MoD paid £22 for 65p light bulb..
Gentleman Aviator
It still used to be (when I last had to get involved) £17 to "provide and fit" a light bulb cos you couldn't do it yourself, not having acquired an NVQ Level 5 in ladder-climbing nor membership of the appropriate professional association. The Staish complained to higher authority ...... and never got promoted!
Still happens - CO's Inspection this week - lots of dead flies in flourescent light fittings:
2011 response: "We'll get someone to come and look at that to see what we can do"
1971 response: "Get those
flies out NOW!!"
Still happens - CO's Inspection this week - lots of dead flies in flourescent light fittings:
2011 response: "We'll get someone to come and look at that to see what we can do"
1971 response: "Get those
flies out NOW!!"
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Of course this doesn't just apply to spares. What about the IT barrel that ATLAS have us over? £1000 to move a PC from one 'tap' to another? Lets face it it isn't just the MOD either...all Gov't Depts get ripped off in similar measure. Not saying it's right by the way!!!
Thread Starter
Ah, but when real aerospace manufacturers start getting involved....
A user needs a laptop for a specific aviation purpose. He breaks it and needs a new one, but unfortunately the old type are no longer available.
So a COTS one is acquired at normal PC World prices. But because it's an 'aviation use' item, it has to have a new Part No., which requires a Service Bulletin.....and the cost of that is €10000. Which doesn't even include the cost of the laptop!
The light bulb voucher states 'Basic Price 22.51 per D of Q as at 18-JUN-10'. However, if it's really true that this means £22.51 per 100, then yes, it's a mistake......
Wasn't some MTO once given a speaking-to for revealing that MoD was paying something like 10x the going rate for replacement Mini alternators?
A user needs a laptop for a specific aviation purpose. He breaks it and needs a new one, but unfortunately the old type are no longer available.
So a COTS one is acquired at normal PC World prices. But because it's an 'aviation use' item, it has to have a new Part No., which requires a Service Bulletin.....and the cost of that is €10000. Which doesn't even include the cost of the laptop!
The light bulb voucher states 'Basic Price 22.51 per D of Q as at 18-JUN-10'. However, if it's really true that this means £22.51 per 100, then yes, it's a mistake......
Wasn't some MTO once given a speaking-to for revealing that MoD was paying something like 10x the going rate for replacement Mini alternators?
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Filaments
Just on the BBC that said light bulbs are actually specialist filaments for a watchman radar. No idea what that might be (well I know what a radar is!) but never let the truth get in the way of a good story!
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Better not mention the BAe Squash Balls then............. Any EX VC10 will know what I mean...
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sorry to shoot this whole thing down but i have just been to our stores with the number and it is actually £22 for the D of Q which is 100 so the light bulbs are 22p each so actually a good deal and just piss poor journalism 
said light bulbs are actually specialist filaments for a watchman radar
The Sun quotes 'an un-named soldier'....so how many bases have Army storemen and a Watchman radar. Should narrow the field down for the witch hunt to begin
Or is this, again, a lazy journalist who can't tell the difference between an airman, soldier or a sailor!
Nothing will ever top the Active Dipping Sonar kit for C130.
Funny how it takes a light bulb to get both the Sun and Fox going. Neither would understand anything more complex......... Like the dipping in the hover capability of the C130.
Funny how it takes a light bulb to get both the Sun and Fox going. Neither would understand anything more complex......... Like the dipping in the hover capability of the C130.
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Of course you could look at........
NHS spending and the role of the private sector - The British Medical Association
and
Hospitals run by HSBC pay £200 to fit wall socket - Times Online
but wait that was the Governments idea!!
then dont forget the
NHS continues to pay for PFI | Healthcare Network | Guardian Professional
puts a lightbulb into perspective doesn't it......
NHS spending and the role of the private sector - The British Medical Association
and
Hospitals run by HSBC pay £200 to fit wall socket - Times Online
but wait that was the Governments idea!!
Four of the hospitals in HSBC’s fund pay charges at rates far higher than those charged by normal tradesman.
- The Central Middlesex hospital in northwest London said that, on average, its contractor, Ecovert FM, charged £210 to install an electric socket.
- West Middlesex University hospital said it was typically charged £150 by Ecovert FM for the same task. An independent electrician located close to both hospitals in Harrow said a typical charge for replacing a socket was £40. The cost of installing a new one was £80.
- Royal Blackburn hospital said it was charged £198 by its contractor, Consort, to put in a datapoint – needed to plug a computer into an internal network. By contrast, West Middlesex University hospital said it was usually charged about £60 for the same service.
- West Middlesex University and Royal Barnet hospitals said they were normally charged about £100 to install a new lock – a third more expensive than local locksmiths.
- The Central Middlesex hospital in northwest London said that, on average, its contractor, Ecovert FM, charged £210 to install an electric socket.
- West Middlesex University hospital said it was typically charged £150 by Ecovert FM for the same task. An independent electrician located close to both hospitals in Harrow said a typical charge for replacing a socket was £40. The cost of installing a new one was £80.
- Royal Blackburn hospital said it was charged £198 by its contractor, Consort, to put in a datapoint – needed to plug a computer into an internal network. By contrast, West Middlesex University hospital said it was usually charged about £60 for the same service.
- West Middlesex University and Royal Barnet hospitals said they were normally charged about £100 to install a new lock – a third more expensive than local locksmiths.
NHS continues to pay for PFI | Healthcare Network | Guardian Professional
The repayments are usually significant for a trust. Leeds Teaching Hospitals pays around £3m a month under its PFI deal and last August the Department of Health said that NHS organisations will eventually pay more than £50bn for buildings worth just £11bn, with maintenance charges adding a further £15bn.
Per Ardua ad Astraeus
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Nutloose - these articles are without meaning without detail. IF 'installing' a socket involves cutting out for the socket, chasing cable into the wall, running cable to a circuit connection etc etc I suspect there are NO 'independent' electricians who will do it for "£80". If however it is a simple 'replace that socket' it is a rip off.
Sunday Times Journalists are known to seek a story rather than facts.
Sunday Times Journalists are known to seek a story rather than facts.
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NutLoose
#21, above... OOPs!
Better not mention the BAe Squash Balls then............. Any EX VC10 will know what I mean...
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It's been going on for years. About 15 years ago, we had a bit of a surprise in our workshop. Being a Signal Regiment, we used quite a few co-ax connectors. Common or Garden BNC connectors. Granted they were Mil Spec to Defstan whatever, but Amphenol sold these by the thousand to the MOD. A year or two before, the stores system started price marking the stores. The connectors were labelled at GBP 10.50 or so. Not terribly unreasonable, given they were Mil Spec. We were getting low, so we demanded another 20 or so.
When the new batch came in, they were price marked at over 50 pounds!! Same item, same packaging, same NSN, same DofQ. We raised it with the RLC head Norman (there is one of these per R SIGNALS regiment) and he just shrugged his shoulders.
Another one. On an RAF station, we Army types needed some nuts & bolts for our radio masts. We ordered 50 or so through RAF Supply. Back came the response "None of these have ever been ordered in the RAF, would require external contract to be let, suggest demand is excessive, demand cancelled". Yet had we ordered them through the Army system, we'd have got as many as we liked. The nuts & bolts were always falling off the masts or going rusty, no big deal at all to replace them. I wonder how many other items the RAF did actually let a contract for, that were available in the system?
When the new batch came in, they were price marked at over 50 pounds!! Same item, same packaging, same NSN, same DofQ. We raised it with the RLC head Norman (there is one of these per R SIGNALS regiment) and he just shrugged his shoulders.
Another one. On an RAF station, we Army types needed some nuts & bolts for our radio masts. We ordered 50 or so through RAF Supply. Back came the response "None of these have ever been ordered in the RAF, would require external contract to be let, suggest demand is excessive, demand cancelled". Yet had we ordered them through the Army system, we'd have got as many as we liked. The nuts & bolts were always falling off the masts or going rusty, no big deal at all to replace them. I wonder how many other items the RAF did actually let a contract for, that were available in the system?
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As there hasn't been much on any of the, many, Nimrod threads recently, can I point out that we spent £4bn of MRA4 bean tins? I'm fairly sure that we will have to pay out again for the beans!
Duncs
Duncs
@Grabbers
Responsible for - No.
Experienced in winning - Yes.
Its always amazing how people bemoan the loss of the little chap who pops into the office to fix a few things for you, except when the bills for him get worked out, and you realise said little chap read the papers half the day and doesn't actually do very much.
I recall an particular system which had a MTTR (allegedly as it happens) of four hours - UK wide. And it was 24/7. Without going into the ins and outs, it was certainly an important system and while it could be debated as to whether 4hrs was the right number, thats what people quoted against, and were set up to deliver at a price.
Roll forward 18 months and everyone comments upon how good the service is, and how much better it was than before - except one 1* who moans like b***ery about the poor service. He demands an investigation into the alleged compliance, and a shed load of money is wasted proving that the MTTR is 4 hours or less every month. Several things come to light - his personal station MTTR is more like 8 hours as it takes 4 hours to drive there from the nearest place any sensible person is based, so although the entire system is MTTR he is at the tail end of the performance curve and is going to have to learn to live with it.
Another investigation is demanded as he insists that he was getting 4 hours before, and should be getting it now, as the Contractor is clearly doing it all wrong.
Support Command pony up all the stats for every repair carried out by Support over their four years in charge, and the MTTR calculated for the entire system and for his station. System is 8 hours and the station is more like 14 hours.
Contractor looks smug, Strike want to beat up Support and 1* looks like a d***.
MOD realise that they could have saved a fortune had they done the actual performance calculations and asked people to bid on this basis - but now decide not to do anything as the contract is past the half way point in its duration, and the costs of disbanding half the support people, would exceed the costs for the remaining years of the contract.
Contractor in effect continues to charge a lot of money for something MOD wanted, have been given, but never had actually achieved themselves, and could never have had any benefit from.
System goes out of service three years later, with enough unused spares to replace all unserviceable parts with new boards, never repairing anything and still have enough spares to run the system for a further decade.
Contractor is asked to remove the system for £1 and sells the spare parts for several millions to the NHS who had been unable to buy any spare parts as someone seemed to have bought all the production capacity in its last few years.
Was I responsible - No, but did I give the client what he asked for - Yes
Were/are you responsible for this sort of contract?
Experienced in winning - Yes.
Its always amazing how people bemoan the loss of the little chap who pops into the office to fix a few things for you, except when the bills for him get worked out, and you realise said little chap read the papers half the day and doesn't actually do very much.
I recall an particular system which had a MTTR (allegedly as it happens) of four hours - UK wide. And it was 24/7. Without going into the ins and outs, it was certainly an important system and while it could be debated as to whether 4hrs was the right number, thats what people quoted against, and were set up to deliver at a price.
Roll forward 18 months and everyone comments upon how good the service is, and how much better it was than before - except one 1* who moans like b***ery about the poor service. He demands an investigation into the alleged compliance, and a shed load of money is wasted proving that the MTTR is 4 hours or less every month. Several things come to light - his personal station MTTR is more like 8 hours as it takes 4 hours to drive there from the nearest place any sensible person is based, so although the entire system is MTTR he is at the tail end of the performance curve and is going to have to learn to live with it.
Another investigation is demanded as he insists that he was getting 4 hours before, and should be getting it now, as the Contractor is clearly doing it all wrong.
Support Command pony up all the stats for every repair carried out by Support over their four years in charge, and the MTTR calculated for the entire system and for his station. System is 8 hours and the station is more like 14 hours.
Contractor looks smug, Strike want to beat up Support and 1* looks like a d***.
MOD realise that they could have saved a fortune had they done the actual performance calculations and asked people to bid on this basis - but now decide not to do anything as the contract is past the half way point in its duration, and the costs of disbanding half the support people, would exceed the costs for the remaining years of the contract.
Contractor in effect continues to charge a lot of money for something MOD wanted, have been given, but never had actually achieved themselves, and could never have had any benefit from.
System goes out of service three years later, with enough unused spares to replace all unserviceable parts with new boards, never repairing anything and still have enough spares to run the system for a further decade.
Contractor is asked to remove the system for £1 and sells the spare parts for several millions to the NHS who had been unable to buy any spare parts as someone seemed to have bought all the production capacity in its last few years.
Was I responsible - No, but did I give the client what he asked for - Yes
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£22 for light bulb
I suspect this is a side effect of "just in time" systems, rather than holding a reasonable stock of consumables with users. JIT was supposed to save money by avoiding the cost of large stocks of spares, but taken to extremes is plain stupid
I suspect this cost a great deal more than £22. To raise a requisition enter it on a computer. Someone in stores to find it, pick up the item and send it out is where the costs occur
I suspect this cost a great deal more than £22. To raise a requisition enter it on a computer. Someone in stores to find it, pick up the item and send it out is where the costs occur
Dear oh dear! You poor fools! Some years ago I was a manager of a division of a company that did IT outsourcing, let me tell you how it works.....
1. Governments are afraid of (a) Staff numbers and (b) Public debt.
2. We find a department of government that has its own computers and support staff. We decide to target them. We do some research, then we tell the Sun. Headlines start appearing "Government spends billions on computer systems that don't work!", "Lazy public servants play computer games all day". You know the drill.
3. Our glossy brochures on outsourcing miraculously turn up. It doesn't take much for the Minister to realise that this problem will go away if he out sources it because the costs will be hidden in current expenditure overheads.
4. The Minister directs that a request for tender be written and issued. This takes at least a year, by which time the IT requirements have changed.
5. The IT industry responds with a quotation. This takes a year to write and often consists of Three volumes.
6. The tender Board evaluates and awards the tender after another year of deliberation.
7. We now have a contract to provide what the Department thought it wanted Three years ago. We hire the Departments best IT staff and fire the rest. The Minister is happy. The head count is down.
8. Now the fun really starts. Since we are a lying pack of weasels that would sell our own grandmothers, we compare what the Departments wants now with what was specified in the contract then. Needless to say, we find "discrepancies", always in our favour. Want an iPhone App? Sure! Must have! Twenty million. Need a new fax machine? We are your sole supplier, Three thousand quid.
9. Now the miracle happens, and this is very important..
About nine months into this contract, a keen accountant realises that we, the contractor, are lying rotten dirty thieving weasels who would sell their grandmothers He tells the press, and they ask us to confirm that we charged Twenty million for a Two bob iPhone App, and Three thousand for a Two hundred quid fax machine.........
So we say "Sure we did, but don't blame us, blame the Government for writing the contract and awarding it to us!
..And the media lambast the government, and the howling mob of taxpayers chase the Minister down the street.
Meanwhile us rich dirty rotten weasels are trying to leverage our Twenty million dollar iPhone application into a Thirty million dollar iPad application "upgrade".....
To put it another way, if you paid Twenty Two quid for a light bulb, somebody, somewhere wrote you out an invoice for Twenty Two quid and presented it to you with a straight face.
To put it yet another way, don't ever outsource anything that is not a bog standard item or service that there is already a thriving market for with multiple sources of supply.
Take office cleaning. Now try and price office cleaning with security cleared cleaners. My guess that the price would multiply by Ten. It is exactly the same as putting the word "Organic" or "Aviation" in front of the name of a simple household product. The price immediately doubles.
1. Governments are afraid of (a) Staff numbers and (b) Public debt.
2. We find a department of government that has its own computers and support staff. We decide to target them. We do some research, then we tell the Sun. Headlines start appearing "Government spends billions on computer systems that don't work!", "Lazy public servants play computer games all day". You know the drill.
3. Our glossy brochures on outsourcing miraculously turn up. It doesn't take much for the Minister to realise that this problem will go away if he out sources it because the costs will be hidden in current expenditure overheads.
4. The Minister directs that a request for tender be written and issued. This takes at least a year, by which time the IT requirements have changed.
5. The IT industry responds with a quotation. This takes a year to write and often consists of Three volumes.
6. The tender Board evaluates and awards the tender after another year of deliberation.
7. We now have a contract to provide what the Department thought it wanted Three years ago. We hire the Departments best IT staff and fire the rest. The Minister is happy. The head count is down.
8. Now the fun really starts. Since we are a lying pack of weasels that would sell our own grandmothers, we compare what the Departments wants now with what was specified in the contract then. Needless to say, we find "discrepancies", always in our favour. Want an iPhone App? Sure! Must have! Twenty million. Need a new fax machine? We are your sole supplier, Three thousand quid.
9. Now the miracle happens, and this is very important..
About nine months into this contract, a keen accountant realises that we, the contractor, are lying rotten dirty thieving weasels who would sell their grandmothers He tells the press, and they ask us to confirm that we charged Twenty million for a Two bob iPhone App, and Three thousand for a Two hundred quid fax machine.........
So we say "Sure we did, but don't blame us, blame the Government for writing the contract and awarding it to us!
..And the media lambast the government, and the howling mob of taxpayers chase the Minister down the street.
Meanwhile us rich dirty rotten weasels are trying to leverage our Twenty million dollar iPhone application into a Thirty million dollar iPad application "upgrade".....
To put it another way, if you paid Twenty Two quid for a light bulb, somebody, somewhere wrote you out an invoice for Twenty Two quid and presented it to you with a straight face.
To put it yet another way, don't ever outsource anything that is not a bog standard item or service that there is already a thriving market for with multiple sources of supply.
Take office cleaning. Now try and price office cleaning with security cleared cleaners. My guess that the price would multiply by Ten. It is exactly the same as putting the word "Organic" or "Aviation" in front of the name of a simple household product. The price immediately doubles.
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just another jocky
Re post # 2.
Just got back from golf; I think you will find that the tapes and associated non-breakable boxes were actually costed at £48 each and not, only that, they were sourced from South America (Brazil If I remember correctly).
3P
Just got back from golf; I think you will find that the tapes and associated non-breakable boxes were actually costed at £48 each and not, only that, they were sourced from South America (Brazil If I remember correctly).
3P