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SFAC - Spaceport Facility Construction and Outfitting tool

A Facilities & Ground Support Equipment Cost model

2005

The Project ¦ Contact

The Spaceport Facility Construction and Outfitting/Ground Support Equipment (SFAC) Cost Model was developed to aid Program Office planners, analysts and cost estimation teams by providing a flexible capability to estimate the non-recurring cost of acquiring the facility and ground support equipment operations infrastructure to support future programs. The tool, and those public portions of data that enable it's capability, will be available to both private and government organizations. Indirectly, this provides a capability for the private sector to better understand and estimate proposed infrastructure costs, while simultaneously providing NASA/government users an improved capability to support program decision makers requiring credible, and well understood, cost estimation.

The benefits of this development effort include:

  • The tool separates data from code. For teams, an Export/Import capability allows scenarios and analysis, including data, to be easily emailed as small files that can then be re-imported by other users. This capability allows a group of users to grow the tool capability, especially as regards data and specific analysis, by organizing and giving structure to that data.
  • The ability to play “what-if” scenarios on the computer prior to making large capital investment or more detailed study / development decisions.
  • Flexible capability to modify existing data to accommodate specific analysis scenarios.
  • Flexible capability to modify estimates based on the complexity, reusability or operational nature of the element objects that the facility and GSE is required for.

The Project:

  • Created a friendly graphic user interface (MS Access "*.mde" file) by which to organize and access an initial data store (MS Access "*.mdb" file) focused on facilities and ground support equipment costs and characteristics.
  • Implemented a scheme by which future efforts might conduct notional studies comparing the costs of certain facilities and equipment vs. others.

The Team & Acknowledgements:

Milestones:

  • Project complete January 2005.

Contacts, Further Information, Distribution:

The SFAC tool is freely available to government, industry and academia upon request. Please review all "models" in considering any need for a copy. Please state name and organization with the request.

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Also see:

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Website Contact: Edgar Zapata, NASA Kennedy Space Center