Catalogue description Ministry of Aviation and successors: Directorate of Technical Costs: Registered Files (CON Series)

The Ministry of Aviation's Directorate of Technical Costs consisted of a number of component branches responsible for different types of supplies from different suppliers as well as an administrative branch, serving the Directorate's administrative needs, such as staff matters, accommodation and records. The functions of the Directorate included the preparation of estimates of appropriate prime cost of manufacture of supplies ordered by government departments to enable forward contract prices to be fixed; advice on incentive schemes and work systems; advice on managerial control of expenditure on unpriced research and development contracts; combined investigations with the Directorates of Accountancy services.

With the demise of the Ministry of Aviation in 1967 the Directorate of Technical Costs was absorbed by the Ministry of Technology. When, in turn, the Ministry of Technology was abolished its responsibilities for aerospace research, development and procurement (both military and civil) passed through the short lived Ministry of Aviation Supply to the Ministry of Defence, shedding some of the civil side, and by October 1971 had settled within the Ministry of Defence's Procurement Executive.