DCMA – NDIA EVMS Collaboration Workshops

The Program Management Systems Committee (PMSC) of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) and the Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA) agreed last fall to conduct a series of Earned Value Management Systems (EVMS) workshops designed to increase consistency of practices and transparency of objectives and constraints, as well as reduce cycle time associated with decision making and problem resolution. 

The group that is meeting is composed of 10 DCMA and 9 industry representatives. Thus far there have been two workshops, one in October of last year and the other in January of this year. There will additional workshops. At the recent PMSC meeting the results of these first two workshops were presented. 

DCMA has agreed that while they will continue to issue discrepancy reports (DRs), they will no longer be numbered to reflect significance. DCMA has agreed to present DRs on a daily basis during the course of EVMS reviews to avoid surprises for the contractor at the end of the review, but even more importantly to ensure that the auditor reviewed and understood all relevant data (i.e. to allow the contractor to clarify, if appropriate). DCMA is updating its processes to reflect these agreements.

An agreement about some important terminology has also been reached. The terminology for EVM System status will now be either “approved” or “disapproved.” The Contract Business Analysis Repository (CBAR) currently includes those two descriptors and it also includes “not evaluated” and “not applicable.” The CBAR will be revised to match the agreement.

The workshops also reached agreements that will facilitate the streamlining of the surveillance and system approval processes. These include approval include moving from monthly to quarterly surveillance and moving from annual to three year surveillance cycles, with two  of the three years being devoted to the sixteen (of the total of thirty-two) criteria that DCMA has identified as high risk guidelines.

Among the topics for future workshops is the review of an industry developed model for Advance Agreements.

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