Deja Vu All Over Again

In my early years in the Center for Operational Research and Analysis while I was working on life cycle costing, the CF-18 program was under scrutiny from the Office of the Auditor General for cost overruns and creative accounting.  I discuss this extensively in Cost Estimation and Performance Measurement in Canadian Defence: A Principal-Agent-Monitor Perspective .

I didn't have direct personal involvement in this program but I remember at the time my director at logistics analysis and my future director at air operational research took a trip to the PRICE corporation headquarters.  PRICE was a leading company in the field of parametric costing.  They collected data on the cost of military systems and then used statistics regression to help estimate the cost of future military systems.  The visit by these two directors was intended to determine if the PRICE software and data base could help with the cost estimation of major programs, like the CF-18, during the Canadian Forces rearmament program of the 1980's.

These two directors came back with different impressions of the value of the PRICE software and data base.  My director at logistics analysis was in favour of acquiring the PRICE software and data base for the Canadian Forces.  My future director at air operational research thought the PRICE data base was not applicable to the Canadian Forces situation and their regression technique was not accurate.

The Canadian Forces didn't acquire the PRICE software and data base or use the services of the PRICE consultants.

Twenty years later in the early 2000's, I was doing a study of costing for the maritime forces.  I had an opportunity to visit the PRICE headquarters and I took a course on their software and how to use their data base.

I came home and wrote a trip report which described how the PRICE software could be used in the shipbuilding program that was starting in Canada at that time.  I recommended that the Canadian Forces acquire the services of the PRICE consultants to help with the costing of future military acquisitions for the Canadian Forces.  We didn't and instead continued to estimate the costs of our military acquisition programs poorly.

The Office of the Auditor General has recently criticized the Canadian Forces for underestimating the cost of the F-35 which was chosen to replace the CF-18.

It is deja vu all over again.