Originally Posted by
ORAC
Those used to working on military contracts know through long experience the relevant manuals and specifications for military work. You throw in a team used to working on civil projects who equally just know the civil specifications, are they going to spend months trying to read every book/standard in the contract?
Assumption? Someone in a hurry just assumed the specs were the same, nobody had the military contract background to query the design - and it came back to bite them.
That's part of it. Another part is that a lot of the wire harnesses are designed, installed, and certified to civil certification standards and other wire harnesses to Mil Standard. It was assumed that if a wire harness was going to be certified by the FAA, it would be designed and installed per the civil standards. Bad assumption. Many (though not all) civilly certified wire harnesses had to be designed and installed per Mil Standard. That's rather odd to certify to one standard and design and install to another, but that's how the contract read. And that was missed.