Download Bid Compliance - ORION Active Structure

Cross Compliance
Checking Bid Compliance
Interactive Engineering
The Compliance Problem
A specification comes in, a frenzy of work, a
bid goes out.
The specification can be voluminous and
detailed, and the bid will usually describe
what is being offered, not directly address
the requirements. A mistake can be costly.
How can we know the bid is compliant?
Interactive Engineering
Hard to Do Manually
Cross Compliance between specification and bid
can be a daunting task, with hundreds of separate
yet somewhat integrated requirements, requiring
the person to build up a model of how the
requirements interact.
The person who did the bid is probably the wrong
person to check for compliance, because of their
investment of time and effort in the bid, but noone else has the detailed knowledge.
Interactive Engineering
Compliance Checking
One way to do compliance checking is to:
• turn the requirements into their semantic structure,
• turn the bid into its semantic structure,
• use each requirement to search the bid structure
This way, we can automatically find requirements that
aren’t addressed, or are inconsistent with the bid.
Interactive Engineering
Turning Text into Semantic Structure
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3.2.4.3 Chapter 1, Space System Description. This
chapter shall describe the space system and supporting
facilities in sufficient detail to afford the reader a single
source document of general system information. A brief
narrative shall describe the purpose, main features and
leading particulars for the space system as described
below. Illustrations that clarify a particular system or
reduce the verbiage necessary for explanation shall be
included.
3.2.4.3.1 Description of the satellite. The description
shall be of sufficient detail to provide an understanding
of the purpose and function of the subsystems, their
relation to overall system operation, and such additional
information as to enable the crew member to
understand subsystem functions peculiar to the satellite.
Subsequent paragraphs shall describe in greater detail
subsystems peculiar to that satellite. Such information
shall include a general discussion of each major
subsystem.
Conversion of text into structure leaves behind all the problems of
text – passive or active voice, synonyms, mapping between relations
like Buy and Sell, references to other parts of the document.
Interactive Engineering
Comparing Structures
The two semantic structures are compared
automatically and structure in the specification that is
different in meaning, or is missing from the bid
document, is reported on.
Any ambiguity in the specification has already been
identified (it was checked as it came in), so where the
bid assumes a specific meaning, this possibility of
noncompliance is noted.
The degree of compliance can be assessed from the
report.
Interactive Engineering
Automatic Compliance Checking
Comparing semantic structures automatically is a
good way for management to ensure the process
is free of bias – the system hasn’t spent the long
hours doing the bid, and is not invested in the
outcome.
Interactive Engineering