Quote:
Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins
Thanks, Paul for chiming in and providing some experienced insight into how these contracts work, and the differences between them. I have no experience in that arena. I'm just passing on what us poor dumb engineers thought we "knew" about all of it. It's obviously more complex than I understand. What we did pick up on, what was absolutely unmistakeable, was the manner in which we were allowed to approach things in our jobs. After the merger, it was very much no longer the "playground" into which I hired, with no one worrying about, nor accountable, for cost. After the merger, that was the only thing that mattered.
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Please, Jeff: If you are a "poor dumb engineer" I'm a sock puppet.
What Boeing did on the military side with the F-18, with a complicit government group, was pretty much genius at the time and is still studied at the Defense Acquisition University, where I have been a guest speaker a number of times.
The genius was once they got the original F-18 in the fleet, got the Navy a "little bit pregnant", subsequent versions of the F-18, including a nearly entire new design with the E/F, were contracted under the "engineering change proposal" clause in the contract...no competition, same rate structure, no detailed contract review, etc.
Again, everyone would nap better than Sleeping Beauty if I went into the details, but they are spectacular from a PM perspective.