Originally Posted by vecvechookattack
Excellent news indeed. At last something is being done about it.
Ahh, but they could have taken it one step further and had a radical overhaul of procurement, such as working closer with industry in integrated project teams using lean processes. They could have had one arm of the organisation looking after procurement and one arm dealing with in-service logistics. It would have been much, much leaner and smarter and it could even have been given a banner headline (ta-dah) "Smart Procurement." If that hadn't quite worked they could then have employed Dilbert as a management consultant to solve all our problems by changing to "Smart Acquisition."
OMFG, it's Groundhog Day!!
It'll never change. The kit we get is only as good as the contract/spec that we write and, just as importantly, the bullishness of the Project Manager in carrying it through to completion.
tucumseh hit the nail on the head: this needs quality PMs and there ain't too many around.
Bottom line is that the defence contractors will always want cost overruns to be borne by the customer (aka the taxpayers) rather than by their shareholders/profit margins.
It takes a good contract/spec and hard-nosed Project Managers and Contracts Officers to fight this; the very same people that
tucumseh said need to be in positions of authority.
Will that ever happen? Unlikely.
TOG