We’ve all heard the old adage “a girl in every port.” What most of us may not know, is that young Navy sailors would establish high standards for the type of girlfriend they would look for at their next port. The joke was that you could always “lower your standards” correspondent to the remaining time in your shore leave.

Today, the government is taking a page from the sailor’s playbook, perpetuating the notion of establishing high standards, then lowering them as time runs out.  The government calls it “competitive bidding,” but this is really just a mechanism for lowering standards.

The government will tell you that it pays for its suppliers to meet the “Deliverable Contract Items.” These must then be documented as “acceptable,” and then accepted by the government representative.  Often, though, the government will ask a contractor to complete part of the project, and then go out to subcontractors who offer the cheapest rates to finish the assignment.

For example, earlier this week I met with a representative of a major military contractor. He showed us a prototype of a product being developed for shipboard use. He went on to say that although his firm had designed, engineered and validated the equipment, they had to go out to subcontractors to build the units. The government would then pick a handful of the lowest bidding subcontractors to manufacture the first units for installation.

The bottom line is that it would appear government agencies are now awarding contracts to prime suppliers who will develop the product, then going in and hiring subcontractors to produce the product for the lowest cost to the government (i.e. lowering their standards). To top it off, they are managing the contracts, so that the prime contractor has no choice, but to go along with the plan, if they want to keep working for the government.

What wrong with this picture? I would appreciate your take on this issue? Have you run across similar situations in your work with government contractors?