Engineering, capital, and policy judgment for companies building in aerospace and defense.
A student consulting group of Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College.
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Three practices, one account
We staff engineering, capital, and policy against the same problem, so the technical answer, the financial case, and the path to a government buyer are built to agree with each other rather than assembled separately.
Technical
Harvey Mudd engineers who have flown the hardware, not just read about it.
Finance
Capital strategy joined to federal contract pipeline analysis, run on primary data.
Policy
How the customer actually buys, from doctrine through procurement.
Modeled in a recent engagement
$635K
Modeled cost reduction per survey
90%+
Survey labour hours removed
7
Use cases scoped and specified
3
Practices on one account
Companies we have worked with
Scope
Your engineers are booked on production-critical work, and the useful but not urgent items never reach the top of the list: a legacy process audit, a speculative idea nobody can justify senior hours on, a landscape scan, a question the team stopped seeing years ago. That is what we take. We are not trying to out-engineer anyone, and we do not take on classified work, controlled technical data, or anything inside an export control boundary.
Scoping costs you one call. We will tell you plainly whether it is something we can help with.
Capabilities
CADA is a student consulting group of Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College that gives aerospace and defense companies engineering, financial, and policy analysis from a single team.
Technical
Harvey Mudd engineers who have flown the hardware, not just read about it.
Finance
Capital strategy joined to federal contract pipeline analysis, run on primary data.
Policy
How the customer actually buys, from doctrine through procurement.
How an engagement works
We ask what the actual gap is before proposing anything, and we ask what is off limits at the start rather than discovering it later.
Scope
A short call to find the actual gap. We ask what is off limits from the start, including anything export controlled or classified, before proposing anything.
Team
Three to five analysts, drawn from whichever practices the problem needs and led by a practice lead. A hardware question pulls the Harvey Mudd engineers, a capital or contract question pulls the finance practice, and most engagements draw on at least two.
Cadence
Engagements run on the academic semester, roughly twelve weeks, with a standing check-in every two weeks and a working session at the midpoint. Longer relationships continue across semesters as a new scope rather than an open retainer.
Deliverable
A written analysis with the model or dataset underneath it, and a presentation to whoever has to act on it. Interim material goes over as it is produced rather than being held back to the end.
Engagements
8 members · Claremont McKenna College · Harvey Mudd College
Technical
Engineering feasibility
3
Finance
Funding and federal contracts
4
Policy
Government procurement
1
Join CADA
Timeline
To be determined.
Eligibility
Open to every class year at Claremont McKenna and Harvey Mudd. No prior defense background is expected. What matters is that you can pick up an unfamiliar technical or regulatory subject quickly and write about it clearly.
Process
A short written application, then a conversation with two members about something you have built or analysed, then a final round working through a live problem of the kind CADA actually takes on.
Who we look for
Ready to apply
Applications are handled through the contact form. Tell us which practice interests you and what you have built or analysed.
Get in touchContact
Send the problem rather than a job description. The first call is a scoping conversation: we ask what is off limits from the start, including anything export controlled or classified, before proposing any work.