F-35: Progress on EVMS

Costs continue to come down in the program.  Here's another example:

The Pentagon has reduced its withholding of progress payments on Lockheed Martin Corp's F-35 fighter jet program to 2 percent from 5 percent after the company made "significant progress" toward fixing a deficient internal business system, according to a document obtained by Reuters on Monday.

Joe DellaVedova, spokesman for the Pentagon's F-35 program office, said the action had been taken at the end of August. He gave no details on the exact amount of money affected by the decision by the Defense Contracts Management Agency (DCMA).

The agency told Lockheed in a letter dated Aug. 30 that it decided to reduce the withholding amount after seeing "significant progress" toward improvements in the company's earned value management system (EVMS), which helps the company track cost, schedule and other risks to the F-35 program.

It said Lockheed had made progress on 15 of 16 capabilities required to regain certification of the system, and the company was expected to show continued improvement.

Funny how this all works.  You have audits, you address the problems the audits find, you make progress.  That's how every program works, although to listen to critics, it is only this program which has had any problems.

Graff