Re: Re: Mission Creep

KH said:
> > >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).

Derk said:
> This sounds eerily familiar.. And I am in the defence market :)

   Sounds familiar to me too, from when I was selling linguistics--and
linguistics is quite a fuzzy thing to sell (eg take any Japanese text
and hand it to five Japanese linguists.  I'll bet you that all five
find things they say are wrong--and each one will be different from
the rest.  How do you guarantee "translation quality"?).
   But when that kind of thing happens, it ordinarily bespeaks
sloppiness on the part of the selling company.	Usually they're too
eager to get the contract to spell out all the costs; or sometimes
they simply don't know what they're talking about.  Or both.  In which
case, the buyer is within his rights to say "you screwed up, so you're
paying the overrun."  (<g> Last year Dupont said "we think your bid is
too low, compared to the other bidders"--so I said "would you feel
more comfortable if I put in an extra review cycle for, oh, another
15%?"...and they bought it!)
     I've also seen the buyer pressure the sales rep to take change
orders for free--okay, it's a buyer's job to try to get stuff cheap,
but the sales rep can always tell him to take a hike.  If the client
whines about penny-ante stuff, that's a client you're better off