Pinnacles participates in The BARDA Industry Day: Contracting for Countermeasures on October 17-19, 2011

Pinnacle participated in the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) conference - BARDA Industry Day: Contracting for Countermeasures on October 17-19, 2011 in Boston.

Pinnacle’s goal in attending the conference is to ensure we stay up to date with the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority Contracting Process.  This ensures that we can provide current information to help our clients with BARDA requirements for Earned Value Management, Program Management, Scheduling, and Cost Estimating for proposals and execution after contract awards. 

Once again, the topic of Earned Value Management was discussed at length during the BARDA conference and there is still a lot of confusion in the Biotech community about the requirements from BARDA.  Pinnacle has seen the same issues with organizations in the Biotech community pursuing NIH and NIAID contracts.

As in previous sessions BARDA dedicated a presentation specifically to Earned Value Management.  The requirement for the use of EVM was stressed in this session and in Pinnacle’s one on one sessions with Contracts and Technical leadership at BARDA.  BARDA is in the process of adding EVM specialists and Systems to assist clients with monitoring the ongoing quality of submissions and contract execution.

Conference participants were shown presentations that covered the BARDA suggestions and requirements for creating Product Development Plans.  This included several Earned Value and Program Management deliverables that Pinnacle has helped our BARDA and NIAID customers produce.  These include:

• Work Breakdown structures (including work packages)
• WBS dictionaries (covering BARDA contract milestones and Program deliverables)
• Schedules and Integrated Master Schedules
• Statement of Work (cross referenced to the WBS and the Product Development Plan)
• Risk Management Plan and Risk Register
• Subcontractor Management Plans

Pinnacle has been supporting our clients with:

• The development of BARDA and NIH proposals
• The rapid changes required during final submission
• The transition from proposal to execution upon award 
• Successful submission of a Performance Measurement Baseline
• Operations of the Program Management and Earned Value Management systems

Please contact us to discuss your BARDA proposal preparation and Earned Value Management Requirements.