My Big, Slow Fail: A Comedy Of Errors

Abstract

My frequent telephone conversations with the contracting officer (CO) over the next few weeks were quite positive. It looked like wed need 60 days to award the contract, which sounded long but not outrageous. I was optimistic that we could be faster, but I figured there was wisdom in building in a little cushion. Better to under-promise and over-deliver, right? One nagging issue was that I seemed to uncover new stuff at every turn. A typical phone call to the CO would go something like this: Were in good shape Oh, wait, the J and A needs to address this and that and this other thing. Or: Turns out the market research isnt completeI shouldve mentioned that sooner. Then there was, Did I mention we need a program management plan? You get the pictureand eventually so did I, although I was embarrassingly slow to act on it. I kept asking for a list of all the necessary tasks, documents, and reviews. And the list just kept on growing.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Feb 01, 2011
Accession Number
AD1016348

Entities

People

  • Daniel R. Ward

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Acquisition
  • Air Force
  • Competition
  • Contracts
  • Cost Estimates
  • Costs
  • Electrical Engineering
  • Engineering
  • Engineers
  • General Officers
  • Market Research
  • Personnel Management
  • Program Management
  • Specialists
  • Systems Engineering

Readers

  • Educational Psychology
  • Government Contracting/Procurement.
  • Military History of the United States in the 20th Century.