From: gpetty@rain.atms.purdue.edu (Grant W. Petty)
Newsgroups: sci.geo.meteorology
Subject: Re: Mission to Planet Earth
Date: 19 Aug 92 23:27:11 GMT
Distribution: na
Organization: Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Purdue University

In article <1992Aug14.222632.3632@gvl.unisys.com> hopkins@gvl.unisys.com writes:
>In article <56844@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> gpetty@rain.atms.purdue.edu (Grant W. Petty) writes:
>> [...]
>>>That's why EOSDIS is expected
>>>to be the largest civil computing contract in history, so I'm told.
>>>In fact NASA just requested Hughes and TRW (the bidders) to submit new
>>>cost estimates because the existing estimates were thought to be too low.
>>
>>This illustrates why government procurement has such a horrible
>>reputation for wastefulness.  Why not just say to the lowest bidder,
>>"OK, that's your estimate and you got our contract based on that
>>estimate; now we (and the taxpayers) are going to hold you to it, come
>>hell or high water, and make YOU eat any cost overruns!"
>
>Ah, yes, the happy co-operation of a contractor who's taking a bath.
>It makes for high quality work, good schedule performance, and top-
>quality equipment.  All the way to Chapter 11.  In your dreams.
>
>Seriously, nobody profits from a seriously underbid contract.  The
>agency has to brow-beat the contractor for every deliverable, the
>contractor cuts corners wherever he can, claims mount on both sides,
>lawyers and bean-counters are running the show, schedules are out the
>window, and nobody is happy *or* getting his money's worth.
>
>NASA has a responsibility to ensure that the bids are reasonable.  In
>this case, they have decided that neither is.  They should be commended.
>The bidders are being reminded that their bids should be reasonable so
>that they *can* be held to them.  Otherwise NASA can't rely on the system.
>
>	Bill
>


My point is that there would probably be fewer seriously underbid
contracts in the first place if the bidders knew that there would be
very limited tolerance for overruns.  I have always assumed (perhaps
simply out of an ingrained distrust of government contractors) that
some contractors deliberately underbid just to win the contract,
knowing full well the final costs will probably exceed the bids their
competitors had entered and that, with a little persistence, they'll
succeed in squeezing the difference out of Uncle Sam anyway.  At least
that's the conclusion the public is forced to by press reports of
chronic defense contract overruns.

It seems relatively rare that the government requests new bids on
account of blatantly low estimates, yet it seems relatively
commonplace for overruns to occur and ultimately be charged to the
government.  Something is therefore wrong, either with the
government's ability to spot underbidding or with their willingness to
fork out more money for overruns, or (possibly) with my perception of
what is really going on out there.

Of course, the above issues fade into insignificance in comparison
with the wasteful funding of so-called Big Science projects that have
the backing only of politicians and hardware engineers, not scientists
or the general public.  EOS is frighteningly big, but it at least
seems to have a generally accepted scientific rationale.  Whereas the
supposed scientific benefits of the Space Station (and any manned
mission to Mars) seem to elicit contempt from virtually every
scientist I have ever spoken to who is not directly funded to do
something with or for the Space Station.




-- 
Grant W. Petty                                gpetty@rain.atms.purdue.edu
Assistant Prof. of Atmospheric Science        (317) 494-2544
Dept. of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences     "All standard disclaimers apply"
Purdue University, West Lafayette IN  47907-1397