The DoD Service Acquisition Process is how the DoD acquires professional services from private industry. The process starts with a valid mission requirement for a service essential for the execution of an organizations mission. The process continues through a planning phase, which develops the foundation for defining your requirement and business strategy, and ultimately ends with the delivery and assessment of the services provided.
Service Acquisition Process Phases
The services acquisition process has three (3) phases with seven (7) steps. [1]
- Planning Phase: Lays the foundation for action. During the planning phase, you form the acquisition team and get leadership support for all the actions that must happen to ensure the mission is supported. Baseline and analyze your current service strategies; identify problem areas and projected mission changes; and get your stakeholders to define their key performance outcomes for this requirement. Also analyze the market place to assess current technology and business practices, competition and small business opportunities, existing and potential new sources of providing the service, and determine if commercial buying practices can be adapted.
- Step One: Form the Team
- Step Two: Review Current Strategy
- Step Three: Market Research
- Development Phase: Uses the requirements roadmap process to define your High Level Objectives and tasks, standards, allowable variations, and method of inspection. After completing the roadmap you will then be in the best position to develop a performance work statement (PWS) and quality assurance surveillance plan (QASP). During this phase you will also identify your funding sources, develop a government estimate of contract price for the required service, and get industry feedback on your working documents. Finally, synthesize an acquisition strategy that leverages contract type and performance incentives to deliver a best value mission performance to the customer. The basic performance principle is to tell the contractor what the performance results are, not how to do the job. Let industry develop the solution.
- Step Four: Requirements Definition
- Step Five: Acquisition Strategy
- Execution Phase: You create a solicitation document that formally communicates to industry your requirements and strategy. You receive contractor proposals for how they will meet your performance results and standards and then evaluate them against criteria selected that will best determine the success of a potential contractors approach. After contract award, the business relationship you have with the service providing contractor should foster innovation and improvements to mission performance outcomes. This part of the process involves two key areas: administering contract requirements such as invoicing and payments; and managing the relationships and expectations of both the contractor and customer’s in meeting the terms of the contract and achieving the required mission performance results. You also start the planning phase for a follow-on acquisition if there is a continuing need for the service being provided.
- Step Six: Execute Strategy
- Step Seven: Performance Management
Each phase builds on the knowledge gained in the previous phase. Some actions within each phase can be completed in parallel; others should be completed sequentially to make more informed decisions based on new knowledge gained. The project plan in Appendix B will help you tailor a plan for your service acquisition. This guidebook will cover each of the steps in detail and illustrate how to use the requirements roadmap tool to assist you in developing performance-based requirements documents.
AcqLinks and References
Updated: 7/14/2021
