From: "David Rodemaker" <dar@horusinc.com>
> Once again, there is a less fine line between "maximizing
and
> "charging the market price" to "sticking to the government because we
Tall Tales But True Dept.
The story of the $500 wrench.
This was a special tool designed to unlock a bolt on an F-16A's ejector
seat. It was found that a $2 wrench could do the same job, except for
capturing the bolt afterwards.
Big hoo-ha. $2 wrenches rule.
Then someone dropped the bolt while unscrewing it. To retrieve it took nearly
$500,000 worth of effort in taking apart the F-16 and re-assembling it.
That's why the menufacturer had gone to the trouble of making special tools...
after awhile, the governernment spent a lot of money getting new wrenches, and
even
more getting the cockpit re-designed in the F-16C.
The story of the $200,000 coffee machine.
The USAF has a machine called the C-5A Galaxy It's capable of
transporting 300 troops pretty much anywhere in the world, and is designed for
long flights, long, long flights that can end up in a combat zone.
Do you have any idea how much coffee gets consumed by 200 paratroops about
to make a drop in 17 hours? So it's not your standard 4-cup
coffee-maker.
What's more, the C-5A had to be able to function in case enemy action
caused
it to de-pressurise. So the machine had to be able to take sudden
changes in ambient pressure without exploding and sending scalding coffee
everywhere.
Now the GAO (Government Accounting Office) had a neat rule to save money. Any
aircraft involved in a minor accident, such as tyres bursting, could be
stripped of non-essential non-critical parts until put back in service.
they
didn't have to be re-tested if they weren't essentials, like ailerons,
but were "nice to have" like cushions, or coffee machines.
So there was a requirement that all such non-essential items should have
their crash-worthiness tested, to see if they were OK to re-use without
inspection.
And all requirements had to be tested.... so, you guessed it, the
manufacturers had to load up an old 707 with vast quantities of parts, fit
radio-guidance,
and deliberately crash it and salvage what they could. So for 30 or so coffee
machines, that cost an additional $5 million or so. Yes,, they made a loss on
each one.
The $90 screw..
The GAO also had a rule that overheads involved in any purchase should be
evenly spread between all items in the purchase. Sounds fair enough.
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> On Sat, 30 Jun 2001, Alan and Carmel Brain wrote:
> From: "David Rodemaker" <dar@horusinc.com>
I loved those, thanks:)
Anyway, as for milspec kit costing more, even when selling a simple off the
shelf wrench it's more expensive. Why? Simply because the whole milspec
documenting apparatus has to be run for the simple wrench. Which is why we
always have a seperate list of 'commercial' items that we recommend the
customer to buy at a nerby hardware store. Of course, there's always some who
want to buy it through us. Which costs.
Cheers,
> Derk Groeneveld wrote:
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Which
> is why we always have a seperate list of 'commercial' items that we
The MIL Spec problem comes about from a large number of peacetime warriors
with
nothing to do. The specification for the C-130 Hercules transport was a
total of
400 pages. The pentagon did not have the man-hours to specify
And the C130 is an outstanding aircraft. (and has been for what? at least 40
years) If it took 400 pages of specifications to make it so (which by the way
seems hardly unreasonable to me given the complexity of the system, then it's
well worth it.
Los
[quoted original message omitted]
> At 8:41 AM -0400 6/30/01, Richard and Emily Bell wrote:
Having worked at Lockheed martin when they were putting together
specifications for aircraft, this isn't quite so true.
I was there for the UK-RMPA, the C5-D bid and a few other smaller
proposals. The documents aren't that big. They are in the 2,000+ page
range but that's because it includes materials advances, changes in
design from existing systems and all sorts of very in-depth details
on the design and its capabilities. Once the book was compiled, it was sent to
the government board and they broke it back down into the various sections for
their experts to compare with the other bids.
I know this because I worked in the publications department and supported the
Macs they used to generate the graphics and lay the pages out in Framemaker. I
got to see the process first hand. I got a
nasty speeding ticket on the day we finished the UK-RMPA (P3-Orion
for the Brits) bid and the publications group was doing the final assembly of
the document.
I'd have loved to have seen the C5-D.
<laugh>
Specificaitons are amazing things.
I was tasked to document a program (that had no documentation internal or
external). Originally I was to use a Milspec standard. Then a different
standard, then an IEEE standard (12207), then a combination, then back to
IEEE. After 6 months they decided on IEEE.
They decided that they wanted "everything specified in the specification". The
standard, itself, was over 200 pages (in 3 parts).
I got about 1/10th the way into the specification and realized that it
was going to be massive. I took a sample for one procedure (over 2 pages) to
the government contact and expalined that the finished document would be well
over 1000 pages. I asked if they really wanted it done in the style and method
they described. They indicated that they did. So I finished the document.
You should have seen the jaws drop when I delievered the first draft topping
1700 pages (10 copies, because they all insisted on paper copies to make
revisions rather than editing electronic copies or just printing the pages
that needed editing and marking those up).
At the next review meeting, they started to go through the document LINE BY
LINE! Looking to see if the technical aspects were correct? No. Getting into
arguments as to whether the term "Associate" applied to government, military
and contract workers or just to government and military. Arrrghhh!!!! After
weeks of meetings and revisions, I am ready to have it signed off. And then
they decide that they will never get it past the review committiee because it
is too big. Arrrgghhhh! They wanted me to split the docuemnt and place most of
the detail into the source code comment blocks.
Another time (doing Y2K stuff), I needed to make an inventory of the
commercial software on location, so that vendor statements of Y2K compliace
could be obtained. It took me 3 months to gain access to a
storeroom that had -ZERO- classified or sensitive material. All due to
turf wars.
On another job (selling office supplies), we had to spend hours and hours
obtaining hazardous chemical statements for each of the items we sold to the
local city government. And we could not keep them on file
for any lenght of time. They required time/date-stamped versions of the
statements EACH QUARTER! If the date was from the previous quarter, it would
not be accepted. We had to obtain statements for thousands of items each
quarter so that the date on the top of the faxed statement would be in the
correct quarter.
---
> > Anyway, as for milspec kit costing more, even when selling a simple
Which
> > is why we always have a seperate list of 'commercial' items that we
Occasionally the Navy shops would want to buy some piece of material, below
our $50 purchase minimum and the guy didn't want to fill out the 17 pages of
paperwork to buy it. So I'd "give" him a "sample" and he'd authorize a bit
higher price on the next PO
> Ryan Gill wrote:
> At 8:41 AM -0400 6/30/01, Richard and Emily Bell wrote:
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I am dropping off this thread, as we (myself included) have taken it
W-A-Y off topic.
- ---
Brian Bell bbell1@insight.rr.com ICQ: 12848051 AIM: Rlyehable YIM: Rlyehable
The Full Thrust Ship Registry:
http://www.ftsr.org
- ---
- -----Original Message-----
From: owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU
[mailto:owner-gzg-l@lists.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU]On Behalf Of
aebrain@austarmetro.com.au
Sent: Friday, July 10, 2893 18:44
To: gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu
Subject: Re: [FT] Military Overcharging
[snip]
> The standard, itself, was over 200 pages (in 3 parts).
Been there, done that.
[snip]
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And I, as the occasionally, self-appointed arbiter of 'germane-ity',
apologize for having found it TOO fascinating to intercede. And, yes, I did
take notes.
The_Beast
> <laugh>
Originally I was to use a Milspec standard. Then a different standard, then an
IEEE standard (12207), then a combination, then back to IEEE. After 6 months
they decided on IEEE.
> They decided that they wanted "everything specified in the
The standard, itself, was over 200 pages (in 3 parts).
Been there, done that.
The trouble is, that the Mil Standards themselves are actually pretty good, IN
THE RIGHT HANDS. 1679 a bit primitive, 2167 was OK, 2167A a bit too terse, 498
WONDERFUL, IEEE 12207 too terse again.
By "terse" I mean "too generally wishy-washy with no specific guidance
on how to shrink the results to something reasonable".
The first thing the standards do is tell you to tailor them. Basically, these
standards are designed to be useful on every project, from a simple software
module to a World Wide Command and Control System, or for that matter, the
Internet. All of it.
So someone *who knows how to use these standards* will take the 200+
pages, and
tailor them to the 2-30 documents that are relevant for the task. The
standard actually tells you to do this, and 498 and 2167 both gave a guidebook
even larger than the standard on how to decide what to remove altogether or
combine.
Basically, if you ever find yourself making a document that won't actually
help you make, use or maintain the system, you're using the standard wrong,
and
should go-back and do some more tailoring.
Whereupon you will find that the clueless customer says "you're not giving us
what we want, we want it all! All 4000 Interface Specifications! The Software
User Manual for an automatic system with no manual intervention! All of
it!".
I've made systems that are completely documented according to 2167A that had
exactly 3 documents, each of about 20 pages, for them. 498's even better, the
documents are clearer and positive boons when building the system. I've also
seen systems documented (badly) in 1679A (predecessor to 2167A) that were best
measured in megapages. Literally. In one, (a great disaster) just the data
flow model took up 10 cubic metres of space. The savvy but unethical company
gave
the clueless customer exactly what they asked for- nay, DEMANDED - a
totally useless waste of effort, at a cost of hundreds of millions.
I'd recommend to any software developer that they have a good, solid read of
Mil Std 498, AND the handbook. And it's absolutely vital to realise that
although you *can* write 300+ different documents for a system according
to the standard, that is no reason why you *should*. For example, a missile
guidance
system that fits in the nose of an anti-air missile shouldn't have a
separate user's handbook, GUI design document, and system administrator's
manual. And a
package that runs on 1 PC might best just have 3 documents - a combined
Requirements/Design/Maintenance document, a combined Installation
Guide/User
Manual, and a Sales Brochure/Executive Summary.
But there's always some clueless newbie that suspects that the Big Bad
Contractor's trying to pull a fast one on them, and not giving them enough
documentation. So they reject the clear, concise, complete and useful first
draft for something that groans under its own weight, which only God alone
(certainly not the author) knows if it's complete or not, and which it would
take an army of thousands several decades to review properly. They then spend
9 of the 10 available days for review arguing about the exact meaning of
"shall", "should, and "may" even though these have very specific and
well-
defined definitions in the standard.*
I've seen a fully grown Lieut Cdr of the US Navy tear pages out of documents
and eat them in frustration at one of these meetings. (Then he and I adjourned
for a few minutes, got a pen and some Corflu, went to the photocopier, made a
few changes while the Clue-Free Zone in the conference room gabbled on
about definitions, shook hands on it, so all was well in the end.)
I guess the only difference between Australia and the US is that in Australia,
$30 US per hour is a good rate for someone with 15+ years of experience,
not $300... FWIW I'm leading the software team doing the spaceflight avionics
for a
6-payload scientific satellite, and I get less than $30 US per hour...
but I'd do it for less, it's fun!
* OK, here's the potted version.
Shall - means it shall be done this way.
Should - means it should be done this way, unless you find a better (or
much much cheaper that's almost as good) way.
May - means a suggested way, but there are probably others that are
better, and if you know of one, use that instead.
So the New Kil-O-Zap PDS System:
SHALL be able to successfully kill X standard targets in Y
seconds.(though X+1
would be better!)
SHOULD use existing standard Navy components (unless KV-mart ones at
1/100 the
price are even better, so we could refit the whole fleet) MAY use a missile
system as the kill mechanism (though a beam weapon is fine if that's what's
needed)
> Brian Bell wrote:
> > I am dropping off this thread, as we (myself included) have taken it