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 CHAPTER 2 ACQUISITION PLANNING
2-100 GENERAL. The Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) defines
acquisition planning as follows:
"Acquisition planning means the process by which the efforts of all
personnel responsible for an acquisition are coordinated and integrated
through a comprehensive plan for fulfilling the agency need in a timely
manner and at a reasonable cost. It includes developing the overall
strategy for managing the acquisition". (FAR Subpart 7.1)
After the issuance of the FAR in 1984, additional emphasis was placed on
acquisition planning. Planning the work and then working the plan is just
good common sense and should be accomplished for all procurements with the
possible exception of small repetitive buys. In its simplest form, planning
consists of clarifying both the objective of the undertaking and the path by
which the objective will be pursued. The process starts with a needs
analysis.
2-200 NEEDS ANALYSIS. A needs analysis may be very simplistic or it may
be very complex depending upon the circumstances . If the function is
already under contract, the needs analysis may only consist of a
revalidation of existing contract requirements. If the function is
currently performed with an in-house force, or if the function is brand new,
i.e., no past experience in-house or out, then the needs analysis process
becomes more complex.
2-210 The systems Approach. The systems approach assumes that the
function under study is a system and consists of a job or a combination of
jobs carried out by people and sometimes machines for a certain purpose.
The parts of a system are usually called inputs, work processes, outputs,
and control loops. These parts are shown in Figure 2-1. From a
contractor's view, the system consists of taking people, facilities,
material, and the contract documents and inputting them into a work
process. The result of this work process is a contract output.
There are two major control loops in this system. Both loops use standards
as the basis for determining acceptability. The contractor quality control
(QC) loop feedsback information from the output to the work process so the
contractor can adjust performance to meet the specified standard. The
Government quality assurance (QA) loop looks at the output and determines
its acceptability in light of the same standard. This information becomes
an input for contractor management to adjust the work output and the quality
control function.
A systems approach permits the analyst to identify outputs and separate them
from the specific procedures required to create the outputs. When the
Government specifies a given procedure, it assumes responsibility for
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