No part was to be physically built here. The plan was to build the 767 in Seattle and modify it in Wichita. There were a fair amount of jobs supporting the Tanker Program here in St. Louis though.MSU South Sider wrote:In the original proposal, was it disclosed what part of this project would be built at Boeing's operations in St. Louis?
http://snipurl.com/tankerupdate
The ousted head of the U.S. Air Force, Michael Wynne, said Friday he expected the service to seek new bids for midair refueling aircraft from Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp after federal auditors faulted the selection process for a $35 billion program.
There's probably a reason the American industrial base is shrinking, Mr. Wynne. Bureaucrats like you and John McCain go out of their way to screw American industry and its workers. But at least the pockets of John McCain's lobbyists were laced with nearly a million dollars from EADS/Northrop in the process.
Someone please bring back Ross Perot.
The ousted head of the U.S. Air Force, Michael Wynne, said Friday he expected the service to seek new bids for midair refueling aircraft from Boeing Co and Northrop Grumman Corp after federal auditors faulted the selection process for a $35 billion program.
When he said they were leaning over backward to maintain competition, he meant they changed the evaluation criteria after the RFP was submitted to keep EADS/Northrop in the competition. Not only that, the GAO determined the Air Force incorrectly performed evaluations that put an American company out of favor. That violates ethical standards and is just plain stupid, politically speaking. If EADS/Northrop didn't have a platform that optimally met warfighter needs, that's their problem.Wynne, forced to resign June 5 over nuclear and ballistic missile safety oversights, said the Air Force in effect had leaned over backward to maintain competition after a botched sole-source plan to lease and then buy modified Boeing 767s as tankers.
"We wanted to make sure we had competition," Wynne said of the selection process faulted by GAO. "It's very hard now because the industrial base in America is shrinking."
"I think getting a competitor to hang in there was one of our early-on responsibilities because we felt like that was the best way to get the best price for the government and the best value for the taxpayer," he added.
There's probably a reason the American industrial base is shrinking, Mr. Wynne. Bureaucrats like you and John McCain go out of their way to screw American industry and its workers. But at least the pockets of John McCain's lobbyists were laced with nearly a million dollars from EADS/Northrop in the process.
Someone please bring back Ross Perot.
The 67-page, redacted GAO findings: http://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/311344.pdf
Digest
1. Protest is sustained, where the agency, in making the award decision, did not assess the relative merits of the proposals in accordance with the evaluation criteria identified in the solicitation, which provided for a relative order of importance for the various technical requirements, and where the agency did not take into account the fact that one of the proposals offered to satisfy more “trade space” technical requirements than the other proposal, even though the solicitation expressly requested offerors to satisfy as many of these technical requirements as possible.
2. Protest is sustained, where the agency violated the solicitation’s evaluation provision that “no consideration will be provided for exceeding [key performance parameter] KPP objectives” when it recognized as a key discriminator the fact that the awardee proposed to exceed a KPP objective relating to aerial refueling to a greater degree than the protester.
3. Protest is sustained, where the record does not demonstrate the reasonableness of the agency’s determination that the awardee’s proposed aerial refueling tanker could refuel all current Air Force fixed-wing tanker-compatible receiver aircraft in accordance with current Air Force procedures, as required by the solicitation.
4. Protest is sustained, where the agency conducted misleading and unequal discussions with the protester, where the agency informed the protester that it had fully satisfied a KPP objective relating to operational utility, but later determined that the protester only partially met this objective, without advising the offeror of this change in its assessment and while continuing to conduct discussions with the awardee relating to its satisfaction of the same KPP objective.
5. Protest is sustained, where the agency unreasonably determined that the awardee’s refusal to agree to the specific solicitation requirement that it plan and support the agency to achieve initial organic depot-level maintenance within 2 years after delivery of the first full-rate production aircraft was an “administrative oversight,” and improperly made award, despite this clear exception to a material solicitation requirement.
6. Protest is sustained, where the agency’s evaluation of military construction costs in calculating the offerors’ most probable life cycle costs for their proposed aircraft was unreasonable, where the evaluation did not account for the offerors’ specific proposals, and where the calculation of military construction costs based on a notional (hypothetical) plan was not reasonably supported.
7. Protest is sustained, where the agency improperly added costs to an element of cost (non-recurring engineering costs) in calculating the protester’s most probable life cycle costs to account for risk associated with the protester’s failure to satisfactorily explain the basis for how it priced this cost element, where the agency did not determine that the protester’s proposed costs for that element were unrealistically low.
8. Protest is sustained, where the agency’s use of a “Monte Carlo” simulation model to determine the protester’s probable cost of non-recurring engineering associated with the system demonstration and development portion of the acquisition was unreasonable, where the model’s inputs concerned total weapons systems at an overall program level and there is no indication that this is a reliable predictor of anticipated growth of the protester’s non-recurring engineering costs.
Digest
1. Protest is sustained, where the agency, in making the award decision, did not assess the relative merits of the proposals in accordance with the evaluation criteria identified in the solicitation, which provided for a relative order of importance for the various technical requirements, and where the agency did not take into account the fact that one of the proposals offered to satisfy more “trade space” technical requirements than the other proposal, even though the solicitation expressly requested offerors to satisfy as many of these technical requirements as possible.
2. Protest is sustained, where the agency violated the solicitation’s evaluation provision that “no consideration will be provided for exceeding [key performance parameter] KPP objectives” when it recognized as a key discriminator the fact that the awardee proposed to exceed a KPP objective relating to aerial refueling to a greater degree than the protester.
3. Protest is sustained, where the record does not demonstrate the reasonableness of the agency’s determination that the awardee’s proposed aerial refueling tanker could refuel all current Air Force fixed-wing tanker-compatible receiver aircraft in accordance with current Air Force procedures, as required by the solicitation.
4. Protest is sustained, where the agency conducted misleading and unequal discussions with the protester, where the agency informed the protester that it had fully satisfied a KPP objective relating to operational utility, but later determined that the protester only partially met this objective, without advising the offeror of this change in its assessment and while continuing to conduct discussions with the awardee relating to its satisfaction of the same KPP objective.
5. Protest is sustained, where the agency unreasonably determined that the awardee’s refusal to agree to the specific solicitation requirement that it plan and support the agency to achieve initial organic depot-level maintenance within 2 years after delivery of the first full-rate production aircraft was an “administrative oversight,” and improperly made award, despite this clear exception to a material solicitation requirement.
6. Protest is sustained, where the agency’s evaluation of military construction costs in calculating the offerors’ most probable life cycle costs for their proposed aircraft was unreasonable, where the evaluation did not account for the offerors’ specific proposals, and where the calculation of military construction costs based on a notional (hypothetical) plan was not reasonably supported.
7. Protest is sustained, where the agency improperly added costs to an element of cost (non-recurring engineering costs) in calculating the protester’s most probable life cycle costs to account for risk associated with the protester’s failure to satisfactorily explain the basis for how it priced this cost element, where the agency did not determine that the protester’s proposed costs for that element were unrealistically low.
8. Protest is sustained, where the agency’s use of a “Monte Carlo” simulation model to determine the protester’s probable cost of non-recurring engineering associated with the system demonstration and development portion of the acquisition was unreasonable, where the model’s inputs concerned total weapons systems at an overall program level and there is no indication that this is a reliable predictor of anticipated growth of the protester’s non-recurring engineering costs.
"We believe that Boeing would have had a substantial chance of being selected for award" if not for the mistakes, the Government Accountability Office said in its 67-page ruling upholding Boeing's protest of the Feb. 29 award to rival Northrop Grumman Corp. The decision was disclosed last week and released yesterday after lawyers for the companies removed proprietary information.
Due to government misconduct, the Tanker will now be subject to a short re-bidding process. Although generally good news on the surface for Boeing, it really does not seem like a good outcome. This is so because the Pentagon plans to announce a new winner by the end of the year. If the Air Force decided only after the RFP was submitted to industry that they wanted a larger plane (and after telling Boeing not to use a larger platform for the bid), how much time does that leave Boeing to provide that bid instead of its KC-767? It really doesn't. In my opinion, the fix was in and it still is. The Pentagon is just trying to limit political backlash.
More here: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/b ... ct100.html
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I would be definitely celebrating on the west side of the state as this was a big win for next door neighbor Kansas. The outskirts of Kansas City area will get two big manufacturing investments, Boeing and Ford.innov8ion wrote:Cause for celebration today.
^ It's good for St. Louis too. I worked on the Tanker Program from 2002-2005 so I feel a sense of redemption.
