Much has been written about planning and progressing as applied to manufacture, but there is a noticeable lack of information on its application to the design work which must precede construction.

It is in order to help fill this gap that the present paper has been written.

The paper deals with planning applied to the development of prototype aircraft from the time of submitting a tender up to the first flight of the first prototype.

It discusses the methods of estimating the lapsed time up to first flight, the design man-weeks likely to be expended, methods of measuring design progress and the cost of design changes.