"Boater" wrote in message
...


Supplied by the lowest bidder...


You know, this comment, that one hears all the time, is not exactly true.
The wording for government contracts is "lowest qualified bidder" or "lowest
technically qualified bidder".

We used to scan the Commerce Business Daily faithfully in the early days of
my company. It is a list of contracts or purchases to be made by any of the
gazillion government agencies, including military.
RFQ's (Request For Quotations) for anything more complex than toilet paper
were carefully written to basically disqualify everybody except the
preferred vendor, if in fact there was one. Often the RFQ would contain
wording like, "Acme Model 871 or equivilent". Well, unless your equivilent
was an exact copy of the Acme Model 871, down to the last nut, bolt and
color, the purchasing agent could justifiably discard your quotation, even
if your price was lower.

In a way it was good, because the government was also regularly ripped off
by having to award a contract to an unqualified, low-ball vendor who
happened to luck out and respond to a poorly written RFQ.

Our large government financed contracts were usually awarded by a prime
government contractor, like a Raytheon or a Litton who could solicit bids,
technical proposals and then pick and choose based on their own set of
qualifying standards.

Eisboch