Evaluating Best Value Tradeoff Decisions

[bob7947]

I posted a GAO report on this topic on the Home Page. I thought someone might find worth commenting. The title is: Defense Contracting: Enhanced Training Could Strengthen DOD's Best Value Tradeoff Decisions.

[Jacques]

I took a quick look. It doesn't seem to contain any revelations, but what could one expect from a report required by statute?

There is probably a lot one could nit-pick, but my favorite is the suggestion that DAU can instill the business judgment necessary for good quality/price trades through case studies. I guess if the choice is between case studies and nothing, I'd take the case studies; but they are a poor substitute for experience.

[formerfed]

There's no substitute for experience but the problem with gaining experience is twofold - to gain experience people have to work in a mentor -prot?g? arrangement but agencies aren't pushing that enough and the actual models/examples used by many of the "experienced" people are not good. From what I see, too many of the "experienced" people use whatever they did in the past that worked and have a difficult time adapting or tailoring to the unique aspecst of a new acquisition.

The report recommends use of case studies or scenarios to teach but another problem is DAU doesn't have any

The Defense Acquisition University (DAU) is responsible for providing training to the DOD acquisition workforce. According to DAU officials, they offer more than 10 courses that contain elements of the best value tradeoff process, but none of the current courses provide case studies or scenarios that focus on reaching price differential decisions during source selection.

I personally had an excellent course - advanced contract law taught by an Associate General Counsel at GAO, and he used case studies to teach source selection. His assignments used actual cases where he provided background and students then did research and developed a "decision" that was then compared with the GAO one.

[garth]

I found the statistics presented in the report very interesting.