Contractor Inanity

[Stan]

Meh, I dunno: I've done all three points of the triangle (KO, PM, user), and I find the tripod to be one unstable structure. Suckitude of just one leg results in pain. For what it's worth, Army people that do this stuff all come from other branches; I think the Air Force is the only service where you can go right into some kind of acquisition field straight out of Basic Training/OBC. Army type officers have all at least commanded companies, and some were 3s/XOs prior to changing fields. NCOs are all reclasses from something else, as well.

It's State doing the contracting - Far worse than the Army could dork up. I initially had the pleasure of ordering and receiving which is far less painful but not without some drawbacks.

See, what I'd be interested in finding out is what the final spec for your widget looked like in the contract. Let's say your requirement as the user was for the widget to weigh, say, no more than ten pounds, be no more than (note I use "no more than" rather than "MUST be 8.123 pounds like the one we say at the trade show that we liked") a foot tall and a foot wide. You know what room you have to work with, and how much you can carry. You know what you want it to do, and that what you want it to do is in the realm of the possible.

Good point. After discussions with the vendor, I printed out my 1/2" of paper and shocked him. Been too quiet lately with me thinking "I really pissed some DC dude off this time" ! There's been disconnects before, but most work out.

What I'm guessing is that somewhere along the way, your requirement as the user got tweaked by the TRADOC people (assuming you are Army), and extra got added to the requirement, which drove size or weight up. If that's not the case, and the contract for the widget clearly sets thresholds in the design for the production version, then there's a problem that the Government has every right to claim remedy for. The Government doesn't just take it in the shorts if what was asked for isn't what was delivered; I don't know who's telling you that, but they're wrong on that count.

In this last case our widget specs did get tweaked based on funding limitations. I think someone should have got back with us and stated our expectations vs funds didn't jive. BUT, what good would it be to give me something I can't deploy simply because it fit into financial imitations? I thought it was logical to simply reduce the quantities by one or two til the end user-specified item could be had. Too simply ?

So anyway, the $1M question is: "what was the contractually-explicit specification vice what was delivered"? I know this doesn't help your situation at all (and I really don't know if we carry the same widgets), but it bears asking. If the lowest bidder isn't going to deliver the right item, the contract doesn't get awarded to them. This happens far more often than the reverse, but obviously doesn't sell newspapers were it to be published.

On paper the vendor fulfilled what the contracting officer required. Only later (the widgets have yet to arrive) did we (vendor and us) determine the widgets don't exactly fit the intended mission. Worse yet, some of the miscellaneous items for this widget are sub-contracts and the vendor claims being stuck in the proverbial corner.

I've been raising hell thus far, but the funds are committed and gone. The vendor has til the end of FY10 to have the goods here and training accomplished.

[J Wolfsberger]

In this last case our widget specs did get tweaked based on funding limitations. I think someone should have got back with us and stated our expectations vs funds didn't jive. BUT, what good would it be to give me something I can't deploy simply because it fit into financial imitations? I thought it was logical to simply reduce the quantities by one or two til the end user-specified item could be had. Too simply ?

...

On paper the vendor fulfilled what the contracting officer required. Only later (the widgets have yet to arrive) did we (vendor and us) determine the widgets don't exactly fit the intended mission. Worse yet, some of the miscellaneous items for this widget are sub-contracts and the vendor claims being stuck in the proverbial corner.

See my comment to Sandbag. Odds are:

1. The vendor didn't know what your mission/operation was - probably wasn't told and didn't ask.
2. Nobody wanted to go back and explain there was a disconnect somewhere in what you asked for/what was technically feasible/what was affordable.
3. I'm inferring that by "sub-contracts" you mean government furnished or specified components. Which means somebody failed in developing the specs (par for the course after point 1), or didn't want to upset someone else by attacking their (in this case) pet rock.

[Stan]

See my comment to Sandbag.

Hey John !
During two large contracts, this is exactly what went wrong. A very big Beltway Bandit with way too much on their plate - my contract ended up with a "logistics specialist" who unceremoniously dumped a line item because the potential vendor I had worked with before (and provided as a reliable source) was not their source. The log spec then ordered some other friggin doohickey that was not only incorrect for the intended application, but way too expensive resulting in me ending up short for my units.

Odds are:

1. The vendor didn't know what your mission/operation was - probably wasn't told and didn't ask.
2. Nobody wanted to go back and explain there was a disconnect somewhere in what you asked for/what was technically feasible/what was affordable.

Precisely ! All of the above

I'm inferring that by "sub-contracts" you mean government furnished or specified components. Which means somebody failed in developing the specs (par for the course after point 1), or didn't want to upset someone else by attacking their (in this case) pet rock.

Basically sub-assemblies that we refer to as "tools" (weapons) that are sub-contracted to a third party (your pet rock theory in action). By ordering a different widget and the sub-assemblies for that wrong widget, I end up with a logistical nightmare trying to store non-standard ammo and spares.

[Entropy]

The problem I've had when I'm at the unit level is that I have no input into the requirements. I'll get equipment that shows up on by doorstep and too often it sits around collecting dust. Most of these are intel systems that assume I'll have plenty of room when deployed, reliable power and good bandwidth. Frankly, if it can't fit or run on a laptop or an external hard drive then chances are it's not coming on the deployment.

[Pete]

A very big Beltway Bandit with way too much on their plate - my contract ended up with a "logistics specialist" who unceremoniously dumped a line item because the potential vendor I had worked with before (and provided as a reliable source) was not their source. The log spec then ordered some other friggin doohickey that was not only incorrect for the intended application, but way too expensive resulting in me ending up short for my units.

And the boll weevil said to the farmer,
"Farmer, I'd like to wish you well"
Farmer said to the boll weevil
"Yeah, I wish that you were in hell

Lookin' for home
Lookin' for a home
Ah, you have a home, all right
You'd have a home, real hot home."