Why worry about weight growth?

No, engineer. but sometimes you have to be creative to keep your job.

 

100% correct, I have bid for and won several govt tenders for govt service craft knowing after reading the docs the RFT requirements were drafted by someone lacking experience so the boat was under spec'd for the proposed duty operations.
I came in with an 'at build cost' bid then at clarification submitted an alternative better proposal on a new budget.

Majority of maritime projects in Aus/NZ put out to tender are won by a principle contractor offering a cost or less than cost bid. The profits in the change of work orders and design revisions.

 

you means something like this? Note the names:

 

Its not really as diabolical as it first appears. The fact is that all these projects, software, technology etc are all so complex that it is impossible to quote on them, like the beancounters expect.

The poor old tenderers have to act like they have the answer, when in fact there are so many 'gotchas' that no-one has any idea what they dont know.

The old saying "We dont know what we dont know" applies exponentially as the scope of the job increases.

 

difficult to predict is one thing, intentionally and knowingly understating the cost just to land the contract is fraud.

 

Needless to say, the more open-ended the escalation clauses are, the more likely under-quoting will occur. But whether accepting the lowest tender ends up being more expensive than taking the highest, would be impossible to know before the event, and extremely difficult after.

 

Well, welcome to shipbuilding. That accounts for a very large %'age of how contracts are won. One particular shipyard, which shall remain nameless, we knowing were awarded contracts ahead of us, buy offering at significantly below cost price, significantly; their price was below the price of just the proposition system alone!! Since they were desperate for the work, anything to land a contract and keep the workforce intact.. The old saying of "a bad contract is better than no contract"...

 

I would, but right now I need my lawyer!

 

Yes, I cant argue with that. Ad Hoc's expansion is very pertinenet too

I always remember an old saying "Never sign a contract with anyone whose handshake wouldn't have been good enough in the first place"

It is obvious that the old 'pit digging' strategy must be used by so many unscrupulous operators.

In the software business - we used to joke about the scenario when a manager would say, "Oh, we just thought of something else we need ... " or "We forgot to mention that .... "

The proper reaction was to do a sharp intake of breath and look worried - like the tradesmen do

 

So true. Several of us dreads this one particular contractor who would always underbid a project. Their company was keeling over and in great debt . The only means to survive was to have a contract. That way, they can show the bank they are still in business and borrow money. What little money they earn goes to the bank in the form of interest.

Sometimes, surviving is cheaper than having to declare bankcruptcy.

 

Worse yet, in government projects the contractors know exactly how much money is on the table and exactly how much it would take the government to to the work themselves. This information is provided to them by their congressmen who approprate the monies.

Once we, a government shipyard, lost a bid to do some conversion work on a ship in our yard. We had to include overhead like security, cranes, dry docks, etc. in our bid. The contractor was given our bid and came in just under it...suprize! Then they showed up without welding machines, NDT, crane support, etc. and expected the government to supply it because it wasn't specified in the contract that they had to supply it. So the contract had to be re-negoaited so they got the money to pay us for the services we supplied and got a profit on top of that money also...ended up being twice as expensive as our first bid, yet the contract was held up as showing that the contractors were cheaper than government workers....

And don't even start me on ASDS....<pukes>.

 

Oh dear, that sounds just like the "SMART" initiative the UK Govt introduced in the late 90s to save the Govt money in procurement and get the best product at the best price. The resulting inferior products and over spends they bought, because some pen pusher thought now this really is "smart" procurement in action (but had never spent 1 minute inside a shipyard or looked at real things made) speak for themselves....utter nonsense!

 

Majority of times its the tender process Govt's use that cost the taxpayers unnecessary expenditure.

I have seen numerous examples of under spec'd SOR in tenders & EOI releases with the focus of the paperwork demanding the bidder prove they are compliant with a list of regulations designed not to weed out unskilled/qualified builders but to bias the selection process against out of state or country bidders.

In Victoria Australia, a special act requires all Govt tender bidders to prove/justify their submission will enhance the quality of life, improve living wages for next three generations from a distant engine supplier assembly worker to the guy hosing down the docks.

Several times bids from my accredited and approved company were hundreds of thousands under the winning bidder but I was from out of town. We once lost out a tender that we had the winning (better design) bid because the head of (water police) boat maintenance dept had a relationship with supplier of the existing under performing boats police mgmt were wanting to replace.

If we do win the bid for a govt tender they take control of the build using their advisers, typically butt covering govt employers with often really bad results.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-03-07/government-sues-over-dud-rescue-boat/4558196

There's so sentiment, level laying field or fair go with govt tenders

 

Meant to say 'There's no sentiment, level playing field or fair go with govt tenders

 

Get back to the original question !!!!

seems like yet another post that's lost its way from the original , get back to the original question not really interested in all this other rubbish