"British MoD acquisition/procurement and support organization may be privatised"...
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"British MoD acquisition/procurement and support organization may be privatised"...
U.K. MoD Eyes Privatized Acquisition
Jul. 21, 2012 - 10:48AM
Britain’s Ministry of Defence could run a competition to outsource its 14
billion pound ($22 billion) annual procurement and support organization as early
as 2013, according to the country’s minister for armed forces.
The possible 2013 competition to partially privatize the Defence Equipment
and Support (DE&S) organization is expected to attract some of the world’s
largest program management companies.
Jul. 21, 2012 - 10:48AM
Britain’s Ministry of Defence could run a competition to outsource its 14
billion pound ($22 billion) annual procurement and support organization as early
as 2013, according to the country’s minister for armed forces.
The possible 2013 competition to partially privatize the Defence Equipment
and Support (DE&S) organization is expected to attract some of the world’s
largest program management companies.
Last edited by Stratofreighter; 23rd Jul 2012 at 12:17.
Not sure how this can work, someone clever than me is going to have to explain how companies like KBR can be the ones running procurement (which includes arranging a through-life support solution) when they also bid for the support contracts?
I only pick on KBR because I happen to know they have a major stake in BRAMA who service the Hawks at Valley, the other companies are probably in a similar situation.
Won't we be in the situation where we pay money to a private company in order to run the organisation that then gives their own subsidiaries the most profitable contracts?
I only pick on KBR because I happen to know they have a major stake in BRAMA who service the Hawks at Valley, the other companies are probably in a similar situation.
Won't we be in the situation where we pay money to a private company in order to run the organisation that then gives their own subsidiaries the most profitable contracts?
Any one notice how Gray has changed his terminology since announcing this on radio just after Xmas? In December he used phrases and terminology that could only have been lifted from one source - an airworthiness Standard scrapped over 3 years ago. When queried over his by an MP, Gray's office denied he spoke the words, despite the radio interview being there for all to hear.
But what ever way he dresses it up, it is part mandated policy, and part an adaptation/extension of existing practice.
I hope he isn't getting paid too much to read old policies and present them as his own.
But what ever way he dresses it up, it is part mandated policy, and part an adaptation/extension of existing practice.
I hope he isn't getting paid too much to read old policies and present them as his own.
Civil Service procurement doesn't work because nobody is actually accountable for failure to perform.
Privatisation won't work because profit is far more important than performance.
I vote for putting the military in charge of their own procurement. Have a management staff course, how to write a contract etc., one year (make it count as an MBA) for Officers who have a talent for it.
CDS bashes heads and has a staff who look for Tri-Service options.
Thoughts?
Privatisation won't work because profit is far more important than performance.
I vote for putting the military in charge of their own procurement. Have a management staff course, how to write a contract etc., one year (make it count as an MBA) for Officers who have a talent for it.
CDS bashes heads and has a staff who look for Tri-Service options.
Thoughts?
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I vote for putting the military in charge of their own procurement. Have a management staff course, how to write a contract etc., one year (make it count as an MBA) for Officers who have a talent for it.
S-D (not a CS btw)
Why oh why oh why does someone being in the military automatically mean that they will be an excellent procurement and project manager?
The problem isn't that someone doesnt wear a uniform, its a combination of rapid posting of military personnel, insufficient staff training for CS, massive political indecision making in London, an inability to secure the correct funding, coupled with an overoptimistic attitude to budget growth by planners, and an inability of seniors in uniform to take tough decisions in a timely manner which may help solve matters.
The problems of procurement failure are numerous, and the military is as guilty as the CS in messing things up, but far better at pretending that a big boy did it and then ran away...
The problem isn't that someone doesnt wear a uniform, its a combination of rapid posting of military personnel, insufficient staff training for CS, massive political indecision making in London, an inability to secure the correct funding, coupled with an overoptimistic attitude to budget growth by planners, and an inability of seniors in uniform to take tough decisions in a timely manner which may help solve matters.
The problems of procurement failure are numerous, and the military is as guilty as the CS in messing things up, but far better at pretending that a big boy did it and then ran away...
Civil Service procurement doesn't work because nobody is actually accountable for failure to perform.
In the first instance, extend this system to every type of contract.
Then implement the regulations and actually hold them accountable.
Chinook HC Mk3 is a classic example. The Public Accounts Committee raged about the waste, blaming "lack of Management oversight". But then claimed MoD could not tell them who was meant to provide this oversight, and there was no means of finding out.
This was crap, and they were told so. The answer was laid down, in this case in Directorate Management Plan, approved by the very person with "management oversight", DGAS2. That is, it was his primary role to validate the programme Risk Register and personally assess the top 10 each month. Ask any Risk Manager under him how often he did this.
The same DG had a long history of dismissing any attempts to avoid wasting money with "of no concern to MoD(PE)". His formal position on Risk Management was; By all means record the risk, but if you dare try to mitigate it, watch out. This nonsense was formally taught to MoD entrants during his tenure, and the ethos remains to this day; although to be fair to the likes of the MAA I believe this penny has dropped with them. But elsewhere, you only have to look at the DE&S family tree to see that the people meant to be overseeing this, and imparting knowledge from a "centre of excellence" are in fact the worst exponents.
The solution is the same as for most things discussed here. Implement the regs. And sack those who refuse. As matters stand, it remains a disciplinary offence in MoD to implement the regulations designed to avoid waste.
Edited to add, in case you didn't already know; same DG - Nimrod MRA4.
Last edited by tucumseh; 23rd Jul 2012 at 16:14.
It isn't exclusively the CS and it isn't exclusively ABW either. For those who read it, the Gray report was a bit of a curate's egg. Some good ideas, but an awful lot of "here's the solution, let's find a way to make it fit".
There are undoubtedly some people in ABW whose giveaf8ckometer is hard-wired to zero. For every one of those people I've come across, there is also at least usually more one whose meter is pegged at 11. In the middle are an awful lot of people doing the best they can - whether that's good enough or not is a different question.
A huge amount of emb8ggerance is/was generated by the Planning Rounds, where people in town (MB) in general moved programmes and money around to fit an annual budget line, usually with no idea of what this did to cost escalation, programme risk, OC and morale.
One Maritime IPT got through Initial Gate - which should have been cause for wild celebration, whereupon the IPTL was told that the Assessment Phase funding had been cut to one third of that required, largely because the RDEL amount didn't fit the EP silt chart budget line. Told to get on with it and not to worry about slippage - but to try not to let it happen!
There are undoubtedly some people in ABW whose giveaf8ckometer is hard-wired to zero. For every one of those people I've come across, there is also at least usually more one whose meter is pegged at 11. In the middle are an awful lot of people doing the best they can - whether that's good enough or not is a different question.
A huge amount of emb8ggerance is/was generated by the Planning Rounds, where people in town (MB) in general moved programmes and money around to fit an annual budget line, usually with no idea of what this did to cost escalation, programme risk, OC and morale.
One Maritime IPT got through Initial Gate - which should have been cause for wild celebration, whereupon the IPTL was told that the Assessment Phase funding had been cut to one third of that required, largely because the RDEL amount didn't fit the EP silt chart budget line. Told to get on with it and not to worry about slippage - but to try not to let it happen!
Thanks for the feedback.
I don't assume everyone in the military will be good at it.
I think the US model is good. Put someone in post for long enough to get good at it - 7 years? Promote them if they do well. The US are prepared to have a Brigadier General with only two staff if that's what the person has earned but the project hasn't reached the 'big staff' stage yet. It has to be a worthwhile career move. Make the rank Acting if the results can't be assessed yet. Put 'em back down to whatever if it turns out they failed.
The military tend to be better at sacking incompetents, but admittedly not by much.
Ultimately though it will mean that, with less agencies, accountability is easier to pin down. And since we don't want the CS doing the fighting, that means the military doing the procuring.
Final point. We would probably be better off if the VSOs had the balls to tell Government that funding affects capability. I would suggest that the Government publishes a list of foreign policy objectives - in secret to the Commons Defence Committee if necessary - and the CDS reports on what the Armed Forces can achieve with the budget provided.
I don't assume everyone in the military will be good at it.
I think the US model is good. Put someone in post for long enough to get good at it - 7 years? Promote them if they do well. The US are prepared to have a Brigadier General with only two staff if that's what the person has earned but the project hasn't reached the 'big staff' stage yet. It has to be a worthwhile career move. Make the rank Acting if the results can't be assessed yet. Put 'em back down to whatever if it turns out they failed.
The military tend to be better at sacking incompetents, but admittedly not by much.
Ultimately though it will mean that, with less agencies, accountability is easier to pin down. And since we don't want the CS doing the fighting, that means the military doing the procuring.
Final point. We would probably be better off if the VSOs had the balls to tell Government that funding affects capability. I would suggest that the Government publishes a list of foreign policy objectives - in secret to the Commons Defence Committee if necessary - and the CDS reports on what the Armed Forces can achieve with the budget provided.
As hinted above, the scope for a massive conflict of interest is enormous.
Hopefully someone will realise that this could make all previous procurement errors pale into insignificance. Any regrets over particular PFI inflexibility or VFM issues could be made to look trivial....
Hopefully someone will realise that this could make all previous procurement errors pale into insignificance. Any regrets over particular PFI inflexibility or VFM issues could be made to look trivial....
tuc:
That is so true and so conspicuous by its absence.
F3WMB:
Better that who? I wouldn't even take much comfort from your qualification. The people who oversaw the deconstruction of the UK Military Airworthiness System were Military, RAF VSOs in fact. They are all honourable men evidently...
...implement the regulations and actually hold them accountable...
F3WMB:
The military tend to be better at sacking incompetents, but admittedly not by much.
This could be a contractual bun fight to beat ALL contractual bun fights! As the global defence sector continues to consolidate the number of companies large and complex enough to provide such a service shrinks accordingly, and by their very definition they will be amongst the major providers of goods and services to MoD.
Stuff.
BRAMA haven't been involved in Hawk work at Valley for a long time now, they lost the contract some years ago. Babcock Defence Services are the current provider.
Stuff.
BRAMA haven't been involved in Hawk work at Valley for a long time now, they lost the contract some years ago. Babcock Defence Services are the current provider.
Last edited by pr00ne; 23rd Jul 2012 at 19:39.
Fair enough, it's been a while since I passed though 208/19 but the point still stands. Can we not end up in the situation where we pay someone to award themselves with our procurement and support contracts?
insufficient staff training for CS
When I joined MoD(PE) as a project manager, it was my 6th grade as a Civil Servant. I'd managed projects in two of the previous grades and been an HQ "Staff Officer" in another (posts since Militarised at SO2 level). Some years later, after well over 100 projects, all delivered to at least Time, Cost and Performance, I was still regarded as inexperienced in that 6th grade because ELINT was missing from my cv. My annual report was very specific. Only after doing that on Nimrod R (before/during/after GW1) was I deemed fitted for promotion. Every single day of my career I drew on my experiences from those first 5 grades. The teaching I received from my seniors, who actually thought I was a young inexperienced whippersnapper when well past 100 projects, was invaluable.
Today, that 6th grade is the first grade for direct entrants. They are never required to demonstrate any of the competencies myself and my colleagues gained in the previous 5 grades. To compound matters, there is no one left to pass on practical experience.
MoD can never recover that situation. Gray's proposals are the right thing to do, but for all the wrong reasons. Because what I describe will never be acknowledged openly by MoD, the same lunatics will be running the assylum, but this time getting paid double working for the companies who do the "CO" part of GOCO.
I mention the above because I agree with Jim. Being Military does not guarantee competence in procurement. Not by a long shot. Look at the procurement disasters everyone bangs on about. Study the personnel. I know most of them. Do you? The DG I mentioned above was a CS. But his boss, who approved everything he did, was a former Admiral. The airworthiness debacle, which has the deliberate waste of hundreds of millions per year, year on year, at its root, was led by senior RAF officers. The threats of dismissal for refusing to waste money were instigated by an RAF AVM, supported by an ACM. (Sorry, bit of duplication there; the ACM was also the RAF Chief Engineer who scrapped the airworthiness system).
This isn't an anti-Service rant; just an observation that it isn't as simple as "get shot of the CS".
Stuff,
Theoretically yes, but in practice no. Contract law and Public Procurement Law would prevent it for a start. But, there will have to be some rather quickly erected Chinese walls if some of the usual suspects are, as I suspect that they will be, amongst the bidders.
Theoretically yes, but in practice no. Contract law and Public Procurement Law would prevent it for a start. But, there will have to be some rather quickly erected Chinese walls if some of the usual suspects are, as I suspect that they will be, amongst the bidders.
Watching recorded coverage of Defence Questions on BBC Parliament the other evening (yes, I was very bored), it struck me that nearly half of the alloted time was spent debating UK defence industry matters. An awful lot of "jobs in my constituency this" and "training of skilled engineers that". It struck me that most of that discussion should have been addressed to the Business rather than the Defence ministers. Wouldn't we avoid a lot of our standard pitfalls if the MOD simply tried to buy the best it could for its money, while UK industry (separately) did its best to ensure that that meant choosing a British product? Having the MOD as poacher and gamekeeper has patently not been working.
Last edited by Easy Street; 23rd Jul 2012 at 20:26.
ES
'Ere, 'Ere,'Ere!. Waving of Order Papers, prolonged waving of Order Papers. "Order Order, Order", from the Speaker drowned in increasing uproar. Sitting suspended!
Which is precisely where Airworthiness went wrong. An Airworthiness Authority MUST be independent of the Operators. An Air Accident Investigation Authority MUST be independent of the Operators. Both MUST be independent of each other, or people die! People have died because the MOD is Poacher and Gamekeeper!
Self Regulation Does Not Work and in Aviation it Kills!
Having the MOD as poacher and gamekeeper has patently not been working.
Which is precisely where Airworthiness went wrong. An Airworthiness Authority MUST be independent of the Operators. An Air Accident Investigation Authority MUST be independent of the Operators. Both MUST be independent of each other, or people die! People have died because the MOD is Poacher and Gamekeeper!
Self Regulation Does Not Work and in Aviation it Kills!