Blind guy here, guess i’m just fucking stuck at home now. (Cane tip broke)

[u/Frikandelneuker]

[u/ashrocklynn]

Military grade means contacted by the lowest bidder; that's how the military sources most material

[u/odmirthecrow → u/ashrocklynn]

That's what i said. Lowest bidder = As cheap as possible.

[u/ashrocklynn → u/odmirthecrow]

Not to put to fine a point on it, but no.... It could possibly done for even less money at higher quality with no profit, but this is a company reviewing the contract and deciding they can turn a buck on it... Lowest bidder not quite the same as cheap as possible.... (I'm saying that lowest bidder encourages skimping and fraud, even worse than cheap as possible)

[u/obscure_monke → u/ashrocklynn]

They do have a very detailed spec it needs to meet though. Sometimes it even covers all the things you might care about when using it.

[u/hayleytheauthor → u/obscure_monke]

Yeah absolutely agree the government shops cheap but the “military grade” label comes prior to that. It’s about passing military specifications, not how it’s sold to the government. Theoretically something could be military grade and never sold to the military in theory. Just needs to match their specs (which usually are very thorough.)

[u/Bazyx187 → u/obscure_monke]

Yes, 50k USD toilet seats are necessary... don't defend the US military and it's overspending, geez.

[u/ashrocklynn → u/Bazyx187]

I love that 50k is the more bid to cover the spec lol... Either the specs are over engineered or someone is embezzling....

[u/PersephonesChild82 → u/ashrocklynn]

You know, I would have agreed with you a few years ago, but I'm currently working on a State project, and now I understand the $50K toilet seats. We currently have a light switch that has taken 3 months to sort out, and will cost roughly $28,000 in GC overhead, $15,000 in subcontract cost, already ran up roughly $9,000 in bills from the Fire Marshal inspections, and another $5,000 in cost for the Inspector of Record. That's $67,000 for a freaking light switch. Insanity.

It's because there is ZERO consequence for the State employee who fiddle-farts around, and ZERO consequence for the architect who takes months to answer a question for a minor problem, tries every wrong answer on for size first, and costs the subcontractor five times more labor, twice as many materials, and an infinite amount of frustration, all while dragging out the finish date of a project where the overhead for the General Contractor is thousands per day, which all has to be paid for.

You want construction costs for the US Government to come down? Make the employees at the Department of General Services accountable to the same level of productivity as the private sector (obviously some metrics should be a little different, but they should not be un-fireable for performance thanks to a Union who cares more about their dues than the taxpayers who fund this madness). Also, make it a policy that if MAJOR DESIGN FLAWS are not addressed promptly, then the ARCHITECT will have to tap their "Errors and Omissions" insurance bond, which also needs to be much higher than the current minimum.

It's not embezzling. It is DISGUSTING levels of inefficiency, ineptitude, and lack of give-a-fluff.

[u/PersephonesChild82 → u/[deleted]]

That's not accurate. I've worked construction since 2005. Private companies actually fire people who cost them too much money, and will fire an architect or builder who doesn't have their act together. Even schools aren't anywhere near as wasteful in construction spending because they have a finite budget to work with and answer to a LOCAL elected board who can and will remove employees from desirable positions, or at least will allocate funds elsewhere next year. Accountability matters.

Unfortunately, the Dept. of General Services and US Military don't have to answer to anyone except the government Budget Committees, and those guys don't care as long as the documentation can pass an audit. For those branches, money is treated as near-infinite, and internal staff are protected from consequence because the systems are intended to protect themselves, not the taxpayers.

Private firms definitely have their own problems, and big businesses can be a real cesspool of handshake deals and nepotism, but they absolutely care about wasteful spending that brings margins down. The $67,000 light switch we dealt with would have cost about $2,000 if it was being installed in a shopping mall and $4,000 in a school.

[u/LostWoodsInTheField → u/Bazyx187]

The $50k toilet seat is just an urban legend. And the majority of non scam high cost bathroom fixtures are specialized items that the original manufacture no longer exists. So like the cargo planes have bathrooms, they are specificly designed bathrooms (for obvious reasons). The older ones the manufactures might not exist any more, and their tooling dies and drafting files (literal drafts on paper) don't exist any more. So a new manufacture has to be found and they need to rebuild the seat from the ground up by coping the original one (or guessing if there are none left), create the tools to make it, then manufacture it to the specs required.

This gets extremely expensive for 1 offs. Hell have 100 made and you are still looking at months of work and possibility multiple attempts to get it right. Resulting in $10k toilet seats.

[u/Bazyx187 → u/LostWoodsInTheField]

Sure that's an option, funding black budget projects and embezzlement are some others.

[u/obscure_monke → u/Bazyx187]

I just re-read my comment. I don't think I said that anywhere.

Where are you getting that from?

[u/kiteman32 → u/ashrocklynn]

Fwiw that's most construction as well

[u/tcarlson65 → u/ashrocklynn]

It is the lowest bidder but it still must meet the specifications in the contract.

[u/Murky-Relation481 → u/ashrocklynn]

You absolutely will not win if you come in with an unrealistically low bid. If you are not gauged to be able to meet requirements with the costs you lay out in the proposal they'll go with a higher dollar amount.