DCAA Jettisons More of its Workload

In a recent memorandum , DCAA (Defense Contract Audit Agency) instructed its staff to no longer initiate EVMS (Earned Value Management Systems) audits. The DCMA (Defense Contract Management Agency) has been designated the Agency responsible for compliance and validation of contractors' EVMS systems. If DCMA decides that it needs DCAA assistance, it must make a formal request for such. However, any request for assistance will be limited to eight (or fewer) of the 32 EVMS criteria identified in the FAR (Federal Acquisition Regulations). These eight criteria include:

• Criteria 13 - establish overhead budgets for each significant organizational component of the company for expenses which will become indirect costs.
• Criteria 16 - record direct costs in a manner consistent with the budgets in a formal system controlled by the general books of account
• Criteria 17 - when a work breakdown structure (WBS) is used, summarize direct costs from control accounts into the WBS without allocation of a single control account to two or more WBS elements
• Criteria 18 - summarize direct costs from the control accounts into the contractor's organizational elements without allocation of a single control account to two or more organizational elements
• Criteria 19 - record and allocate indirect costs
• Criteria 20 - identify unit costs, equivalent units costs, or lot costs when needed. or lot costs
• Criteria 21  - the material accounting system will provide for accurate cost accumulation and assignment of costs to control accounts in a manner consistent with the budgets using recognized, acceptable, costing techniques.
• Criteria 30 - control retroactive changes to records pertaining to work performed that would change previously reported amounts for actual costs, earned value, or budgets.

At companies with contracts requiring EVMS implementation, surveillance and compliance activities represented a sizable workload for DCAA. Perhaps this will free up resources for other audit activities.