SAWE Paper No. 3468 (Boze & Hester, 2009) demonstrated
that uncertainty and risk can be quantified by coupling a
Monte Carlo simulation using Microsoft® Excel, mass
properties data, a work breakdown structure, uncertainty
categories, and derived probability distributions. The risk can
be assessed by evaluating the probability of occurrence, the
standard deviation, and the coefficient of variation resulting
from randomly varying the mass properties variable within an
uncertainty category’s probability distribution.

The original paper demonstrated this approach using data
collected over an 18 month period on an existing ship
acquisition program. The purpose of this paper is to broaden
the range of mass properties data used in the same simulation
model to a five year design acquisition life cycle in order to
gain increased insight into the use of this method. New
observations will be drawn as to the required number of
simulation runs, the various measures of risk, affects on risk of
physical platform changes to satisfy performance requirement
changes, as well as disclosing improved graphic methods for
displaying some risk data.