BAE

[Herc-u-lease]

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.