This is the excerpt I mentioned above - it comes from my dissertation after research into the engineering consequences of availability/capability contracting in the UK defence sector. This bit is from the introduction to my conclusions:
There is a fundamental difference between equipment acquisition and availability/capability contracting. In an equipment acquisition programme the user is paying the contractor to deliver something that is fit for purpose, but it largely can be tested prior to using it on the Mission to confirm that the contractor delivered what was required. In an availability/capability programme the contractor is being paid to be an active part of the Mission, or at the very least the ability to sustain Mission Capability. One of the stated objectives of moving to Availability/Capability contracting is to transfer risk to the contractor, and with that risk goes responsibility.
But in the military scenario the full risk can never be transferred to a contractor. There is a traditional proverb, usually assumed to relate to the fate of King Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth*:
For want of a nail, the shoe was lost;
For want of the shoe, the horse was lost;
For want of the horse, the rider was lost;
For want of the rider, the battle was lost;
For want of the battle, the Kingdom was lost;
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.
Although this proverb is usually cited to emphasise the need to attend to details, to the ILS community it illustrates the chain of causation between component failure and mission loss. If there had been an effective LSA programme the end effects of the nail failure mode would have been analysed in a FMECA, together with a probability of occurrence predicted in reliability analysis and verified through analogy or demonstration. The RCM analysis would have determined whether preventive inspections or lifing of the horse-shoe subsystem components were warranted and the maintainability analysis would have established the required inspection and rectification procedures together with the skills, equipment, spares, consumables and facilities required to achieve them. The level of repair analysis would then have ensured that the appropriate support policies were implemented to reflect the tolerable resource burden for the mission criticality of the horse. In short; King Richard’s horse would have been returned to serviceability (or replaced) within the time required to prevent a Mission failure. Rather than cry: “A horse, a horse; my Kingdom for a horse!”, supportability engineers would point out that he should have cried:
“A capable system, a capable system, my Kingdom for an increased investment in early-phase LSA during the procurement process to assure the most cost-effectively sustainable through-life Capability at Readiness!!”
But admittedly this does not have the same ring to it and would be difficult to render into iambic pentameter.
All of these analyses are based on probabilities and trade-offs between the cost and consequence of Mission Failure, and only the Mission Owner (the one who has the original political or economic need for the Mission) can own this risk. If King Richard’s personal transport had been provided by way of a “Horse Availability Service” it is doubtful that the KPI penalties resulting from the first-line mission availability failure would be regarded as an adequate compensation for the Plantagenet dynasty’s permanent loss of the English throne. This could be seen as a general characteristic of military missions that is rarely (if ever) present in non-military missions, and it is the reason why the Author would suggest the “blind” application of commercial models to military systems is probably naïve.
So it is not sufficient to have penalty clauses defined in a contract; the owner of the Mission needs to have confidence in the viability of the proposed solution together with faith in abilities and trust in the diligence of the organisation that an availability/capability contract will be awarded to. Availability/capability contracts are partnerships based on mutual trust and shared, common objectives, and developing that trust requires extensive collaboration in the planning stages. The current contracting environment inhibits this collaboration until after a contract is awarded, and imposes an adversarial environment until that point. This can only be seen as less than ideal.
* Although this is unlikely since King Richard’s horse was actually stuck in deep mud rather than rendered unserviceable through the loss of a shoe, and some versions of the proverb are known to predate him
PDR