Modeling & Simulation

M&S Contracting

Close coordination is necessary between the Program Management Office’s (PMO) Modeling and Simulation (M&S) lead and the Program Contracting Officer (PCO). Contracting strategies, solicitation, and contract provisions must be consistent with the decided division of responsibilities with particular attention paid to the use of Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) / Government Furnished Information (GFI). [1] Request for Proposal (RFP) language and contract provisions should address: [1]

  • M&S requirements
  • Data rights
  • Contractor’s own M&S planning and documentation
  • Examination of reuse opportunities
  • Expectations regarding the sources of M&S tools and data
  • Ownership and maintenance of government-funded M&S resources
  • VV&A requirements
  • Government user support
  • Access control
  • Metrics and documentation requirements

Indicators of contractor M&S expertise should be considered in defining source selection criteria. Contractor attributes that have a direct relationship to successful M&S use may include: [1]

  • A documented systems-engineering process showing its organizations, activities, the specific M&S tools used by each, and the information flows among them;
  • An existing information sharing infrastructure (i.e., integrated data environment) providing enterprise team members, on a nearly continuous, from-the-desktop basis, the capability to discover, access, understand and download a comprehensive set of authoritative, accurate and coherent product development information. The data items provided by this system should be accompanied with metadata providing the pedigree and sufficient applicability and context information to guide their valid use;
  • Successful experience using a wide variety of M&S, both for design (prescriptive modeling environments such as systems engineering tools, CAD, and software design tools) and assessment (descriptive M&S), from the engineering to mission levels;
  • Successful participation in federations or other types of distributed simulations using an open standard architecture e.g., the High Level Architecture (HLA);
  • A record of reuse of M&S tools and information produced by other organizations (government, industry and COTS)
  • A documented VV&A process, with records indicating a history of compliance; and
  • A staff with documented M&S expertise.

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