Re: Re: Mission Creep

Laserlight schrieb:
> > But you still buy from the lowest bidder,  do you ?
> 
> No, we buy from the best bid, not necessarily the
> lowest.

But assuming both provide the same 'quality' you would go for the
cheaper one ? 

And possibly, there are cases where you say 'A is better than B, but B
is cheaper. And we can buy 10 of B's ships for 9 of A's and that
difference is more important than the quality difference'

So there is still an incentive to bid low. 

> Is it part of neccessary development (to be paid by the contractor)
or a 
> change request (to be paid by the buyer) ?
> 
> Change requests are always paid by the buyer.

>From my experience (not in defence, but it can hardly be different
there), unless you have written everything down to the last nail in the
contract, it's very easy to get into disputes of the kind: 'We can't
use it without X. X is obviously covered by original requirements' (to
be paid by the contractor) 'No, X was not specified. It is a change
request' (to be paid by the buyer).

And for any project that includes any kind of research and development,
you can't specify everything beforehand.

> Upgrades can go out for bid just like anything else. 
> Documentation is owned by the buyer, not the contractor. 

That's fine for an upgrade of the finished product. Rather more
difficult for an upgrade of something that's just being built (the
starting point of this discussion).

>  It may be fiscally advantageous to go back to the original source,
even if
> he's overcharging you...but you can always make it clear that
> it'll be remembered on the next bid.

Not always easy to know whether he's overcharging (at least if he is
careful and not too greedy). There are a lot of bookkeeping tricks.

Greetings