get to the fleet faster and that work as promised. Today, he said, "90 percent of our buying is done exactly like it was done in the early days of the Clinton administration Noun 1. Clinton administration - the executive under President Clinton executive - persons who administer the law ." Only the words and titles have changed. "I'm I'm Contraction of I am. Our Living Language Speakers of some scattered varieties of American English sometimes use I'm instead of I've or I have in present perfect constructions, as in trying to fix that for the Air Force," Little said. "Since the 1970s, the Air Force average cycle time has gone from six years to 11 years. We have to fix that." Among the changes coming in the future, Little told a private gathering of industry executives, is a shift from cost-plus reimbursable re·im·burse tr.v. re·im·bursed, re·im·burs·ing, re·im·burs·es 1. To repay (money spent); refund. 2. To pay back or compensate (another party) for money spent or losses incurred. contracts to price-based acquisitions. The cost-plus contracts Cost-plus contract A contract in which the selling price is based on the total cost of production plus a fixed percentage or fixed amount. are money losers, he said, because the government ends up paying for unneeded overhead and paperwork. Little said he was appalled to hear, for example, that one company recently spent $2 million on a single cost-data study. One piece of advice he gave contractors is to "make promises you can keep. ... I'll be watching big programs carefully." As a case in point, he cited a contractor who presented a new aircraft design and vowed that the entire development would cost $500 million to $800 million. "That's crazy," Little said. "Anyone who's been involved in a new development program knows that. This sets up false expectations and disappointment." He said his goal is for the Acquisition Center for Excellence to become the "911 organization for programs to call when they are having a problem and they don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. how to deal with it." This organization also could become a vehicle to communicate with contractors who have potentially useful ideas. "If somebody has a good idea, they go knocking on doors. They get bounced around.... We want to change that. If someone has a good idea for the Air Force, they can come to us. However, he cautioned that there will not be enough dollars to fund every good idea. |
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