Tecolote develops, maintains and supports widely-used web-based and desktop software applications. We protect the integrity and efficacy of our software products through a rigorous change control process that employs state-of-the-art maintenance tools. Microsoft Corporation has designated Tecolote as a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner (MCP).

Automated Cost Estimating Integrated Tools (ACEIT) is a government funded automated architecture and framework for cost estimating, cost analysis, cost research, cost data collections, financial analysis, business case analysis, cost uncertainty analysis, and other cost analysis tasks. Similar to how Microsoft Office provides a suite of applications to automate office functions, ACEIT was developed by and for US Government cost analysts to provide a suite of applications to automate and facilitate cost analysis and budget development.

A key to ACEIT's power is an architecture that allows each tool to operate separately while maintaining the capability to automatically link together. This enables a user to quickly move from one function to another—from searching an electronics database to building a cost estimating relationship (CER), to including that CER in a life-cycle cost estimate, to assessing the uncertainty in the estimate, to running what-if drills, to generating reports and charts to populating PowerPoint presentations. Every feature in ACEIT is there because a Government cost analyst wanted it there to make their job easier.

ACEIT is the industry standard for developing cost estimates and automating the cost estimating environment. ACEIT is mandated for use by the U.S. Army and is strongly recommended by several organizations in the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, US Coast Guard, US Customs, Dept of Education, and NASA as well as international organizations such as the Australian DoD and NATO for cost estimating activities. Visit our web site for an up to date listing of Government, Support Contractor, Weapon System Contractor and Foreign users of ACEIT.

The ACEIT platform provides powerful capabilities for three distinct user types: the model builder/analyst, the model user, and the estimate/model reviewer. ACEIT brings structure and consistency to the cost estimating process. Tecolote delivers more than 30 ACEIT courses per year and has trained more than 8000 students.

For more information, visit www.ACEIT.com

Joint Analysis Cost/Schedule (JACS) is a Microsoft® Office add-in for Project that performs joint cost and schedule uncertainty analysis commonly referred to as Joint Confidence Level (JCL). It is a leading edge tool that supports various kinds of uncertainty, risk impacts, and costing profiles to produce a powerful uncertainty model within the Microsoft® Project interface. JACS is coupled with the ACEIT Scatter Plot Observation Tool (A-SPOT) which takes the numeric results and plots them on a variety of charts and graphs for visual analysis and reporting.

Key features include:

• The ability to distinguish between time-independent (TI) and time-dependent (TD) costs for a task.
• Uncertainty bands on duration, TI and TD costs.
• Support for risk events on tasks with a probability of occurrence and level of duration or cost impact.
• Defining spending profiles for tasks.
• Support of all logical linkages (e.g., finish-to-start, start-to-start) as well as all constraints (e.g., ASAP, SNET) within the probabilistic engine.
• Automated construction of an ACEIT model that can be further customized or tuned.
• Display of scatter plots of duration vs. cost, CDF, PDF, probability density by year, Sand charts of baselines, tornado charts for finding cost drivers, and an overlay chart of program events (i.e., key events in time during the project).
• Integration in Project opens up opportunities to use the interface for filtering, sorting, and viewing various fields used in JACS as well as baseline Gantt chart and other Project features.

Knowledge Web Services (KNWS) is a browser-based Enterprise Knowledge Management System used to organize, share, search and retrieve documents, Automated Cost Estimator (ACE) models and cost estimating relationship (CER) libraries. It also permits remote access to ACE built cost models from an easy-to-use browser interface. KNWS has built-in, multi-level security and very simple administration features. Once created, KNWS can be maintained by an analyst rather than a network administrator.

Key features include:

• Browser-based. Viewing, uploading/downloading, search, retrieval, site administration, user and folder management are all accomplished through a web browser allowing anywhere anytime access.
• Document Management. All types of documents can be organized, shared, searched, and retrieved. Custom based taxonomies can be created to facilitate document categorization. Detailed document cataloging capability to improve search/retrieval and publishing capability
• Browser-based ACE model execution without ACEIT application on the local machine. KNWS runs ACE models in the browser environment by integrating ACE's calculation engine into the application. Model execution is performed on the KNWS server.
• Online CER Libraries allowing dissemination of estimating methodologies throughout an organization.
• Secure Socket Layers (SSL) support for secured access and transmission of documents. This security measure allows KNWS to host non-classified "FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY (FOUO)" data on the Internet.
• Multi-level security can be implemented within KNWS to provide for customized access to system. View only, upload/download and deletion or management of documents and folders can all be customized down to the individual user.
• Automated broadcast email provides notification to KNWS users of published documents. Broadcast e-mails generated from KNWS show specific file(s), by category, that have been added or updated. This feature can be customized by site.
• System log tracks designated user-initiated activities such as logon/off; account creation, modification and/or deletion; permission modification on folders; document publication, modification, up/downloading and removal; and movement or deletion of document folders.
• System Statistics/Reports can be viewed online directly from KNWS by the Web site administrator.

KNWS is available via two options: 1) procurement of the KNWS application and installation on an organizations server; or 2) procurement of a hosted service allowing users to gain access to KNWS features without the expense of deploying and maintaining a server.

For more information see KNWS.