Justin Trudeau hints at boosting Canada’s military spending

I'll believe it when I see it.

 

[OldSolduer]

More to the point, the city deliberately de-linked and anonymized the financial and technical bids, and awarded purely in the financial bid, then re-linked the financial and technical bids and ‘surprise, surprise’ realized that SNC Lavelin had entirely under-spec’d the tech bid big time to be able to win the overall bid given they understood the award was solely based on the financial bid the technical bid was entirely missing an automated control system, and this non-compliant…so they were ‘allowed’ to keep the win and add the automated control system which…get ready for this…made the financials more expensive and thus not the cheapest financial bid this negating the validity of the award. Not even DND and PSPC could have gotten away with such a fiasco…

So in other words SNC and Ottawa scammed the contract. Not surprising.

 

[Navy_Pete]

More to the point, the city deliberately de-linked and anonymized the financial and technical bids, and awarded purely in the financial bid, then re-linked the financial and technical bids and ‘surprise, surprise’ realized that SNC Lavelin had entirely under-spec’d the tech bid big time to be able to win the overall bid given they understood the award was solely based on the financial bid the technical bid was entirely missing an automated control system, and this non-compliant…so they were ‘allowed’ to keep the win and add the automated control system which…get ready for this…made the financials more expensive and thus not the cheapest financial bid this negating the validity of the award. Not even DND and PSPC could have gotten away with such a fiasco…

The bid also quoted for the changeover from the old diesel train line to a new electric train, but didn't have anything in place for the difference between the two.

I'll see if I can dig it up but there is a really good local reporter on CBC Ottawa following this one that got the tech bid released under whatevre the ATI equivalent is from the city.

You can actually feel the disdain from the tech evaluators on how bad the SNC bid for missing a lot of basics, it was really kind of embarassing what kind of things they missed.

I don't see the current provincial inquiry going anywhere but the LRT is a complete disaster, and I'm still shocked both the other bidders didn't sue the city for lost profits for breaching the RFP requirements. I think they are waiting to see if it's going to fall apart, the contract with SNC gets broken for breach of contract and they can swoop in with a fix at a higher profit margin. Or just don't want anything to do with the City.

It's legitamitely a reason a lot of people in Ottawa don't want to go back to the office; the old bus system was actually better.

 

[OldSolduer]

The bid also quoted for the changeover from the old diesel train line to a new electric train, but didn't have anything in place for the difference between the two.

I'll see if I can dig it up but there is a really good local reporter on CBC Ottawa following this one that got the tech bid released under whatevre the ATI equivalent is from the city.

You can actually feel the disdain from the tech evaluators on how bad the SNC bid for missing a lot of basics, it was really kind of embarassing what kind of things they missed.

I don't see the current provincial inquiry going anywhere but the LRT is a complete disaster, and I'm still shocked both the other bidders didn't sue the city for lost profits for breaching the RFP requirements. I think they are waiting to see if it's going to fall apart, the contract with SNC gets broken for breach of contract and they can swoop in with a fix at a higher profit margin. Or just don't want anything to do with the City.

It's legitamitely a reason a lot of people in Ottawa don't want to go back to the office; the old bus system was actually better.

So who recently retired from Ottawa city bureaucracy and where did they retire to? Call me cynical....

 

[Navy_Pete]

So who recently retired from Ottawa city bureaucracy and where did they retire to? Call me cynical....

Aside from the guy running the implementation for the city, the mayor not running again, and the greasy lawyer that was there as a consultant? (ie basically all the inside people on the bid review)

Suspect it's more of a case of total incompetence and arrogance that they know more than the experts though vice corruption.

 

[Halifax Tar]

I guess my point is that none of that is my job, and we're actually discouraged from giving any single supplier preferential treatment, but there are people who are supposed to be doing this kind of thing that don't seem to be doing anything.

There are lots of bands that are doing some really great and proactive things like that, as well as individual entrepreneurs with pretty good businesses that take advantage of things like their income tax to be more competetive in labour rates that I'm sure would be more than capable of getting into government contracting and provide the same quality, but it's not going to happen by asking individual LCMMs trying to maintain a few thousand widgets whether they've done an exhaustive market survey every time you go to buy something.

What we are doing at the LCMM level really achieves nothing but generates a form marked 'N/A', but some policy clown is probably using it to tick a box.

If someone was going to put resources towards this, that would be great, but I generally resent wasting my time on performative bureacracy that achieves no actual effect, when we can't keep up with the pile of existing work.

It could be something simple, like someone looking at what is posted on Buy & Sell, and pinging potential suppliers about the RFP, while letting us know who they are. Otherwise, unless someone happens to bid on an RFP, we don't have time to go and look for additional suppliers when we know there are a few existing potential suppliers.

Different story when we are replacing a major system, and you will spend a bit of time looking at the marketplace for some options, and do things like requests for Information (RFIs), but we do however many millions every year in routine and ongoing widget buys for exciting things like filters, valves, cables etc that are readily available.

I joke once in a while about setting up a business to sell CAF widgets as a reseller, but a lot of business out there for small companies if they can jump through the RFP hoops. Also a lot of work for consultants helping companies navigate the bureaucracy, so wouldn't be surprised if there are teams of retired procurement/policy SMEs that are trying the create a niche for themselves working with different bands to help develop that kind of business.

I just want LCMMs to stop telling department storesmen there's no stock coming into the system and to go to Burnside and buy spare parts.

PS: I would also like to up your budgets so you guys/gals/peeps can get back to filling my warehouses

 

[rmc_wannabe]

PS: I would also like to up your budgets so you guys/gals/peeps can get back to filling my warehouses

PPS: I would also like to see a hiring blitz so that you folks have the PYs behind that budget to actually do something with it.

 

[MilEME09]

I just want LCMMs to stop telling department storesmen there's no stock coming into the system and to go to Burnside and buy spare parts.

PS: I would also like to up your budgets so you guys/gals/peeps can get back to filling my warehouses

Yeap I remember the report that came out about our supply system over a year ago. Many items are deliberately set to hold 0 in the system.

 

[Navy_Pete]

I just want LCMMs to stop telling department storesmen there's no stock coming into the system and to go to Burnside and buy spare parts.

PS: I would also like to up your budgets so you guys/gals/peeps can get back to filling my warehouses

Yeah, me too, but sometimes local purchases make more sense in the short term.

HR really the big restriction. We don't have enough supply managers to keep up with HPRs, let alone do routine buys. Pretty fortunate to have an excellent SM at the moment, so we're almost on top of HPRs, so actually able to go through the great big list of oustanding NICP buys and manually prioritize the routine re-supplies, which is pretty exciting.

Some brainbox did turn off the DRMIS auto-resupply function years ago because of the budget restrictions at the time, so now there is a massive backlog. When we redid our min/max in the last annual review, we went with 2 years min supply, which was unable to be actioned (due to lack of staff), so we basically told the policy weenies to get stuffed when they asked us to do the annual review again this year, and we'll update individual NSNs as HPRs or buys go out.

In that context, useless forms for every procurement drive me crazy. Even if it's only a few minutes per procurement, that adds up when we're doing hundreds of them, and would be time better spent actually procuring things.

It's taken a while but we're finally starting to get a lot of deliveries. Never thought I'd be excited to get delivery confirmation of things like hoses, valves etc but after a year of telling ships the bins are empty it's nice to be able to actually fill stores demands.

Maybe in a few years we'll even be in a place where we can actively track what items are going to becoming obsolete and find a replacement ahead of time! A guy can dream.

 

[MJP]

Yeap I remember the report that came out about our supply system over a year ago. Many items are deliberately set to hold 0 in the system.

It just means there is no max/mins set in the system, it is less about deliberately not setting a min/max as the default is 0. If a demand comes in for a part with zero stock or one that breaches a minimum at 3rd line, it automatically creates a purchase requirement that is supposed to be actioned by the relevant Equipment Management Team. You can set 0 as a min but it really means nothing. I looked in the system at one of the depots and there are roughly 57,600 NSNs with an associated min/max (out of roughly 154k NSNs) so roughly 1/3. None had a min of 0 set but 18Kish had a min of 1 with 7Kish of those having a max of 1 which means nothing will happen until they hit zero stock and is a pretty useless min/max. So 50Kish had min/maxs set, how useful they are would require a deeper dive.

Should there be more min/max set? Sure for some things especially those with long lead times it makes sense. The kicker is the same Equipment Management Team (EMTs) that @Navy_Pete is discussing with a million things on their plate are the ones actioning the purchase. The EMTs or better there Equipment Program Managers (EPMs) have the ability to use the Defence Resource Planning (DRP) which is a material forecasting tool to help them identify and manage stock based on usage patterns. From what I have seen there is little use of it in that fashion and come 2023 its lifecycle will be ending. It has a replacement on the go to get us from 2023 to 2027 when we fully move to S4 Hana and the suite of analytics it has imbedded in it but not sure how far along they are in the project.

 

[Navy_Pete]

@MJP the fun bit about the DRP tool is that because of all the workaround we've been doing (GSM for contractor work, local purchases, substitutions etc) a lot of the forecasting data wasn't necessarily useful, so the AR process required a lot of deep dives to figure out what the real usage was. Keep finding weird things like active items marked for disposal and obsolete items still in the system as relevant so huge amount of cleanup required on the thousands of line items we have, so probably isn't helping DRP either. Additionally in a lot of cases, we are at the end of life of all kinds of items that may have only been replaced once or twice (some original to build), so we're getting massive spikes in failures creating a lot of sudden demand, which DRP wouldn't actually show. It's a really handraulic process that takes a lot of time.

Murphy's law a lot of those items that are obsolete with the company long gone, and getting something like a shock qualified bronze valve can take several years due to global supply issues and forges being at capacity.

The fun ones were when the companies politely told us that the item is on backorder, with the USN ahead of us, so they'll get to us ASAP but unable to provide an EDD. Completely reasonable, but means we're back to finding more work arounds and temp substitutions (which also takes time). And then when all that lines up and you have an EC in place it can take years to implement, because the lead time to plan/install is pretty significant with the constantly changing OPSCHED.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Yeah, me too, but sometimes local purchases make more sense in the short term.

You're not wrong in an expeditious sense, except its misuse of an AQC to buy spare parts with a unit AQC, and its simply downloading work from ADM(Mat) onto the 1st line. The next problem is ADM(Mat) has no authority/DOA to authorize units to buy spare parts. The last problem is ships/units are not budgeted to fill in gaps for the CFSS.

I lied, there is a whole QA problem as well if units are buying off the shelf items and installing them on the ship. The unit has, now, added stock to the CFSS further muddying the waters (Life cycle management) for you and your fine folks.

Its a dogs breakfast, but my bottom line is I want to get you guy in a position to fill my warehouses, and quickly.

 

[MilEME09]

We really need to stop treating the CFSS like Amazon with just in time delivery. It doesn't work in a war zone, I can't carry 72 hours of technical stores when half of it can't be ordered unless i have a valid work order open. We changed the nature of our supply system over the past few decades but now it doesn't fit how we are doctrinally supposed to operate.

 

[MJP]

We really need to stop treating the CFSS like Amazon with just in time delivery. It doesn't work in a war zone, I can't carry 72 hours of technical stores when half of it can't be ordered unless i have a valid work order open. We changed the nature of our supply system over the past few decades but now it doesn't fit how we are doctrinally supposed to operate.

That is just poor policy not JIT, and highlights our inability to do predictive scaling for our 1st and 2nd line folks.

While we have some very poor practices, IMHO we do not do JIT nor does anyone in the DSC think we should be (well maybe Bill but he is weird). We have some poor policy, a convoluted enterprise resource system/architecture that requires way to much manual intervention and huge number of disparate stakeholders each only really worried about their little piece of the DSC.

 

[daftandbarmy]

That is just poor policy not JIT, and highlights our inability to do predictive scaling for our 1st and 2nd line folks.

While we have some very poor practices, IMHO we do not do JIT nor does anyone in the DSC think we should be (well maybe Bill but he is weird). We have some poor policy, a convoluted enterprise resource system/architecture that requires way to much manual intervention and huge number of disparate stakeholders each only really worried about their little piece of the DSC.

It's not that hard to fix fast and cheap... but you need the right kind of leadership:

A Simpler Way to Modernize Your Supply Chain​

How to spend less and accomplish more


"Conventional wisdom says it takes three to five years and tens of millions of dollars to digitize a corporation’s supply chain. However, a few companies have reaped major benefits—including higher revenue and customer retention—with a faster, cheaper approach. It involves assembling available data; using analytics to understand and predict customers’ and suppliers’ behavior and optimize inventory, production, and procurement; and adding automation to revamp or introduce processes. The transformation requires three main initiatives: replacing consensus forecasts with one unified view of demand, changing one-size-fits-all supply strategies to segmented ones, and creating a plan to continually balance supply and demand and manage deviations or disruptions."

A Simpler Way to Modernize Your Supply Chain

Conventional wisdom says it takes three to five years and tens of millions of dollars to digitize a corporation’s supply chain. However, a few companies have reaped major benefits—including higher revenue and customer retention—with a faster, cheaper approach. It involves assembling available...

hbr.org

 

[Halifax Tar]

We really need to stop treating the CFSS like Amazon with just in time delivery. It doesn't work in a war zone, I can't carry 72 hours of technical stores when half of it can't be ordered unless i have a valid work order open. We changed the nature of our supply system over the past few decades but now it doesn't fit how we are doctrinally supposed to operate.

I don't even think we are JIT anymore. We are "Maybe in time" or "Nil Stock Avail CFSS, no fill date".

What we seem to do now is jump from fire to fire putting them out, HPR process I'm looking at you, and now the HPR process is believed to be the only way to get timely resupply.

This all comes back to us need warehouses full of spare parts just waiting to be used. Which we don't have.

 

[MilEME09]

I don't even think we are JIT anymore. We are "Maybe in time" or "Nil Stock Avail CFSS, no fill date".

What we seem to do now is jump from fire to fire putting them out, HPR process I'm looking at you, and now the HPR process is believed to be the only way to get timely resupply.

This all comes back to us need warehouses full of spare parts just waiting to be used. Which we don't have.

Exactly, in my opinion as an end user the shortages, and supply difficulties we face due to the global economic situation could be softened or mitigated if we actually carried a substantial stock of spare parts in warehouses, properly preserved.

 

[Kirkhill]

Exactly, in my opinion as an end user the shortages, and supply difficulties we face due to the global economic situation could be softened or mitigated if we actually carried a substantial stock of spare parts in warehouses, properly preserved.

Perhaps your supply system might be eased if you weren't using 50 year old kit.

You might as well be asking for a supply of spare wagon wheels.

 

[Halifax Tar]

Perhaps your supply system might be eased if you weren't using 50 year old kit.

You might as well be asking for a supply of spare wagon wheels.

Its a terrible cycle, because need procurement to get us the up to date equipment, and we need the government to get procurement to get us the up to date equipment...

 

[MilEME09]

Perhaps your supply system might be eased if you weren't using 50 year old kit.

You might as well be asking for a supply of spare wagon wheels.

Ridiculous! Wagon wheels would be local purchase in Alberta, along with the horses to replace the LSVW

 

[Kirkhill]

Ridiculous! Wagon wheels would be local purchase in Alberta, along with the horses to replace the LSVW

Another GDLSC contractor.