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SM&A Capability Assessments provide independent evaluations of your business practices and straightforward recommendations to increase revenue and profitability.
We perform assessments covering:
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| + Transition Assurance – |
Improve your transition efficiency from proposal win to project performance. |
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+ Program Services – Improve your project performance and profitability.
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| Transition Assurance |
| An SM&A® Transition Assurance assessment examines your plan for transitioning from proposal to contract performance. Our assessment focuses on four areas: facilities, processes, people, and tools. Figure 4 identifies specific topics assessed within each category. The assessment is based on SM&A’s proven QuickStart® service, where we provide expert teams to ensure successful transition from proposal to project performance. |
| Processes |
| Transition Assurance includes all activities associated with the start-up phase of a new contract. Emphasis is placed on under-standing the contract changes that occur during negotiations with your customer and the proposed technical and project baseline maturity. We also review plans for the project kick-off meeting and the briefing package. |
| People |
| We evaluate your ability to staff the first six months, handle surge requirements, and provide the right amount of qualified people for the start-up. We evaluate the presence of customer counterparts, rules of engagement, stakeholders’ plan, and adequacy of your personnel-training plan. Project team leads are interviewed to evaluate their readiness for start-up. |
| Facilities |
A major key to successfully transitioning from proposal-to-project is a collocated team. We examine the project facilities and support structure provided for the project start-up. The ability to perform at maximum efficiency during the first three to six months is critical to project performance for years to come.
If collocation is not possible, we look for a capable and secure computer and com-munications network with access available to off-site client personnel, subcontractors, suppliers and customers. |
| Tools |
The ability to provide a smooth and responsive contract start-up requires both project-specific tools and general-support tools. The assessment examines product-specific items such as adequacy of current modelling and simulation tools and their upgrade plans. We look for tools used for risk management, configuration management and control, data management, requirement tracking, earned value, and material tracking. We provide an assessment of the adequacy of these tools to support project start-up activities and the capability of your personnel to use them.
These factors directly affect your ability to successfully transition to a profitable project.
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| Figure 4. SM&A Assessment Focus - Assure a successful transition from a winning proposal to an efficient, effective, profitable project delivery. |
| Program Services |
| An SM&A® Program Services assessment examines your ability to perform successfully on a specific project. Our assessment focuses on three areas: processes, people and tools. Specific topics assessed within each category are identified in Figure 5. |
| Processes |
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| The Program Services assessment examines the efficiency of your processes required to perform on the contract. This includes processes associated with performing a contract on schedule, on cost, meeting or exceeding technical requirements and maximizing available fees. Emphasis is placed on project-performance processes such as systems engineering, project management, subcontract management, project planning, and project baseline configuration and change control. We look for processes that maximize award fee, meet critical project milestones, perform successful project demonstrations and provide on-time submittal of contract deliverables. Team members are interviewed to validate that these processes are being followed. |
| People |
| We examine the appropriateness of your organizational structure to your specific business goals and its alignment with the customer organization. Leadership, technical, and business staffing requirements are also examined. We help create solutions that resolve leadership and key personnel shortfalls. We look for the presence of a customer contact plan, rules of engage-ment, existence of a training plan, and identification of all stakeholders. Stake-holder identification and involvement plans are now an important element of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) requirements. |
| Tools |
Successful performance on a project requires both basic and project-specific tools. Our assessment determines if those tools are in place to support the activities shown in Figure 5. In addition, we evaluate the tools used for risk mitigation status, action item tracking, management metrics and how they drive corrective actions, along with recording and disseminating lessons learned.
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| Figure 5. SM&A Assessment Focus – Deliver a profitable project on-time and within budget. |
| Assessment Benefits |
| SM&A solutions have the following track record: |
» 85% Win Rate on over 1000 proposals totaling over $340 billion.
» 4 month average schedule improvement and $1 million+ cost savings with our QuickStart™ Transition Assurance.
» 15% average award fee increase with our Program Services services. |
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| + To see our past projects, click here |
| + To contact SM&A please click here |
