The challenge of forecasting the cost of complex military, aerospace and weapons projects

This paper will consider the spectrum of parametric cost models from cost estimating relationships (CER) to micro and finally macro-parametric models. This will lead to a description of the Family of Advanced Cost Estimating Tools (FACET) parametric suite of models and their top-down capability to estimate costs. One of the unique aspects of FACET is the utilisation of multi-colinearity. Typically, in cost research we are taught to discard one of the independent variables which exhibits this characteristic, but QinetiQ used it to enhance the accuracy of parametrics through the comparison of performance and design characteristics, thus improving the confidence in the model input parameters.