IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/syseng/v22y2019i1p54-65.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

How government oversight adds time to contractor engineering work

Author

Listed:
  • Samantha M. Brainard
  • Zoe Szajnfarber

Abstract

Oversight is necessary for evaluating the performance of contractors building complex systems for the U.S. government, but it can also result in additional program costs. In order to accurately measure the extent of these additional costs, stakeholders need to understand how oversight‐required activities add time to work. To that end, this paper presents the data from a qualitative research study to investigate how oversight adds time to contractor engineering work at a major U.S. aerospace company. We observed that oversight activities require many tasks to complete, which can add cascades of new activities that are performed in multiple iterations. Oversight activities cannot be accounted for in a binary way—oversight adds time to parts of all activities that the contractor performs. We describe the mechanisms through which oversight impacts work by extending the time spent on all activities. Understanding how added time occurs could help both contractors and government program managers determine ways to reduce unnecessary costs. Implications of these findings for systems engineers interested in conducting studies to measure the impact of oversight are discussed.

Suggested Citation

  • Samantha M. Brainard & Zoe Szajnfarber, 2019. "How government oversight adds time to contractor engineering work," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 22(1), pages 54-65, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:syseng:v:22:y:2019:i:1:p:54-65
    DOI: 10.1002/sys.21468
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sys.21468
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sys.21468?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Earll Murman & Thomas Allen & Kirkor Bozdogan & Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld & Hugh McManus & Deborah Nightingale & Eric Rebentisch & Tom Shields & Fred Stahl & Myles Walton & Joyce Warmkessel & Stanley W, 2002. "Lean Enterprise Value," Palgrave Macmillan Books, Palgrave Macmillan, number 978-1-4039-0750-9, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Bohdan W. Oppenheim & Earll M. Murman & Deborah A. Secor, 2011. "Lean Enablers for Systems Engineering," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(1), pages 29-55, March.
    2. Tyson R. Browning & Eric C. Honour, 2008. "Measuring the life‐cycle value of enduring systems," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(3), pages 187-202, September.
    3. Tan Ching Ng & Morteza Ghobakhloo, 2018. "What Determines Lean Manufacturing Implementation? A CB-SEM Model," Economies, MDPI, vol. 6(1), pages 1-11, February.
    4. Carol Ann McDevitt & Eric C Cahill & Craig Stambaugh, 2004. "System‐level application of the evolutionary product development process to manufactured goods," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 7(2), pages 144-152.
    5. Avner Engel & Tyson R. Browning, 2008. "Designing systems for adaptability by means of architecture options," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 11(2), pages 125-146, June.
    6. Aaron A Tucker & Cihan H Dagli, 2009. "Design of experiments as a means of lean value delivery to the flight test enterprise," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 12(3), pages 201-217, September.
    7. Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Joel, 2003. "Lean Transformation in the U.S. Aerospace Industry: Appreciating Interdependent Social and Technical Systems," Working papers 4299-03, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Sloan School of Management.
    8. Tyson R. Browning, 2003. "On customer value and improvement in product development processes," Systems Engineering, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 6(1), pages 49-61.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wly:syseng:v:22:y:2019:i:1:p:54-65. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://doi.org/10.1002/(ISSN)1520-6858 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.