Better Buying Power

Ensuring Our Nation Can Afford The Systems and Services It Acquires

The Acquisition Community’s mission is to deliver the warfighting capabilities needed with the money available by getting better buying power for Warfighters and taxpayers.
BBP Initiatives Successfully Employed in Acquisition of Navy Destroyer

Innovative acquisition strategy by Navy resulted in $298 million in cost savings across three ships and established the conditions for the
follow-on FY13-17 multi-year procurement for DDG 51 class ships while sustaining the shipbuilding industrial base.

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PEO Ammunition Business Model Provides Small Business with Increased Contracting Opportunities

Project Manager Combat Ammunition Systems team developed innovative acquisition strategy that effectively seeks out and utilizes small businesses innovation and rapid response while substantially cutting delivery order award cycle times and costs.

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Hawkeye Achieves Economical Production Rates

The Navy's E-2D Advanced Hawkeye program and the Air Force’s Small Diameter Bomb II program are recent examples where the Department
ensured cost savings by implementing economical production rates.

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By remaining focused on realistic requirements and incentivizing
industry, a United States Special Operations Command team has
developed better first-response casualty evacuation and treatment capabilities for wounded Warfighters.

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Joint Service Team’s Focus on Requirements Yields Life-saving
Capabilities

ENSURING
AFFORDABILITY
Innovative Strategy
SAVES $298M
tapping small business
innovation
ECONOMICAL HAWKEYE
PRODUCTION RATES
Focus on Requirements Yields Benefits

What Is Better Buying Power?

DoD’s Mandate To Do More Without More

Better Buying Power (BBP) is the implementation of best practices to strengthen the Defense Department's buying power, improve industry productivity, and provide an affordable, value-added military capability to the Warfighter. Launched in 2010, BBP encompasses a set of fundamental acquisition principles to achieve greater efficiencies through affordability, cost control, elimination of unproductive processes and bureaucracy, and promotion of competition. BBP initiatives also incentivize productivity and innovation in industry and Government, and improve tradecraft in the acquisition of services.

BBP Focus Areas

Achieve
Affordable
Programs

Conducting a program at a cost constrained by the maximum resources the Department can allocate for a capability. These resources include funding, schedule and manpower.

Control Costs Throughout
the Product
Lifecycle

The ability to understand and control future costs from a program’s inception is critical to achieving affordability requirements.

Incentivize Productivity and Innovation in Industry and Government

Reward contractors for successful supply chain and indirect expense management.

Eliminate Unproductive Processes and Bureaucracy

Unnecessary and low-value added processes and document requirements are a significant drag on acquisition productivity and must be aggressively identified and eliminated.

Promote
Effective Competition

Real competition is the single most powerful tool available to the Department to drive productivity.

Improve Tradecraft in Acquisition of Services

The substantial amount of money spent on contract support services demands a management structure to strategically source these goods and services.

Improve the Professionalism
of the Total
Acquisition Workforce

It is the duty of the acquisition workforce to conduct itself with excellence, responsibility, integrity and accountability.

Items of Interest

Apr 04, 2016

This memorandum highlights guidence developed as an element of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (USD (AT&L)) Better Buying Power 3.0

Achieving Dominant Capabilities through Technical Excellence and Innovation initiative. The analysis behind the 2014 Annual Report on the Performance of the Defense for Acquisition System, published by the USD (AT&L) on June 13, 2014, demonstrated that the use of cost-plus-incentive-fee and fixed-price-incentive Firm Target contracts was highly correlated with programs that achieved better cost and schedule performance outcomes. this guidance is provided to illustrate the various factors that should be taken into account when selecting and negotiating a contract type.

Further details can be found within the memorandum.

Nov 05, 2015

Eliminating Requirements Imposed on Industry Where Costs Exceed Benefits

Eliminating Requirements Imposed on Industry Where Costs Exceed Benefits. Washington D.C: Office of The Under Secretary of Defense, Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, 2015

Eliminating Requirements Imposed on Industry Where Costs Exceed Benefits

Oct 05, 2015

2015 Performance of the Defense Acquisition System Report

2015 “Performance of the Defense Acquisition System” Released After five years of implementing Better Buying Power initiatives, such as “should cost management” and affordability caps, Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics Frank Kendall states that there are signs of significant improvement in acquisition outcomes.

2015 Performance of the Defense Acquisition System Report

Oct 05, 2015

The 2015 Compendium of Annual Program Manager Assessments

These assessments provide a composite portrait of the breadth and depth of the challenges program managers face, and of the highly professional way in which these challenges are being met. They provide an opportunity for those both inside and outside the defense acquisition arena to gain a deeper appreciation of the practical reality of defense acquisition - as seen through the eyes of our front line managers who deal with that reality on a daily basis.

The 2015 Compendium of Annual Program Manager Assessments

Jun 16, 2015

RIO-Guide June 2015

Building from previous editions of the DoD Risk Management Guide, this revised edition emphasizes managing not only program risks but also issues and opportunities. The guide supports DoDI 5000.02 policy as well as the DoD Better Buying Power 3.0 initiative to "improve leaders' ability to understand and mitigate technical risk .

RIO Guide