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by emchammer 261 days ago
What does your last sentence mean? That a contractor charges an additional $5 million to detail what the charges in their quote are for?
1 comments

I apologize in advance for not giving exact numbers - I'd rather not tie my posts to specific programs in the unlikely case that someone I work with reads my posts.

We received a quote containing two lines:

"Hardware Cost - xx million" "Software Cost - xx million"

There was no further information. No detail on how those numbers were derived, nor what we were paying for other than the "hardware and software needed for organic sustainment of the system in question. The defense contractor wanted over 5 million for any additional detail. We wouldn't know whether we receive documentation, schematics, etc without paying additional money. I don't mean that they wanted us to pay more for things like documentation or schematics. We wouldn't know what we are receiving until we pay.

We were providing engineering support for a DoD Program Office which normally deals in multi-billion dollar acquisitions. They treated ~5 million as pocket change. Over multiple system acquisitions, that adds up fast.

Isn’t this what competition solves?
We live in a post-competition economy these days. Those on top don't believe in competition, and we all pay the price.