Striking the Best Deal: Fixed-Price vs. Cost-Based Contracting
For the final event in a series of panels of presentations on the results of empirical research on contracting, sponsored by the Naval Postgraduate School, this particular paper broke new ground in deriving contract outcomes, including terminations and ceiling breaches, from publically available contract data. Additionally, this study found that fixed-price contracts are more likely to face termination but are not systematically more likely to receive fewer bids or experience more change orders or ceiling breaches than cost-based contracts. Ultimately, of the circumstances tested, longer-duration contracts proved most consistently challenging to fixed-price contracts.
Featuring:
Greg Sanders
Deputy Director and Fellow
Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group, CSIS
Michele Mackin
Director, Acquisition and Sourcing Management
US Government Accountability Office
Diane Balderson
Vice President, Contracts and Pricing
Northrop Grumman Corporation
Mandy Smithberger
Director, CDI Straus Military Reform Project
Project On Government Oversight
Moderated by:
Andrew Hunter
Director and Senior Fellow
Defense-Industrial Initiatives Group and International Security program, CSIS
