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>Creating a playing field for private sector participants to compete I know a guy whose job is to negotiate contracts for supplies used by the Fire Dept. in hi
by r_smart 10y ago
>Creating a playing field for private sector participants to compete
I know a guy whose job is to negotiate contracts for supplies used by the Fire Dept. in his municipality (or state, I can't remember). We were on a Skype call once, and he was telling me about a contract he was for a particular thing and how much they paid for it, and I thought: "That seems high". So I took 10 minutes to do a search on it and found another reputable company offering the same good for a little more than half the price. His response was: "Well they should have showed up and bid on the contract." Between his apathy, and the way the law works, there was no interest in going and getting a better deal, or even doing basic market research to use in negotiating the price. I wanted to strangle him.
And it's all to do with laws and incentive structure. I'd like to think that in most businesses if you came up with a way to cut in half the cost on an essential item (I think this was the coats and pants they wear when going into a burning building), you would at least get accolades and have a strong case to be made on your performance review. In the public sector, it's all the same.
- undersuit 10y ago>Between his apathy Apathy? What if this other company has no interest or capacity to deal in a strict supply contract? And then you complain about negotiating the price in a bidding system? "OK, we accept your bid at this price. Now let's talk about reducing the price." Come on, if you're going to use a personal anecdote to convince people at least have a good one.
- r_smart 10y agoThank you for reading the story and completely missing the point while proving it. You seem to assume he would respond how you would respond. He didn't. He had never heard of the company because he had never looked. When I told him about it, he didn't care. When I told him they were possibly over paying, he didn't care. It was trivially easy for me to come up with that info and he had never cared to look at it before and he didn't care to use it when I told him about it. He didn't say any of the things you said. He didn't say anything even close to that. He had no intention of negotiating the price with the company then were likely to settle on. He was apathetic. *edit: You also seem to have completely overlooked the part where I said it was a combination of his apathy and the way the law works. The two are coincident. Seeking out companies for contracts is risky business as it can trigger collusion / corruption investigations (according to him).