RE: http://www.military.com/NewsContent/0,13319,160643,00.html

Who writes and approves these contracts that have so many contentious issues? A contract is supposed to be specific and black and white as to responsibilities.

Let's see, 636 hours amounts to 15.9 forty hour work weeks. They could have built an entirely new semi in that amount of time. Nope, no fraud here

When I read the contract provision I almost dropped my teeth. A provision like that gives a disincentive to perform the job correctly and rewards poor performance with more money than a good performance would bring. Someone should take a very close look at whoever placed this language in the contract. Was it adopted whole from a proposal by the contractor? Was it written by a contract officer for the Army? How was it done? It would be great to hear from contracting types in this forum about how language like this got put into a contract. How the heck did it pass review?

now when have I heard that before. its not only the GAO accounting. I remember toilet seats that cost five and six hundred dollars.first of all I think that the liaison officer are who contracts the deal,job,work. should be schooled in how to hold someone accountable for their work. and how to appraise the work done. not just any good ole boy . are you scratch my back I'll scratch yours. are put the contractor and the liaison officer in jail.but thats my opinion. for what its worth.

(I'm not a contracting officer, but I do a little about the process) First, certain contractors are already "locked in", and the actual contract is a formality...and it's a formality where the government has no other recourse. For example, the LOGCAP contract covers hundreds of small areas. So, if this was a "maintenance" contract, then the LOGCAP contract already has the job. The .mil can't go anywhere else. So, basically, the contract gets written as the contractor wants it, or the mil gets no service. Another example is food service for OIF/OEF. When the gov tried to not pay KBR because some services not performed (don't exactly remember what), KBR merely inflated the headcount numbers so they could charge the "surge rate" for meals and make up the money. There was nothing in the contract that said they couldn't do it. The gov paid it, because they really have no other choice. No other contractor has the resources to feed every deployed servicemember (not just Iraq and Afghanistan). The mil is in a catch-22. They have such massive requirements that the only contractor that can compete is the one that has been designed to provide the mil's needs. It's not that another contractor can't feed servicemembers for less than $20 a meal (or whatever it is), it's that they can't feed 150,000 servicemembers. The only one who can do that is KBR.

To hell with the contract. I can't believe these contractors are allowing shoddy work that could get our troops killed! Apparently, it's all about the dollar with them. Kick their butts out of the region and nullify the contract. Someone with the juice in Washington and some _____s should step up and do something, now!!! Quit talking about it.

I have seen stuff like that in Germany, when I briefly worked for a contractor. They'd squeeze money out of the military left and right, for as little work as possible. They do that all over, wherever the military is stationed, because they know they can get away with it.

But as jwr6 mentioned, in some ways the military has no other option than to contract out and when there are only one or two companies who can remotely compete, then there isn't much of a choice, is there... However, I do think that contractors need to be closely monitored, to catch them early on and slap them on their fingers repeatedly, with a penalty system that allows the government to withhold funds unless the job is done properly.

quote:

Originally posted by kagnew6970:
To hell with the contract. I can't believe these contractors are allowing shoddy work that could get our troops killed! Apparently, it's all about the dollar with them. Kick their butts out of the region and nullify the contract. Someone with the juice in Washington and some _____s should step up and do something, now!!! Quit talking about it.

Kick 'em out and then what? Who is then supposed to do the work that needs to be done?

I'm not a lawyer, a procurement officer, or an expert on contracts, but with all the BS gobbelty goop that is written in to the fine print of every contract out here in the real world, it would seem in the best interest of the taxpayer and the end-user (the military) to have a straight out clause in EVERY contract that makes double-charging and other scullduggery a CRIME! Give the IRS complete authority to prosecute those who defraud the US taxpayers and put them in jail!
War profiteers should get harsh prison terms.

If I saw this guy double dipping this flagrantly at the nachos table I'd kick his butt.

Well I am a contractor, and if my services were that shoddy, I would be fined and also lose the contract. As for the other end of the process, I deal with letting contracts for projects on the airport using FAA grants. If that contractor fails repeatably, they will be fined and/or fired or both. We have inspectors that make sure things are right and if they are wrong, the contractor eats it until he gets it right. The contract should have never been written where they would pay the contractor for fixing their own mistakes. The contracting officer should be held accountable.

As for working with contracting officers, I can tell you that some really should not be in that position. It is sad that some can be in that position to authorize money to be spent, and they have no clue of how to let a contract.

This thread made me think of this.

In the early part of WWII a little known US Senator(Harry Truman) cleaned house in regards to to shoddy work performed by contractors. Is their anyone of his caliber in Washington these days?

quote:

Originally posted by 16528112:
If I saw this guy double dipping this flagrantly at the nachos table I'd kick his butt.

Yuck! Nothing worse then a double dipper.

Yes, but they've had their firing pins removed.

quote:

Originally posted by 67NOV:
In the early part of WWII a little known US Senator(Harry Truman) cleaned house in regards to to shoddy work performed by contractors. Is their anyone of his caliber in Washington these days?

Yeah. Germs are bad enough (not to mention drool in the cheese dip!) But those pale compared to messin' w/ the war effort!

quote:

Originally posted by 67NOV:

quote:

Originally posted by 16528112:
If I saw this guy double dipping this flagrantly at the nachos table I'd kick his butt.

Yuck! Nothing worse then a double dipper.

At various times in my career in the shipyards I have seen contractors knowingly do something wrong just so they could get extra from the government, when it was time to fix it. The original request from the government may have not been complete or actually asked for it wrong. The problem here is no integrity.

Its not like these workers over there are being under paid, most of them make big time wages, and they don't care what they give back to the troops! Where are all the audits being done by DCAA, DCMA at, that it even has to get to the GAO!!! But most of these auditors have never read a contract to see what is right or wrong. Been in this situation many times, get the contract out and read it, then enforce it.......

For quite a few years now, we have been taking jobs traditionally done by military folks and turning them over to civilians. It is supposedly cheaper and is an excuse to reduce the number of military personnel. This kind of fraud is the result.
Just look at the family housing on military bases. Most, if not all, have been turned over to civilians for management, maintenance, etc. If there was a plumbing problem, they used to send an E-3 or E-4 out to fix it. Now they send a union plumber because its cheaper?????????????

This happens all the time in Iraq, I've seen it go the other way as well......doing jobs without getting paid for long periods of time, months, sometimes a full year.

Can't resist a comment on this one. Since the government can't hire lawyers and contracting officers that are the smartest (those guys work for the contractors), we get exactly what we pay for. If one thinks this is a new concept to screw up the repair and then charge for the follow-up repair you haven't been in DoD for the last 50 years. Check out how planes are made and fixed. It would make you laugh if you weren't crying so much at the waste. The political appointees that come into DoD are the cronies of the contractors. Instead of fixing the business practices such as really bad contracting practices, accounting systems, or financial issues; they fool around with strategy and tactics. When the administration changes guess what the political appointees become the Vice Presidents of? Reference privatization: when a contractor takes over the job done by a civil service or military member the cost to the government far exceeds the salaries of the government person. The contractor will cost 2 to 3 times what the miliary or civil service person costs (including retirement and health since the contractor passes those costs on to the government). The individual contactor worker doesn't make more (and sometimes less), but the contracting corporation skims the rest as "overhead costs". No government audit agency to include the GAO has ever gone back to validate/verify the savings after one year and then five years of a so-called privatization contract. It would be embarrassing to Congressmen and Senators whose political contributions come from these contractors, and the political appointees wouldn't get their great follow-on jobs.

quote:

Originally posted by 67NOV:
In the early part of WWII a little known US Senator(Harry Truman) cleaned house in regards to to shoddy work performed by contractors. Is their anyone of his caliber in Washington these days?

No.