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Mr. Luddite

On 4/16/2017 10:49 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2017 19:39:10 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

On 4/16/2017 7:26 PM, wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2017 17:54:26 -0400, "Mr. Luddite"
wrote:

Heh. And they call me Luddite. :-)

I can give you some first hand, much more contemporary examples of what
it's like to be under contract directly with the DoD or as a second tier
sub to major DoD contractors, but it would take a book and bore the hell
out of anyone. Let's just say that they are not as free spending as you
might like to believe and there are reasons for it.

I am not saying you are wrong Greg. It's just that things have changed
over the years.

Nobody ever said they treat small contractors fairly. Too bad you
weren't Raytheon but that still does not excuse the inefficiency of
the whole appropriation, development, deployment and scrapping
process.
How many times did they change the specs on you and expect you to eat
the cost? Did you?

I had many contracts with Raytheon's DoD division and with other major
DoD contractors. Also had a few contracts directly with the DoD.

No, I wasn't expected to "eat" a change in spec that affected our work
but there really were not that many of them. I did a pretty good job at
responding precisely to their RFQ's, because our proposal usually became
part of the contract. Any technical issues or requirements that might
be subject to "interpretation" were ironed out before the contract was
signed. I had learned the hard way in another company. The company
lawyer I had told me I would have made a good corporate contracts
lawyer. No thanks.

You were either very good or very lucky. I had lots of customers with
DoD contracts (My office was called "Washington Defense" until they
changed it to GEM Government, Education and Medical).
They were always complaining about trying to hit moving targets.

I learned to write very detailed technical proposals that not only
indicated acceptance of the RFQ stated requirements but also described
in detail *how* we would meet them. Usually that sort of detail wasn't
spelled out until the critical design review after you were under
contract. Putting that effort into the proposal avoided
"interpretation" disputes later.

I also earned a reputation for stating what RFQ requirements I felt we
could *not* meet and why. That approach won us a $750K contract when
the company was only 8 months old and nobody had ever heard of it. The
program manager called me after getting our proposal and told me they
didn't think the requirement could be met either and we were the only
respondent who took exception to it. Everyone else had simply accepted it.

I didn't take exception due to arrogance. I knew that accepting a
questionable contractual requirement could put me out of business. :-)