Procurement sucesses

[Shaft109]

Hello and thought I'd ask a lighter question - obviously within sensible security boundaries - have there been any procurement success where a project has come in on time and or under budget?

Just gets a touch miserable reading about some of the waste like Nimrod - twice.

S

[Courtney Mil]

The only one I can think of off the top of my head is the Hoover Dam.

[salad-dodger]

Airseeker (UK Rivet Joint)

[melmothtw]

Swedish Black Hawk buy - 2 years from idea to operational in Afghanistan.

[VinRouge]

C-17. Off the shelf proven product.

Sentinel also springs to mind.

Airseeker (UK Rivet Joint) apart from rts issues!?

[salad-dodger]

Sentinel also springs to mind.
Apart from not working properly for the first few years.

S-D

[melmothtw]

F-35 - it's on budget and on track ;)


https://www.f35.com/about/fast-facts

[ZH875]

HS1182 - Hawk T1

[hoodie]

Apache AH Mk.1 - although the planning for crew training let it down, the equipment procurement and other DLODs were pretty good.

[althenick]

UK Polaris

[PapaDolmio]

I'm struggling on this.
C17 I guess, seemed to work pretty much straight out of the box. E3 seemed to- but then I've never been on the fleet so may be wrong.
Hawk I guess as well.
ISTR the changeover from metal to woven airmans SD Hat badges went pretty well.

[MRAF]

This question is incomplete!

"Have there been any procurement success where a project has come in on time and or under budget?" ... And delivered with the required capability...DE&S and their predecessors can no doubt quote successes within timeframes or even budget (I struggle to think of the latter), but more often by 'adjusting' capability from the original design to fit the other 2 criteria. :ok:

In my humble opinion, Defence Procurement should be Operator led to maintain the primary purpose of delivering capability, not just in budget and time. Take some of the US procurement organisations as an example...
:oh:

[Stitchbitch]

F-4JUK? :E

[VinRouge]

MRAF, maybe so, but as frontline operators we sometimes will have to accept the 80% option is the most suitable. We can't insist on bespoke kit for every role, we just aren't rsourced for that.

[ShotOne]

"required capability" Surely that phrase cuts to the heart of the problem as half the time it's not clear exactly what it is...so a super gold-plated spec is written which sends the cost and timescale into orbit.

My vote for the success story would have been the Buccaneer. And that only worked so well because Blackburn were able to convince the Navy (with extreme difficulty) to remove supersonic capability as an essential requirement.

[ian16th]

ISTR the changeover from metal to woven airmans SD Hat badges went pretty well. I suppose we can add the T63 'smooth blue' to the list.

Can't have been over budget as we each bought our own. As for on time, we bought them when we were told to, usually for the next AOC's Parade, Coningsby 1957 in my case :sad:

They cost about £8 when a years clothing allowance was about £5.

[Bannock]

P8I

Boeing Delivers First P8I To Indian Navy (http://www.defencenow.com/news/1051/boeing-delivers-first-p8i-to-indian-navy.html)

and before any one points out -

"The P8Is are being delivered to India by US without its key original equipment as India has not signed the Communication Inter-operability and Security Memorandum of Agreement (CISMOA), as mandated by American laws.


Instead of those gadgets, India has integrated its indigenous equipment from government-owned Electronics Corporation of India Limited (ECIL), Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) and Avantel."

So what if they didnt get it with the Legacy P3 mission suite, they got it on time , under budget and with kit they wanted.

[hoodie]

Does it work? If it works, does it do the job?

[VX275]

Nearly 30 years ago when the RAF were developing an aerial farm on the disused RAF Chelverston airfield they were aproached by the contractor doubling the width of the A1 who wanted to buy the runways as hardcore. Due to the length of the runway and its unexpected depth of concrete (6 foot or so) the project was heading for a healthy PROFIT until it it was discovered that the removal of the runway had affected the water table and the transmitter hall was flooding. The cost of the resulting anti-flood measures meant that the end cost of the aerial farm was only a few thousand pounds.

[Bannock]

"Does it work? If it works, does it do the job?"

Yes and Yes.

How good India does it? I don't know, but one thing is certain. They do it a lot better than us.

[Davef68]

Jaguar 95/96/GR3?

[MAINJAFAD]

Bloodhound Mk 1. 11 Squadrons fully operational by the end of the 1961 in the production contract signed in late 1956, All 11 Sqn's operational in Nov 1961. Plus the Government took money off Ferranti as they made excess profit on the fixed price production contract (about £4M in 1964 prices). Government would have stung BAC as well, had they not been able to hide their excess profits. Both Bristol and Ferranti redesigned their equipment to make production cheaper after the contract had been signed.

[tucumseh]

My personal list runs to 131. You don't really want to read them all, do you?

:ok:


Someone mentioned Apache.... You can't count those programmes where the ISD and even the product itself was redefined to make it look as if it was achieved. And delivering training and long term support is an integral part of the programme. On Apache, Westland were asked to cut the production rate in half, extending that phase by years. They refused. I guess that means the perceived success was DESPITE MoD, not because of them!

[salad-dodger]

"Have there been any procurement success where a project has come in on time and or under budget?" ... And delivered with the required capability
When I mentioned Airseeker earlier, it was with precisely this mind!

S-D

[pontifex]

How about the mosquito?

[Party Animal]

How good India does it? I don't know, but one thing is certain. They do it a
lot better than us.


Now now Bannock := Don't forget who won the prestigous USN Fleet Challenge this year!

For anyone who is interested, it was a RAF MPA crew with a 'borrowed' US P-8 aircraft.

[ShotOne]

Surprised to see Apache being talked about. I seem to recall hangars full of them for months or years with no trained crew to fly them. Had it been a commercial procurement deal, everyone connected would have been visiting their jobcentre

[tucumseh]

Surprised to see Apache being talked about. I seem to recall hangars full of them for months or years with no trained crew to fly them. Had it been a commercial procurement deal, everyone connected would have been visiting their jobcentre

Two main problems;

1. Training should not be considered part of ILS. If the LS date is (typically) 3 months before ISD, and it takes (say) 6 months to train a pilot, then pitching up with a sim 3 months before notional ISD is of no use. You need to get training away from the ILS mindset. To this end, procurement rules state the sim is considered the 3rd aircraft, after the TI and PI. The only person who can change this is the Service owner (the named individual who makes materiel and financial provision, and he'd only do it if, for some reason, there was more than one TI or PI). A simple rule which, if followed, removes so much risk. Show me someone in DE&S who knows this rule, never mind follows it!

2. Blind adherence to PFI dogma. Another concurrent programme in the same Directorate (which should be top of any such list!) was told to PFI its Trainer. The response was to fill in the waiver form, then forget PFI. How many Apache sims, at the same spec as ours, have been sold overseas? None? Then the waiver would have taken 5 mins and it would have been ready on time. They were told, but didn't want to upset the 2 Star. Apache is NOT a good example of how to run a programme.

[Frostchamber]

Sea King AEW2? From conception to sailing south in 11 weeks.

[hoodie]

Surprised to see Apache being talked about. I seem to recall hangars full of them for months or years with no trained crew to fly them.

ShotOne, surely you read what I said about it? The bit about "except training"?

Tuc, the rest of - the great majority of - the Apache story was actually pretty impressive c.f most projects, given the UK specific mods (of which engines were the most high profile, but by no means only, challenges). Initial assessment 1994, Apache chosen 1995, Initial RTS 1999. ISD was then delayed from what it could have been by that training issue, but the capability releases did not stop in the meantime.

Speaking of the RTM322 integration, I think RR (and in particular the couple of Mesa on-site engineers who undertook the integration tweaking) should have got much more kudos for what they achieved in a short time. It was so smooth, it looked easy - and so many people may have thought it WAS easy.

McBoeing were worried, given the problems they had moving from -701 to -701C engines for the US Army. As it turned out, the 322 was working well in a fraction of the time that program(me) took.

[battlecruiser]

Typhoon93, until he started working against us.

[tucumseh]

Hoodie

I would certainly agree with that. But the project initiation, which is what sets the tone, was a disaster. Apache was sold to UK as a simple build to print job. That meant 2 Star jumped at the perceived opportunity to run it on a shoestring. (Same person, same decision on Chinook HC Mk3!). For example, not a single avionic specialist in the team. In about August 1996 word of that got to the Sea King ASaC project manager and he asked to see the proposed Appendix A (to the Aircraft Spec). He pointed out all the obsolescent (and even obsolete) kit the US was proposing to offload on us, removed from their old variants following upgrade. For example, someone had agreed to buy a VHF radio that the RN had struggled to support for 15 years with a policy of "repair by cannibalisation", and were actively replacing in an ongoing project, in the same Directorate. Talk about lack of communication. That's a hell of a red flag. That embarrassed 2 Star into resourcing it better, and the contract had to be changed to "Air Vehicle" instead of "Aircraft", while the avionic component (quite important in Apache) started over again. Much of the programme then proceeded well, but due to firefighting rather than good planning. But it was too late to overturn the PFI nonsense.


Frostchamber. Quite right. What made it a success? The right people. The RN officer who led was superb. He was my boss a couple of years later. You learn more in a week from guys like that than in a 2 year tour in most jobs.

[ShotOne]

Examples of procurement success? Pretty much every major airliner purchase. Granted you never hear about them because they are competently managed and even where the aircraft encounters significant delays this rarely is allowed to hurt the customer. And interestingly, since PFI in the military concept seems to be a dirty word, almost all privately financed.

[dat581]

Super Hornet for the RAAF and the C-17 for both the RAAF and RAF. The Super Hornet was ahead of time and under budget and work as advertised in service. the C-17 for the RAAF has been a fantastic capability and the only problem seems to be they never have enough of them. The MH-60R for the RAN is coming along well too. All three programs are off the shelf and nobody has tried to Australianise them.

[Warmtoast]

Well they got it right in 1951 when I joined up, witness this shoe brush issued to me in March 1951 and still in regular use.


It must have been successful to have lasted this long - 64-years!


ISTR the big arrow on the brush indicates it was made in prison, probably to keep prisoners gainfully occupied.


http://i145.photobucket.com/albums/r231/thawes/ShoeBrush1950_zpsccef82e3.jpg

[Martin the Martian]

I believe I'm right in saying that Nimrod MR.1 went quite well, as did the MR.2 upgrade.

[Mr C Hinecap]

I know most people in here would not care a jot, but the USAS to USASII Logistics IT System project was, in 2001, the only MoD IT project that came in on time and on budget. A huge capability that is only now being rolled out to the other 2 Services in anything other than aviation support.

[tornadoken]

atn #10, RN Polaris, and s1,#33, airline purchasing, are a tad unfair.

Few airlines buy "off the drawing board", ahead of the certification process. When BOAC/BEAC were required to do so, when they were instruments of State policy, much anguish ensued.

USN procurement process for Polaris and its SSBNs were unprecedented successes (4.5 years, ITP to deployment); RN's (5.25 years) followed a largely-blazed trail, with a near-blank cheque: unused contingency funds yielded the savings: these boats were estimated by bloat R.Moore, RN & Nuclear Weapons, Harwood, 2001, P17: Programme Manager: “I hadn’t the faintest idea (of hull build cost) so I took projected cost of Valiant (SSN) and doubled it.”

When the State buys de-bugged Commercial Off the Shelf, daring to settle for 80% of ideal Spec., that often works and we hear nothing about it. Trouble arises (not only, though always, in IT) when Ministers are lured into bespoke. The problem is that, for combat kit, bad guys may already have COTS.

[ShotOne]

On the contrary, without a solid base of airline orders a new airliner isn't going to be built these days so there won't even be a certification process. I agree with your comment re. BOAC/BEA anguish but even there it was the builder rather than the customer which suffered the anguish.

Of course if there's a near-blank cheque, there's not going to be an overrun. Polaris was a National imperative and nobody was going to moan too much even if costs had risen. (That's if anyone found out; official secrecy would keep out any public or press snotty noses).