Why worry about weight growth?

Just in case anyone was wondering if there is any sanity in, or straight players in govt. contracting, I'd like to report that my first job out of college and as a 2nd Lieuy in the USAF was as an engineer in the vehicle management division at Warner Robins AFB.

In four years, I ran about $12,000 over on a total of about 60 contracts valued at 80M+.

In general, I could purchase, say, a pickup truck, for 30% the cost you could. In fact, I could buy a vehicle, run it round the clock for three years, and sell it used at a profit. In case there are any airman out there, I'm the guy that got the Air Force to stop spending money to rip the radios out of cars and trucks that were built with them. I proved that the resale value went up by $250 if it had a radio. I wrote the software and salvaged the computer out of DRMO that made those calcs possible. I hate stupidity, and I was given a pretty long leash when it came to circumventing it. I also was physically standing there when every penny of those overruns got spent. You need do do something, fine, but I'm going to be standing there when you do it. I flew 500 miles to see a $1000 change order take place, but I learned a lot. I spent half the year on the road for the first three years. Slept in the back seat of my car most trips. When I got hotel recommendations from contractors, I found my room was always bugged. Once, I was greeted by a creature larger than a bug that came with the room. At any rate, I was working with commercial or modified commercial products, and the military was a minor player compared to the commercial market. That made it a different game than the military only contractors. But the bottom line is we were effective and efficient.

I did get roped into a few contracts that were, um, outside my comfort zone. Among other things, I handled the infamous Miscellaneous Equipment class, which is everything leftover when they ran out of numbers in the stock class organization system. And here I saw all the crap that everyone else is referring to. Some bad ideas just won't go away if there is a congressman behind them. "Solutions" just keep looking for a problem to solve, meanwhile, production continues.

 

Ad Hoc is happy to comment on tender issues in his thread, if you don't like posts then don't read them.