DOD:Cut Price, Not Profit Price, not profit, is the focus of the Defense Department’s cost-cutting campaign, according to the department’s chief price cutter. Shay Assad, recently named to the new position of director of defense pricing, said DOD’s Better Buying Power initiative is not aimed at reducing contractor profits. “If we’re paying $100 for a product and included in that $100 is $10 of profit, we’d much rather pay $90 and if the contractor made $15 as a result of that, we’d be okay with that,” he said in an interview on Federal Newsradio in Washington. Assad said he is urging contracting officers to increase communication with industry, especially when writing requirements before issuing an RFP. “If we’re going to make a quantum leap in improving what we pay for goods and services, it’s going to be in this particular area,” he declared. But he acknowledged that some acquisition officials are nervous about talking to contractors because they fear being accused of favoritism. “We’re really spending a lot of time with our contracting officers, encouraging them to spend time discussing the requirement with contractors; that there’s nothing inappropriate about it. That the better that contractors understand our requirement, the more precise we are and exacting about what we want, the better proposals and the better competition we’re going to get.” He added, "What we're doing is we're trying to align profitability and performance." DOD hopes the intiative will save $400 billion over 12 years.