This group has been developed within ASTi to respond to the needs of customers who are interested in buying a zero-risk turnkey solution to a program on which they have defined the scope of work by a Performance Specification and a Statement of Work.

It is also the route to be taken by customers who are not sure if they want to buy an ASTi solution, but want to compete for an apples-to-apples comparison.*

This Turnkey Projects group will utilize the technology and products available within ASTi, and configure them into a solution to meet the customer Performance Specification.

They will also provide non-recurring engineering services on a competitive firm, fixed-price basis to deliver a custom-configured solution that will be subjected to a rigorous and formal customer acceptance testing process, which will serve to delineate and define the deliverables. This process will ensure that the customer can place informed reliance upon—and assume full responsibility for—a product that has been proven to meet their requirements. This service will, of course, be supplemented by a full range of post-delivery technical support services provided at appropriately competitive rates.

This allows ASTi to be responsive to those customers who want to flow all primary program execution responsibilities down to an external entity without contaminating our low pricing structure for those customers who prefer to avail themselves of the ASTi collaborative TSC/COTS procurement process.

To contact the Turnkey Projects group, please send a message to: gordon.baker@astiturnkey.com.

The benefit to the customer who uses this turnkey procurement process is that it dramatically reduces their perceived risk along with the need for in-house subject matter expertise at the implementation level.

It also allows them to avoid any investment in pre-proposal analysis. The disadvantage is, of course, that this additional administrative structure must be paid for in the turnkey price. It also imposes some significant costs and lack of flexibility associated with a formal ATG and hand-over process.

It should be noted that once a customer has invoked the analysis services of this group, ASTi will generally not provide our usual free pre-award technical services to configure and price an equivalent COTS system solution for the same requirement. That would, to quote a prominent politician, be tantamount to “Arguing with ourselves”.

* However, under these circumstances the buyer should beware that they are, by definition, soliciting the lowest priced compliant solution, and any change in system requirements may result in system growth and be chargeable as an ECP. (This is in strict contrast to ASTi’s usual COTS practice of defining a system that meets our projection of the customers requirements, versus the defined requirements.)