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Commercialization

OIG Raids Offices Of KSC Construction Contractor

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 8, 2016
Filed under ,
OIG Raids Offices Of KSC Construction Contractor

Report: Federal agents raid NASA construction contractor, Orlando Sentinel
“Investigators with NASA’s Office of Inspector General, the agency in charge of probing crimes against NASA, removed boxes of documents and computer towers from SDB Engineering and Constructors Inc., according to Fox35. The company located on East Parrish Road has worked on several big projects at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center including upgrades to the Vehicle Assembly Building and corrosion control work at Launch Complex 41 and Launch Complex 37, used for United Launch Alliance launches.”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

5 responses to “OIG Raids Offices Of KSC Construction Contractor”

  1. numbers_guy101 says:
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    Well, back in the May 2016 KSC Engineering services Vencore audit by the OIG there was that ominous phrase at the end of the summary – “For recommendations 2 and 4 however, we find the Agency’s proposed actions insufficient and consider the recommendations unresolved”.

    Can you here me now?

  2. Daniel Woodard says:
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    “NASA’s Office of Inspector General described the spaceport’s $1.9 billion Engineering Services Contract with Vencore Services and Solutions Inc. as complex, cumbersome and confusing.”

    Of course makes no sense to award a services contract to a partnership of “at least ten” small companies, with the overhead of multiple management chains and confused lines of responsibility. Well, Duh!!! We all know that, OIG!!!! When did YOU wake up and smell the coffee??

    The reason it happens is because for decades NASA has been forced by Congress through incredibly cumbersome regulations to create absurd selection criteria which effectively make it impossible to actually win an award unless you have dozens of small companies in a so-called “team”. Apparently Congress believes that “promoting small business” is such an existential virtue that actually launching rockets has become secondary, never mind that any “business” that has any business surviving (if you will) can do so without Congress rigging the game with tax dollars that support businesses only because they are small. So OIG punishes contractors for doing things the way they were told to by NASA, which was told to by Congress.

    One example of a contract that worked reasonably well was USA, a very big business created out of thin air to run the entire Shuttle program. It was totally the opposite of normal procurement. The contract was not even awarded competitively, because NASA was able to make the point that it did not make sense.

    The suggestion that there be even more contracts, each one smaller, is equally off the mark.Contract competitions are so time-consuming and expensive that they are major disruptions in themselves. Can you imagine 500 small businesses under separate contracts launching the Shuttle?

    Someone from OIG needs to do an interview with Keith and actually answer his questions, and then sign in on this blog and actually answer questions from us, the taxpayers who pay their salary. If they did that, OIG might actually learn something instead of seeming out of touch with reality every time they release an exposé.

    • muomega0 says:
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      There many degrees of rigging. What to do? A federal contract with cumbersome regulations creates jobs but increases costs. Larger contracts mean more profit Add in the USG vs private mantra. Unfortunately capitalism, which means duplication, doesn’t solve all job/social needs. Reducing fixed costs helps NASA but the layoffs affect the community/USA. The procurement approach is simply the means to the end, and bypasses the efficiency or the lack/neglect of a good flexible policy forward, (but you correctly point out needs work).

      The system is extremely rigged when the policy forward is about votes or profit only at the expense of everything else. Is there not something else that these talented and hardworking folks could work on given a more efficient procurement method than new mothballed test stands, upgraded launch facilities solely for use by a decades old, too expensive rocket?

      Yet NASA “was derelict in not finding a way to apply the constrained funding to build an executable program’ out of this ‘advanced, capable system’ for Mars, so advanced that Ares I could not loft Orion due to solids, that Orion could not return from an asteroid, that the HLV boils away 70t of propellant adding a sixth flight staging for Mars, at a cost 10X the alternatives. More ‘efficiency’ required.

    • Oscar_Femur says:
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      Sounds like the situation at JSC now after the demise of USA. Incredibly fragmented contracting scene, with numerous “small disadvantaged businesses” that provide employees but don’t seem to actually manage anything except how to skim off a percentage. How can 50 corporate offices be more efficient than 5? Every lesson of the shuttle era seems to have been forgotten.

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      A question, Daniel; are you saying, between the lines, that fostering small business is an activity not worthy of the additional expenditure required? Or taking issue with the manner in which this goal is implemented, or?