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BoldestKobold t1_j57ptdh wrote

Reply to comment by ToxicAdamm in The Lights Have Been On At a Massachusetts School For Over a Year Because No One Can Turn Them Off by AStartIsBorn

> When you are bidding on a project, you are incentivized to come in at the lowest price possible. So, you skimp on 'features' and then try to upsell them (at twice the price) once you won the bid.

As a government employee who has had to deal with procurement before, this pisses me off so much. A vendor comes in with a suspiciously lowball bid, but the procurement people (who work for a DIFFERENT STATE AGENCY, but can veto any procurement action done by any other agency) say we have to accept it.

Meanwhile all our subject matter specialists are looking at management like we're idiots. An industry leader will bid, give us a pretty good price discount (since as a state agency we're buying in bulk for most goods and services), but we have to go with some fly by night place that everyone is pretty sure will suck and lead to cost overruns, but because they bid 10% less we are forced to accept it.

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Tvmouth t1_j57udhp wrote

> we are forced to accept it.

and if it's a bad deal, people get paid to decide if lawyers get paid to argue about it. failure is a job's program, the fact that this is a school is a double slap in the face: how can any kid trust adults that are so blatantly corrupt and wasteful for the sake of casting blame and creating more jobs.

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