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Source: PRICE Systems

PRICE Systems was founded in 1975 as a business within the RCA Corporation. It is generally acknowledged as the earliest developer of parametric cost estimation software.
PRICE Systems’ cost estimating software was first developed in the 1970s when David Shore, a vice president in RCA's Government Group discovered that Frank Freiman, in the purchasing department, was able to predict the cost of military new systems with considerable accuracy before design was completed and a parts breakdown was available for cost estimation. Mr. Shore teamed Freiman with William Rapp, who transferred Freiman's relationships to software that could be run on a computer. This was used in a proposal RCA made to the USAF. When questioned by the Air Force, a presentation was made to them by Shore, Freiman and Rapp. The USAF demanded that RCA make this capability available to the entire industry as a condition for accepting its use.
Shore established a new group to be headed by Freiman to develop and run an organization
which Freiman named Programmed Review of Information for Costing and Evaluation (PRICE). PRICE related the basic costs of engineering and production to parameters that included a specification profile of units to be built, amount of work to be performed, the allowed schedule and resources available. It relied on the use of parametric relationships obtained through curve-fitting procedures that had been performed on a historical repository of significant cost data.
Originally a division of RCA and later a strategic business unit of Lockheed Martin, PRICE Systems is considered the pioneer in the science of parametric modeling because the PRICE parametric models were the first generally available computerized cost estimation software. PRICE became an independent, privately held company in 1998. Anthony DeMarco is the President and Managing Member of PRICE Systems L.L.C.