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pebble_hopeful
28th Jan 2011, 17:40
Hopefully this will cause some good discussion.

After rubbish government decisions do BAE come second as responsible for the decline of the armed forces?

As it seems they royally **** up anything they get there hands on.

Has there been anything they have done that has been a roaring success for the military and on time :) ?

Jollygreengiant64
28th Jan 2011, 18:06
BAE has a monopoly over the 'defence' sector of the market, as such it means it is free to do as it damn well pleases, charge what it likes to an extent and generally be inefficient. I believe the reason for the mergers of the separate companies was that some were not doing well, but surely by breaking up BAE the competition produced by the resulting companies would help the market, and the British taxpayer's wallet?

Small Spinner
28th Jan 2011, 18:19
I'm not sure whether there are any other defence companies who do this business that could turn out an ultra safe and current air platform, with the type of management processes being used today.

The complexity of modern systems, their integration, and the whole project management ethos, compete against it happening.

Changes that I saw happening on the MRA4 project, and the subsequent change in engineering direction, took sometimes months to happen. It was like turning a supertanker, painfully slow and cumbersome.
Every change that the PT kept making, and still make in current projects, screws up the whole process, sometimes requiring the engineer to have to go back to scratch. By the time a decision is made, some parts are obsolete, or have only a limited shelf life.

BAE are not alone in being late in delivery, and the lack of research and development, mitigates against rolling out any new project.

I loved my time on the Nimrod, and it is a great platform for maritime surveillance, but the a redesign of the whole aircraft, would surely have solved many of the problems. Crappy autopilot, over long flying control cable runs, fuel balancing linked to a poor C of G issues, too small a rudder etc etc
If it wasn't one thing it was going to be another, and I have a feeling it was going to go through several more problems, as it came into service.

Jimmy Macintosh
28th Jan 2011, 18:35
BAES are not a monopoly in the defense sector. The last aircraft they produced on their own was the hawk. Aircraft and defence are a global industry. The Apache, C-130, C-17 and Dave are not BAE vehicles, yet are in or will be in the UK defense forces.

(As stated above) The problem is that all large companies move at the speed of frozen treacle and have to have stacks of red tape, sorry 'procedures' in place to ensure quality and conformity, as demanded by any reasonable customer. Do you really think that the customer doesn't change requirements during the process? Who foots the bill for that? do they allow a reasonable change to delivery date or make you absorb it in the current schedule?

If the contract limited costs, had proper risk sharing, reasonable methods to exert against change, and incentives/punishments then there is the chance it'll be successful. But all of that requries a special team of people to keep an eye on it and another layer of red tape.

I thought business culture was trying to move away from the blame game and move into a lessons learned culture.

I'm just a lowly engineer, that has witnessed the above rather than have been directly involved.

Kengineer-130
28th Jan 2011, 18:46
Speaking from an objective viewpoint, the MOD are as much to blame as BAE in most cases, never sticking to the original plan, wanting to make ridiculous changes in spec, then moving the goal posts once they are set. :ugh:..

The whole defence procurement policy is deeply flawed, and will remain an utter farce until the people on the coal face (From Sqn Execs to SAC's) get an input into the kit & equiptment we actually need..

The biggest problem the RAF has, quoting an old poster on here, is that if the RAF wanted a dog, they would buy a cat because it's cheaper, and give it surgery. :ugh:

The amount of useless kit we have turn up is comical, but a hideous waste of money. One of the prime examples was a tripod required to mount a peice of test equiptment, cost the RAF £10,000 :hmm:, googling the part number revealed an IDENTICAL item for £299.99 :D.. Who authorises these things? :mad:

Small Spinner
28th Jan 2011, 18:49
Jimmy,
Absolutely right, however we may be moving away from the blame culture, but so far I haven't seen much evidence that lessons are learned and fed back into the process.
There is all too much of the box ticking culture, that Haddon-Cave warned against.

Pontius Navigator
28th Jan 2011, 19:03
It is possible that Boeing and BAE have a totally different ethos on the contracts?

With Boeing they come up with a technical proposal to produce a system to meet the SOR. If a change is then required they will provide a cost estimate of such size that there is really no prospect for deviating from the original Spec. This means that their product can be produced in a standard form in a fairly short time scale.

BAE, OTOH, with no production line to start with will agree to any change in the SOR almost to keep the customer sweet and the money rolling in. The result? A rolling goat.

Is that about right?

Would it have been better to award an aircraft contract to BAE and a systems contract to a different contractor?

Sun Who
28th Jan 2011, 19:37
Read the Defence Industrial Strategy from 2005 to see the extent to which BAE had successfully insinuated itself into the thinking of government and achieved preferential treatment:

http://www.mod.uk/nr/rdonlyres/f530ed6c-f80c-4f24-8438-0b587cc4bf4d/0/def_industrial_strategy_wp_cm6697.pdf

Sun Who

davejb
28th Jan 2011, 19:54
Largely immaterial,
lessons learned, I suggest, amount to this -

1) Do not give a British company a contract that isn't more watertight than a duck's ar$e

3) Don't let a civil servant oversee it, unless they have shown (via smaller contracts enroute) that they can actually run a contract without swapping a good dinner every three months for several million of taxpayers' cash.

8) Don't, for Christ's sake, let any senior officers near the trough, as they would sell Granny for a job in defence on retirement, and will happily sign anything as long as they get a non-executive directorship down the line.

14) Consider (in due course, in the fullness of time, when the moment is apposite, etc etc - insert 'Sir Humphrey speak' here as required') allowing somebody from the armed forces who knows what is needed to provide oversight - non technical advice, where somebody with an ounce of brains says 'we don't need that' and 'we do need this'... just by way of advice, like.

Naaah, it'll never happen, thank **** I'm old and won't have to see the final result of 'civilisation' on this moron inhabited planet....

Dave

(Paragraphs numbered iaw contract numbering regulations, dept of dead on accountancy, HMG).

Cows getting bigger
28th Jan 2011, 20:07
Can someone remind me where BAes largest single customer base lies? :hmm:

Mend em
28th Jan 2011, 21:10
DJB

I think you should come off the fence on this one...

As a push back, what did the 80-100 RAF pilots, navs, back-end operators, engineers, tradesmen, who were permanently based in the NW, integrated into the BAES organisation, with signing and veto powers, do for the last 15 years? Or did I miss something - did they all go native immediately they walked through the gates of hell onto an industry site, were they all intimidated into silence by the mighty industrial giant, or were their thoughts squashed at birth by their senior officers trying to line up a nice pension from 10 years out? Or are you just a bit wrong?

Dengue_Dude
28th Jan 2011, 21:36
You can blame BAES if you wish, blame the government, blame life - blame everything.

A company THAT large does move like treacle, and in the course of these large projects the world moves on, things change.

Governments change, policy changes and the Armed Forces have to change in accordance with the latest policy shift (which may or may not be justified, but they are the Lords and Masters).

So the goal posts shift. It's not really anybody's fault, it's just life.

40 years ago, saying jobs-for-life would disappear would have been treated with derision. Sadly, it's the world we now live in.

But, if it makes you feel better, blame BAE. If not them, WHO are YOU going to choose? At least the jobs are generally British ones.

Rigga
28th Jan 2011, 22:08
I think the problem was /IS that both the RAF and BAE were in the same bed together (and spooned too! but you'll have to guess who's in front)

The relationship was that of closeness but was too close. There didn't/doesn't seem to be any real supplier/customer relations - just relations!

To be efficient you need to be driven (by commerce?) not willing to wait for your friend to come up with some more excuses.

It's the reason that you shouldn't arrange for your in-laws to build an extension on your house. You'll just keep getting put further and further back on their list of "other" jobs.

soddim
28th Jan 2011, 22:17
In my experience most of the blame for the overpriced ineffective and obsolescent equipment entering service should be laid fairly and squarely at the door of MOD. The blue-suiters in MOD must carry the burden of this. Most of them in my day didn't seem to know what the Service needed or wanted and they changed faces at such a rate to pursue their careers that there was no continuity of decision making. Couple this with no commercial acumen and you have a system that any company could make hay with - and they did.

Mend em
28th Jan 2011, 22:40
So far - we have RAF types being ineffective when on industry sites (see DJB), we have RAF types ineffective when in DE&S (see soddim); seems like we shouldn't be letting them loose off a station (other than when the world is perfect, sitting in the front or back of a US 'off the shelf' aircraft)!!

Mechta
28th Jan 2011, 22:51
The amount of useless kit we have turn up is comical, but a hideous waste of money. One of the prime examples was a tripod required to mount a peice of test equiptment, cost the RAF £10,000 http://images.ibsrv.net/ibsrv/res/src:www.pprune.org/get/images/smilies/yeees.gif, googling the part number revealed an IDENTICAL item for £299.99 :D.. Who authorises these things?

Someone probably insisted it went through a standard MOD validation & verification process for which the original manufacturer wasn't prepared to pick up the tab (because of the relatively small number of sales the MOD would order). There would be an outcry if the tripod was bought, went through all the rigmarole of being added to the stores system and then repeatedly failed in service. You can't have your cake and eat it.

Rigga
28th Jan 2011, 23:01
Crumbs!
The ruddy incompetent MOD "leadership" hasn't got over the 1970's "£40 1/2lb Hammer" scandle/Scam yet!

...It's no wonder....

Ogre
29th Jan 2011, 00:30
OK. two points to make
1. Any civillian contractor working on a military contract has to deal with the fact that every three years or so the customer (i.e. the officer he has been dealing with) gets posted and someone new comes along. That someone new has their own ideas of what they want, and wants to know why decisions have been made the way they have. This inevitably leads to changes in the specification.
2. Any change to the product, at any point in the process, requires time and money to implement. The figure I get quoted on a regular basis is "a thousand bucks just to change the drawings". That drawing change could be as simple as changing the part number, or sticking a label on.

So, from point 1 above, any new "customer" who wants changes will delay the project and cost money.:ugh:

And believe me, in order to do a thorough, professional job and not leave the company open to liability if something goes wrong, we the engineers have to take the time and money to get it right. BAE seem to be singled out a lot recently, but I reckon a lot of firms in the same line of business are saying "there but for the grace of god..."

phil9560
29th Jan 2011, 02:09
Shouldn't that that order have come in at around errr the year 2000 ?

Where is it ?

Ok - who's dealing with it ?

Get your coat and get out.

Too late.

seafuryfan
29th Jan 2011, 07:53
Post No 8 (Sun Who's link)

I had a look at that link to 'Defence Industrial Strategy', a weighty 5mb tome full of analysis, graphs etc and a very impressive photo of dozens of suits of the 'National Industries Defence Council' around a table on p18. It's hard to believe that no one in the photo was in denial about what was going to happen. As you say, BAe do feature pretty heavily!

tucumseh
29th Jan 2011, 09:03
Davejb

3) Don't let a civil servant oversee it, unless they have shown (via smaller contracts enroute) that they can actually run a contract without swapping a good dinner every three months for several million of taxpayers' cash. Correct. Spot on.


A lesson in MoD(PE)/DPA etc civilian staffing. With a few exceptions, the lowest technical grade is PTO2/ HPTO/C2 (or TTO equivalents, depending how old you are!).


In the late 80s, the absolute minimum experience for a specialist avionic engineer HPTO in MoD(PE) seeking promotion to SPTO (C1) was to have managed a raft of radar, sonar, comms, navaids, EW and ELINT projects, in each stage of the procurement cycle. He will have already served at up to 5 previous grades, been a project manager in at least one lower grade (e.g. minor works at a workshop), an Engineering Authority and very often an HQ “staff” job as what is now called Requirements Manager.

(Tell me, how many in DE&S have that background?”)

To attain promotion, he had to satisfy a promotion board consisting of 3 persons, all at least two grades above him, that he was suitable to fill ANY post at the higher grade.

By the late 90s, the C2 merely had to have been bagman for his boss for a year and, if he knew how to write, minutes secretary at a few meetings before going in front of a board. The board could partly consist of staff JUNIOR to him, normally some clerk in Personnel (sorry, Human Resources). He merely had to persuade them that, in time, he would become reasonably competent in the post he was applying for.

As I’ve said before, not many Wg Cdrs on here would be happy if their promotion was determined by a Pilot Officer (with all due respect to any POs). And you wouldn’t expect a 21 year old graduate who’d never been near an aircraft to be appointed Senior Pilot. But, effectively, that is what happens daily in MoD acquisition. Looking at the DE&S senior staff list, I think I’m fairly safe saying that not one of them meets the 1989 criteria for the most junior post in PE.



I have a feeling recent events (Nimrod cancellation and the SAR-H fiasco) will be right up Bernard Gray’s alley, and his proposal to privatise procurement/acquisition (not yet clear he understands the difference) will be pushed forward. BAeS and others will be knocking at his door already. Think of the money they'll save not having to bid for contracts. They'll just run the whole show under a consultancy contract. Rest assured, they were working on their proposal long before Gray submitted his report.

Dengue_Dude
29th Jan 2011, 10:23
Ogre:

Oh, you are SOoo right.

Was that from the heart, or do you KNOW?

NutherA2
29th Jan 2011, 18:19
22 posts on a thread entitled BAE and nothing from Beagle! Hope you're just on holiday, Beags, and not unwell.

Herc-u-lease
29th Jan 2011, 19:07
I was glad to see tucumseh put his point in; he’s usually bang on the money with procurement/PT and is this time too.


As for whether BAE is to blame or not – I don’t think they are to blame. Any contractor will only be as poor as the customer allows them to be. To pick on tucumseh’s point, the lack of experience in managing complex contracts has led to ineffective management of the contractor. Just because you’ve had the training, doesn’t mean you have the experience to make the right judgment. If the contractor fails to succeed on the program and gets a bad profit/report (I work in a slightly different acquisition system to DE&S) then the government manager is equally to blame. Successful requirements stability is, IMO, a function of a solid requirements generation process and strong project leadership on both the government side and the contractor side; this will ensure cost, schedule, performance are met. I fully understand the glacial time periods needed for config/requirement change – it’s not easy as earlier posts have alluded to.

There is also the macro-economic view to consider, in that the Government has some responsibility for national industry for the good of UK PLC. I truly believe in fair competition and a free market economy, but some core competence has to be retained by the UK to meet the political aims and foreign/defence policy. BAE has very cleverly (and sensibly) diversified away from over reliance on the UK defence market, which it holds a huge stake in. To be successful in other markets, they must be competitive. As an example, they cannot expect the USA gov’t to give them an easy ride on certain contracts to keep jobs alive.

The only people to blame are, either rightly or wrongly, the politicians, who make the calls for the good of wider economy, and ineffective management for letting the contractor fail or allowing reqm’t changes when it really is too late in the project.

davejb
29th Jan 2011, 20:03
Thanks Tuc,
and as for Herc - U - Lease

The only people to blame are, either rightly or wrongly, the politicians, who make the calls for the good of wider economy, and ineffective management for letting the contractor fail or allowing reqm’t changes when it really is too late in the project.

Quite right. I note that most of my recent posts (those since 1901, approx) tend to speak ill of politicians, but the simple fact is that these are the people supposedly empowered - at no small cost - to supervise departments/ministries and to make policy decisions. If BAEs, for example, run rings around us on contract after contract, then it is ultimately the politicians in charge of the relevant departments who have failed to provide oversight and leadership.

Perhaps we should consider the idea of appointing our political leadership on some other, new criteria, other than 'best in breed' at the local dog beauty contest?

Dave

Ogre
29th Jan 2011, 20:45
Dengue_Dude

Been there, done that, both sides of the equator! More than once I've been in the "meet and greet" for the new customer rep, only to end up in on the receiving end of an in-depth grilling of the fundamental issues his (or her) predecessor had agreed and on which we had based the technical solution. The results was along the lines of "well I think it should be.......".:ugh:

The other point to remember is that defence contractors are businesses, and have to keep their shareholders happy. Perhaps the information won't be readily available, but if you can see the company financials then you will find that on certain big projects they will make very little profit, or indeed posted a loss. A lot of the posters on threads assume that the contractors are fat cat companies coining in the cash at the expense of the customer. Sorry folks, it just ain't so!

Small Spinner
29th Jan 2011, 20:49
Herc,
You are right. I have always been uneasy about the full on criticism of BAE, as the level of oversight has been pathetic. The set up of the company management and engineers exacerbate the problems tenfold however, and they will try and pull the wool.

Even when there was a large element of risk on BAE, the MOD removed the spec compliance, and accepted a lower standard of verification. This left BAE a clear run, with little or no risk, and in essence it is of little financial impact to them that the project has been cancelled. IMO of course.

BEagle
30th Jan 2011, 12:38
It hadn't been a happy morning oop at 't big house for 't Bungling Baron Wasteospace. He had awoken in a foul mood, thanks to rather too much brown ale 't previous night - and his mood hadn't improved when Old Scrotum, his wrinkled retainer, had brought 't morrning paperrs.

't Baron had thought he werr safe from criticism about 't cancellation of ' 't owd Comet 2000', as he fondly called it - because all comment seemed to be aimed at " 't soft sootherrn poof Tory Boy Camerron an' 't mithering Fox boogerr". But the Sunday Times had made him 'reet proper blazin''.

"By 'eck!", he exploded over breakfast, expelling a choice piece of ram's testicle sausage which was deftly caught by Booggerroff, his trusty but rather flatulent whippet whose fielding skills were barely diminished by age, "Has't tha' seen this?", he queried Seth, 't foreman of 't werrks, "Yon air force folk are trying to blame us ferr 't 'owd Comet 2000!".

't Baron's first idea was simple and a few calls were made. "Tony lad", he queried, "Has't tha' got any brass in 't fund left over from 't bungs we gave them little brown lads for 't Torrnado sale?". Assured that there was indeed a source of funding available, he then made another call. "Now then, Rupert lad, what's this in 't paperr o' yorn? 'ow much to silence 't booggerr?"

There was a short intake of breath at the other end of the phone, before an anitpodean response involving an invitation to perform an unusual sexual act upon himself was proposed to 't Baron, followed by a loud click.

"That's knackerred that then", mused 't Baron. "Any road, what arr them booggerrs moanin' about? Stickin' bomb doors? Nowt that a drop of WD40 won't fix. Sticking nosewheel - a bit 'o fittin' at £1000 an hourr'll soon fix that. And 't hot air pipe - 't lads can find a nice bit o' asbestos laggin' to wrap 't booggerr wi'. Gaps in 't engine walls? A few tubes o' marine' silicone sealing mastic'll see them right - 't ll cost us £85.78 for a carton of 25 x 310 ml tubes, so with VAT that'll be £13282.07 a litre to 't air force as them boogerrs in MoD won't notice 't decimal point. Never have to this day!!"

Seth, however, had further bad news. "But Master, they've starrted terr cut oop 't Comets at Woodferrd, tha' knows".

"Well, I'll go to the foot 'o owerr sterrs! By 'eck, Seth, don't fret thee sen. Gerrout 'n find someone as needs some scrap an' there'll be a nice little earner in it ferr thee! Don't forget how much them silly soft southern sods paid us to do that. 'That'll learrn fatty Brown oop in Jockland', Foxy 'ad said, an by 'eck, 'ee werr right"

LookingNorth
30th Jan 2011, 15:49
About time Beags. You need to team up with a cartoon artist and do a weekly strip. I hasten to add, comic strip.

TwoTunnels
30th Jan 2011, 18:05
I too have 2 sinple comments:
1. As a CUSTOMER, doesn't the MoD have the high ground when purchasing new equipment? If a company wants to sell to the Forces then surely they need to deliver or incur costs/penalties.
2. I don't think we help ourselves by assigning SO1/2s in PROMOTION TICK IN BOX procurement assignments. Get proper SMEs involved from the outset, who follow the project through and who are accountable for any short comings.

Herc-u-lease
30th Jan 2011, 18:50
Twotunnels,

I agree with both items, but the nature of defence procurement does not always fall the way we think it should. If we were any ordinary customer buying a bespoke item, then we would go to a specialist who is capable and experienced in producing such a good; usually a company with strong experience. Not quite so easy in the defence realm with costly developments (£Bs) and often novel technologies. Although we strive for firm fixed price contracts, there are often occasions where the customer (us in this case) assumes some, if not most of the development risk. If BAE were to assume the development risk this would add in very expensive protection/risk factoring, making for an hugely expensive contract - or the risk would be simply too great that no sensible CEO would accept the project. I agree we should be in the driving seat as customer, but the complex and horrendously expensive nature of defence projects precludes that under the current acquisition thinking.

as for the point about ticking boxes, couldn't agree more. in the current assignment it took me 18 months just to feel useful - fortunatley i've got a good amount of time on the project as have the key decision makers.

Pontius Navigator
30th Jan 2011, 20:18
TT, the best analogy for youas a customer is getting some building work done.

The first thing you find is that your choice of contractrs soon becomes limited. First some put in silly bids just in case you are stupid. Eventually one puts in a sensible bid. So sensible that the contractor realised he underbid and so fails to turn up.

Then you start again, perhaps with a new spec. As your contractor starts work Mrs TT decides she want a change - underfloor heating say. Now there is little extra work for the tiler but that doesn't stop him doubling the price.

See where I am coming from?

Fishtailed
31st Jan 2011, 00:05
Last year, scrap Jaguar, howls of protest on here.
This year, scrap Harrier, more howls of protest.
Fine products, eh! What's up with you lot.