Exploring the Management of Outsourcing and the Determination of Civil Engineering Minimum Manning Numbers in Order to Optimize Air Force Benefits

This thesis investigates the relationship between peacetime and wartime tasks for Air Force Civil Engineering career fields in regard to outsourcing. Relevant literature in civilian sector outsourcing techniques is then studied to determine how they decide on what to outsource and what to keep insourced. Peacetime tasks performed by individual career fields are correlated with the wartime tasks to determine if there is any valuable wartime training gained from the completion of peacetime work orders. Several interviews completed with Air Force Civil Engineer readiness experts to evaluate an importance factor for each career field wartime mission. This importance factor and the wartime correlation is then coded into a mathematical system dynamics model. This model enumerates different decision-maker profiles of outsourcing motivation in order to predict long term trends of manning authorizations given the wartime correlation and importance factors. Different specific dynamic cases are then discussed and possible predictors for optimization are suggested.Air Force Inst of Tech Wright-Patterson AFB Oh School of Engineering is the author of 'Exploring the Management of Outsourcing and the Determination of Civil Engineering Minimum Manning Numbers in Order to Optimize Air Force Benefits', published 1999 under ISBN 9781423545842 and ISBN 1423545842.