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Originally Posted by T. Hoffman
That is a really great analogy; however, your parallel to the engineering world all assumes that your company still retains the right to CHOOSE New Little Guy Machines in the event that Amazing can't hold up its end of the bargain. Unfortunately, under the current rules, your company is at the mercy of a ranked list, and the selection of your alternate business partner is made for you by an external party. No matter how much you want to do business with New Little Guy Machines and no matter how much they want to do business with you, if they are the #2-rated company on that list - you're going to be stuck with the #1 guy no matter what he makes and how well he makes it - for all you know, he's making widgets and you need whatchamacallits! Makes perfect business sense to me!  |
The analogy to the real world still holds perfectly. Yup, that's right - welcome to the real world of government engineering! That is the one where decisions regarding the selection of business partners are bound by the rules of "8-A corporations," "Buy-American Clause," "Lowest Bidder selections," "Minority-owned business preferences," "Business development zone preferences," "competitive peer reviews," "justfications for non-competitive procurements," etc. etc. etc.
You know, the more and more I look at what happens with a typical FIRST team and the experiences they go through, the more and more impressed I am with FIRST and how they make it more and more like the "real world" every day (even the really wierd parts of the real world)!
-dave