Original Date: 07/08/2002
Revision Date: 01/18/2007

The Directorate for Missiles and Surface Launchers aggressively attacked and solved problems and delays associated with the Technical Instruction process used as a “short-term” contractual vehicle to task and fund a contractor to perform specific work when results expected are not well defined.

The Directorate for Missiles and Surface Launchers (PEO TSC-M/L) uses Technical Instructions (TIs) as a contract vehicle to facilitate execution of effort by the contractor to perform engineering trade studies, develop product improvement concepts, support flight tests, and solve production problems. Many undesirable features of the process existed that PEO TSC-M/L’s Technical Representative (TechRep) sought to correct, including no single PEO TSC-M/L point of contact (POC) for all TIs, which resulted in a lengthy approval process; no standard format for the TI document; no central TI tracking system; no standard monthly reporting format; and no timely award fee process.

The TI process improvements addressed Administration, Management and Insight, and Award Fee. Under Administration, improvements included the establishment of a central POC at PEO TSC-M/L; implementation of one tracking system for all TIs; the establishment of standard reporting formats for both the PEO TSC-M/L and the contractor; and the standardization of the TI document (now three pages versus approximately 20). With improvements in Management and Insight, the contractor and Tech Rep jointly draft and revise the TIs, which are now managed at the TI level versus the associated higher level contract line item. Improvements in Award Fee brought about accelerated Navy field activity review; quicker feedback and fee to contractor; and PEO TSC-M/L and the TechRep provide the award fee assessment.

The old TI methodology allowed ten of 30 TIs to be overspent, past due, or out-of-scope of desired work. The new TI methodology has allowed only one of 42 TIs to experience one of the above problems, and that overrun was due to program cancellation. Another major improvement is continuing a TI past its original execution period. It is a rule that work must stop until the new TI is in place, and often this process was not started until the original TI had expired. Now the team is proactive and the new TI is in place as the old one expires, which alleviates a stop in work. Also, due to the team management/execution philosophy, the time to process a TI and get it in place to allow the work to begin has dropped from approximately two months to five days, which is now the new goal for every TI. This five-day goal has only been missed once in two years since the improvements were implemented. Considering that 20 TIs are processed each month, this savings in time is very valuable. The reporting and tracking improvements have also allowed reduction of the award fee process by approximately two months, including financial and technical reporting. Since the award fee process is intended to incentivize the contractor for good performance, this is a win-win situation for both the contractor and PEO TSC-M/L.

For more information see the Point of Contact for this survey.