PSC: Services to remain over half of DOD buying

The Professional Services Council, an industry group, expects spending on services to continue to represent more than half of the Pentagon's buying.

However, the group's executives said they expect pressure on this spending to remain high as well.

PSC today releases its 2015 Vision Federal Market Forecast, an annual forward-looking report on the state of the market. The group also holds a two-day conference today and Thursday.

During a media briefing on the report, Alan Chvotkin, PSC's executive vice president and counsel, said services now make up about 55 percent of DOD's spending.

"I think it will hover right around there, but it will certainly be more than 50 percent," he said.

Chvotkin noted that services spending often includes work related to platforms, such as logistics support or repairs, and said PSC has advocated for the Pentagon to include that work in platform budgets.

Chvotkin said he remains "confident that sevices will dominate the marketplace, even with the pressure on spending."

In particular, Stan Soloway, PSC's chief executive, said during the call with reporters that he continues to see efforts to trim spending on headquarters support services for both the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the services.

Soloway also noted he'd like to see the Pentagon better manage services and recognize the complexity of this category of spending.

"Services is not a thing, it's not an industry," he said. "It's an amalgamation of completely different marketplaces."

"The idea that you can have a single sort of monolithic approach to managing services acquisition is not true," Soloway continued.