1. Checking Bid Compliance
Cross Compliance
Checking Bid Compliance
Interactive Engineering

2. 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

3. 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 no-one else has the detailed knowledge.
Interactive Engineering

4. 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

5. Turning Text into Semantic Structure
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.
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

6. 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

7. 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