System Studies & Simulation Inc.
On 31 January 2012, the US Air Force (USAF) announced awards on Design and Engineering Support Program III (DESP III). VSE Corps, with whom S3 partnered on this, won an award.
DESP III is a five-year, multiple award, Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) contract vehicle providing a broad range of engineering services in support of any system or subsystem within the Air Force and other DoD agencies. The contract ceiling amount is set at $1.9B. Efforts will be placed on contract via task orders to support specific objectives which focus on improving system life cycle cost, operational life, performance, sustainment including maintainability and support, and safety and environmental friendliness.
One of the primary purposes of DESP III is to provide the Air Force and other DoD customers with a contract vehicle for engineering services in a fraction of the time normally required for standard contract actions. Although DESP III excludes repair work, it includes the development of prototypes and limited production runs, and can be used for Advisory and Assistance Services. In addition, incidental construction, essential to the performance of the engineering service, is allowed.
Since the DESP III contract is a services contract, all task orders placed against DESP III shall comply with AFI 63-124. As such, all Contract Engineering Tasks (CETs) shall be written in performance terms, in accordance with AFI 63-124. All work shall be described in terms of “what” the required output is, rather than “how” the work is to be performed or the number of hours to be provided, except when deemed essential by functional activity for safety and/or security reasons.
