Department of National Defence and their flying machines

I am going to deviate slightly from my normal entries and comment on a story in the Globe and Mail today about the Department of National Defence and their procurement process on airplanes required for search and rescue.

Let me first caveat my comments by saying I have no other information on this process than that which has appeared in the paper and as we all know this never represents the complete story. However, I will make comments based on my experience in many different industries, when you allow the technical experts, whether engineers, information technology professionals, doctors, radiologists etc. run the procurement process -- with the specifications being rigid and uncompromising.

It has been my experience that those who are the so-called technical (subject matter ) experts sometimes can't see the forest for the trees. They get so enamored with a particular feature (or "bell/whistle") that they can no longer be totally objective in their approach. From the surface this is what this DND scenario smacks of.

When you rule out all competition based on rigid specifications you no longer have a fair and open process. Oh sure, there may be numerous things that this Spartan airplane might be able to travel wonderfully fast and perhaps given the size of our country, this is a very important specification. However, should it eliminate from competition, the Spanish C295? From my perspective, if you were looking at this objectively, there would be weightings assigned to proven capability vs. speed and whatever other specs are defined. The definition of the importance of these specs cannot be done in isolation. There needs to be healthy dialogue between evaluation team members, all of which cannot be those intrinsically linked to the project.

If the Spartan's are somewhat unproven, as the article says, in Search and Rescue, what are the risks associated, compared with the proven level of the Spanish planes? Is it better to get somewhere slower, but somewhat guaranteed or does Canada become the proving ground for the Spartans?

I am sure that there are other things within this purchasethat perhaps result in a necessary comparison of risk factors.

I have had doctor's, radiologists, techies all come to me at some point in my career and indicate something is a "must have". With appropriate probing, it is quickly discovered that they just really, really liked a feature that other products were not offering -- but could they live without it? Absolutely!

As I said in the beginning, I am not sure what level of diligence has been done in this process, but given the reports and the seeming past history of quick decisions on multi-million dollar purchases it does beg the question -- Where is the objectivity?

As I have said in many other entries in this blog -- this is why it is important to have the Procurement Professional front and center in this type of process!