wes@loft386.uucp (Wes Peters) (10/08/90)
In article <1990Oct1.160100.389@vaxa.strath.ac.uk>, cadp13@vaxa.strath.ac.uk writes: % IF, instead of contracting, % NASA were to employ people, whose SOLE concern was to get the crew up and down % again safely, rather than the ever present bottom line, it would lead to a % safer, more efficient launch system (and we might finally get this space % station off the ground :)) In article <5689@mace.cc.purdue.edu>, dil@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Perry G Ramsey) writes: > Essentially, I agree. It makes sense to buy things already made from > contractors if they are things that the contractor already makes: Unfortunately, this just doesn't work for any program that has a low production volume, such as the space shuttle. Anything that you only build on or two a year of is going to be essentially hand-crafted every time. This applies to expensive car toys (Ferrari F-40), expensive yacht toys (J-44), and expensive space toys (Shuttle). > It doesn't make sense to buy custom made and designed things from outside > vendors when the outside vendors have no real expertise at making > these things, except the expertise that they gained from the last > contracting job. The whole job of making specialized things could > be moved in-house, and you could leave out a whole lot of bureaucratic > tangle of people looking over the shoulders of people looking over > other people's shoulders. No, you would have one entire organization of bureaucrats looking over the shoulders of the producing organization of bureaucrats, and yet another organization of bureaucrats to settle jurisdictional disputes between the producers and the overseers. Thinking that having the government do something in-house would be more efficient than having it contracted out is ludicrous. > In most cases, the contractors in the > US don't even own their own plant or furniture. It's all paid for > by the government anyway. The contractor is essentially bringing > nothing to the deal, except that they know how to deal with > government paperwork. There is, in fact, an entire class of > company, disparagingly known as the "Beltway Bandit" (in reference > to the fact that many are located on the highway which surrounds > Washington, DC, the "Capitol Beltway") which essentially does nothing > but hire people who work under the direction of the Government. Actually, they bring two things into the deal: 1) knowing how to deal with the government paperwork, which quite often even the contracting government agency doesn't really know, and 2) people with the expertise to actually CREATE something; you just don't find those kind of people in the civil service. > There's one real problem. It is virtually impossible to hire > competent technical personnel at the salaries the Government > offers. The contractor salaries typically run 20-30% higher > that their NASA counterparts. At the top of the organization > it's much worse. The current contractor arrangement exists > to skirt around Civil Service regulations. Without a major > overhaul of Government hiring (and firing) policy, there's > no real hope of your suggestion being implemented. > > I think it's the right approach, though. I think you're entirely wrong. What we really need to do is reduce the granularity on government contracting jobs, in the space program, the defense industry, and elsewhere, and make it MORE competitive. The main problem with the current state of government acquisitions is that there is too much of a "whole ball of wax" concept. The government should run procurement in many steps, starting with a concept definition, to a requirements definition, to a preliminary design, then a pre-production model, and then multiple-source production contracts. Each step should be seperately competed, and not until the prior step is completed and results published. The "defintion" contracts and preliminary design should be level-of-effort or time-and-materials contracts until completion, with quarterly progress reviews. The pre- production model contract, uncluding tooling and production layout, should be cost-plus, and the production contracts should be firm fixed contracts with early completion bonuses. Every effort should be made along the way to use commercial-quality documentation and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) or non-developed item (NDI) production. The main expenditure in modern federal acqusitions is not the design or production of the systems, but the cost of documenting the system in the level of detail and REPETITIVENESS required by the Federal Acquisition Regulations. % PS > this might sound a little old fashioned, even socialist, but I'm afraid % that when it comes to space exploration, politics is just not of any concern. > I am a redneck right winger of strong credentials. My objection to the > current situation is that it corrupts capitalism. It's not free > enterprise when the government pays for everything and absorbs all the > risk, and the contractor makes a profit from it. It's all the > problems of socialism (sloth, inefficiency) with all the problems > of capitalism (rich people get richer for doing nothing.) If the rich people are getting richer for doing nothing, why did I spend a lot of last year working 60 - 70 hour weeks for no pay raise? I think you have been watching 60 Minutes or other TV news programs too much, and need a drastic reality check. For all the heat government contractors in general, and defense contractors in particular, have taken in the media over the past five years, keep in mind what these contractors have accomplished over the years - putting a man on the Moon, putting a lander on Mars, building entire floating cities that can circle the globe numerous times without refueling, and building a radar system that can track small objects as far away as the asteroid belt. -- Wes Peters wes@loft386 {bigtex, uunet}!loft386!wes Sail South Dakota... they'll never believe you on the coast!
dil@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Perry G Ramsey) (10/11/90)
In article <1990Oct8.031849.27121@loft386.uucp>, wes@loft386.uucp (Wes Peters) writes: > Anything that you only > build on or two a year of is going to be essentially hand-crafted every > time. This applies to expensive car toys (Ferrari F-40), expensive yacht > toys (J-44), and expensive space toys (Shuttle). > > > Thinking that having the > government do something in-house would be more efficient than having it > contracted out is ludicrous. > Thinking that one bureaucratic organication contracting production out to another bureaucratic organization would be more efficient than producing it by the first bureaucratic organizaion is ludicrous. > > In most cases, the contractors in the > > US don't even own their own plant or furniture. It's all paid for > > by the government anyway. The contractor is essentially bringing > > nothing to the deal, except that they know how to deal with > > government paperwork. There is, in fact, an entire class of > > company, disparagingly known as the "Beltway Bandit" (in reference > > to the fact that many are located on the highway which surrounds > > Washington, DC, the "Capitol Beltway") which essentially does nothing > > but hire people who work under the direction of the Government. > > Actually, they bring two things into the deal: 1) knowing how to deal > with the government paperwork, which quite often even the contracting > government agency doesn't really know, and 2) people with the expertise > to actually CREATE something; you just don't find those kind of people > in the civil service. Why don't you find them in the Civil Service? (the pay issue, principally) The people who work for contractors essentially work for government agencies their entire careers anyway. Arch Hughes in a followup to your article makes a point about hiring painters to paint his house. By my original rules (hire someone from the outside if he brings outside experience to the job) contracting painters to paint your house makes sense. They already know how to paint houses, and own most of their own equipment. When they finish the job, they go on to work for a different customer. If, however, you had a whole lot of houses to paint over many years it would make more sense to hire the painters as your own employees. Which is what the government should do with the people who are now operating as contractors. > > I think you're entirely wrong. What we really need to do is reduce the > granularity on government contracting jobs, in the space program, the > defense industry, and elsewhere, and make it MORE competitive. The main > problem with the current state of government acquisitions is that there > is too much of a "whole ball of wax" concept. The government should run > procurement in many steps, starting with a concept definition, to a > requirements definition, to a preliminary design, then a pre-production > model, and then multiple-source production contracts. I can buy some of this. It's just that the contractors are not really in a position to do the concept definition, requirements definition, preliminary design, or pre-production. The government is the customer and if they don't have the expertise to do all of this, they are in no position to decide whether the contractor is doing it right. The old way of having the government lab bringing the idea up to the production stage and then multi-sourcing the production makes sense to me. That is competitive, which is what you are insisting on. The reason competition doesn't work in the first stages is that it is impossible to evaluate whether what is being done is right. The government has to know what it wants before it can issue a firm contract to have it done. > Each step should be seperately competed, and not until the prior step is > completed and results published. The "defintion" contracts and > preliminary design should be level-of-effort or time-and-materials > contracts until completion, with quarterly progress reviews. A level of effort contract is essentially just renting employees at a very high cost. It should only be used to rent people who have otherwise developed some unique skill. It doesn't make sense to rent forever. > Every effort should be made along the way to use commercial-quality > documentation and commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) or non-developed > item (NDI) production. When you start putting unsuitable hardware in space because it was readily available, things get really expensive (heavy, unreliable, doesn't stand the environment, etc.) > The main expenditure in modern federal > acqusitions is not the design or production of the systems, but the cost > of documenting the system in the level of detail and REPETITIVENESS > required by the Federal Acquisition Regulations. All of that FAR stuff is to make sure that the government isn't getting ripped off. The trouble is that they have built a system where the expertise is at the contractor's facility, so it's difficult to decide technically if they are or they aren't. > If the rich people are getting richer for doing nothing, why did I spend > a lot of last year working 60 - 70 hour weeks for no pay raise? I think > you have been watching 60 Minutes or other TV news programs too much, > and need a drastic reality check. You're getting a little personal here, but I'll overlook it. My experience comes from six years working for aerospace contractors, not from listening to 'Inside Edition' distort the facts. By rich people getting richer, I refer to the stockholders (myself included) who essentially provide nothing to the taxpayer except the sign on the door and then geting a profit from it. Note that as a stockholder, I think this is a swell deal, but as a taxpayer and one interested in the exploration of space, I'm not so happy about it. > For all the heat government contractors in general, and defense > contractors in particular, have taken in the media over the past five > years, keep in mind what these contractors have accomplished over the > years - ... (listing of government funded projects) And I still insist that the contracting company provided nothing to the government. Everything from the pencils on up was paid for by the government, and the contractor just wrote the paychecks and made the recruiting trips. The people on the floor (apparently yourself included) did what they did out of some sort of devotion to the program, and the fact that they were working for GD, or MCDAD, or Rockwell, or whoever didn't really make any difference. There is a pretty common phrase among employees in the business: "changing badges". This means that you have changed contracting compainies, but you are still essentially working on the same stuff. That's probably the best example I can think of illustrating the (lack of) value that the contracting companies bring to the equation. Somewhere in this thread I did support the notion that the contractors were essentially honest, just operating in a rotten environment. Some of the comments we are making here might help that. -- Perry G. Ramsey Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences perryr@vm.cc.purdue.edu Purdue University, W. Lafayette, IN USA dil@mace.cc.purdue.edu We've looked at clouds from ten sides now, And we REALLY don't know clouds, at all.
jcburt@ipsun.larc.nasa.gov (John Burton) (10/11/90)
Just my two cents worth: When the government contracts for something (Space Shuttle, Fighters, Tanks, whatever) much of the excessive cost comes from two areas: 1) the additional level of red-tape needed to first oversee the operations of the contractor and to second audit the expense reports (cost overruns) of that contractor, and 2) research and development costs. R&D is a great place to generate cost overruns. The contractor can *always* say that the R&D took longer and cost more than originally anticipated because in a sense it is true. When breaking new ground or coming up with a new generation of technology, the R&D is NOT straight forward. It is almost impossible to accurately predict how long and how expensive it will be to come up with the needed breakthroughs. There is an old saying that research is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration. Its possible to estimate the time and expense for the perspiration, but impossible to estimate the time and expense for the inspiration. But without the inspiration, all the perspiration is just about worthless. Because of this, contractors can basically charge whatever they want for R&D. A possible solution is to NOT have the contractors do the R&D work. Have some of the universities or national labs do the basic research for a particular project. (Basically the "think tank" concept.) Next, have NASA or the Air Force or Navy or whoever is interested in the project work with the research lab to develop one or two prototypes to prove the basic concepts and design. Finally turn the project over to the contractor to polish the design and mass produce the (whatever). This way, the government agency gets exactly what it wants instead of what the contractor thinks it can get away with. Perhaps have NASA be an intermediate development agency between the basic research and the aerospace development efforts of the Navy and Air Force instead of having a duplication of effort... again, just my $.02 worth... John Burton (jcburt@cs.wm.edu) (jcburt@ipsun.larc.nasa.gov)
David.Anderman@ofa123.fidonet.org (David Anderman) (10/18/90)
If your concern is over reducing overhead, why not look at HR 2674 (the Space Transportation Service Purchase act)? It would reduce launch costs by getting government out of much of the costly oversight. Your congressperson would be happy to give you a copy of the bill.... -- David Anderman Internet: David.Anderman@ofa123.fidonet.org --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dan.Daetwyler@p14.f7.n391.z8.fidonet.org (Dan Daetwyler) (10/26/90)
WP> For all the heat government contractors in general, and defense WP> contractors in particular, have taken in the media over the past five WP> years, keep in mind what these contractors have accomplished over the WP> years - putting a man on the Moon, putting a lander on Mars, building WP> entire floating cities that can circle the globe numerous times without WP> refueling, and building a radar system that can track small objects as WP> far away as the asteroid belt. Unfortunately, you just demonstrate you don't understand the problem. After all, the contractor's didn't ask the media's permission... they just went ahead and did the job. They didn't even ask Slimey Sam how they should do the job. They had the horrible efrontery to consider they might know more about their area of expertese than he did. Finally, they didn't devote 50% of their efforts to saving the "starving masses". In fact they didn't even check with the media to determine who the "starving masses " were, this week. Being a "conservative", slightly to the right of Kahn, I strongly support free speech, but the media frequently causes me to question my beliefs. D Squared
Dan.Daetwyler@p14.f7.n391.z8.fidonet.org (Dan Daetwyler) (10/26/90)
JB> get away with. Perhaps have NASA be an intermediate development JB> agency between the basic research and the aerospace development JB> efforts of the Navy and Air Force instead of having a duplication JB> of effort... JB> again, just my $.02 worth... You'll still face the problem of NASA trying to be the "system manager". This would be great, if... In order to be a good manager, you have to know something about the job you're trying to do. All to often management tries to "manage" something they aren't technically qualified to manage. Almost invariably, disaster results. This isn't saying NASA isn't filled with qualified people. It is a statement that they do "over manage" in esoteric areas that they do NOT have sufficient knowledge of. And it i s also to say that NASA has the same bureacracy problems that all large organizations have. All too frequently technical decisions are made for purely political reasons. One of the standard "contractor" jokes about NASA was the one about "testing". NASA's standard test was "to destruction". Then repair and test five more times. Now use the product in a live mission. This kept NASA "clean" politically, when something went wrong, but didn't do much to keep costs down, or get on with the job. I know of one case where the "repair" after test cost more than a new device would have cost, but NASA insisted on the original device being "repaired". D Squared