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Attempts to recover funds expended by the government will devolve into a time-consuming and fruitless "he said; she said" with lawyers on both sides bringing arguments to bear. This will simply increase the expense to the government (read, "taxpayers") of the non-functional product and delay procurement of the materiel which was needed.

The appropriate behavior would be at least these three steps-

First, review the specifications and acceptance procedures that controlled the development of the boat to understand why they allowed an unacceptable result to be delivered. That is, "doesn't work" implies a seriously impaired result, yet the purpose of engineering specifications and an acceptance procedure is to preclude exactly this outcome.

Second, a review by an independent third-party group to rule out any deliberate evasion or subversion by either side of the intended process for assuring successful completion of the contracted work. Should such be found criminal penalties would be appropriate. This process and its outcome should be as public as possible to bolster public confidence that no corruption is involved.

Third, the contractor should be penalized in any future bidding for contracts, up to and including denial of such bids either temporarily or permanently. There ought to be a graduated application of such penalties, given that deliberate unscrupulous behavior has not been found in the review of part one.

Never the less, the contractor should be held responsible to exhibit expertise in "boat" design sufficient to forestall a "doesn't work" result. Note that this requires an opportunity for the contractor to continuously liaison with the government's contracting agency before and during the development of the "boat", and to have opportunity to act on their expertise and require modification of the specifications and acceptance process to provide a successful result.

This intercourse too should be as public as possible. Let the public see that common sense is being brought to bear.

Such beneficial conduct by the contractor(s) should result in positive feedback during this and subsequent projects. Perhaps bonuses for bringing to light what would have been important weaknesses in the contracted product. And certainly this conduct should earn the contractor advantage in future bidding, as the compliment to the penalization proposed above.

Children and businesses learn best with positive feedback. Rather than devolve into a "Who is to blame?" mentality, this kind of undesirable outcome should be modified by using an empowering approach based on the open question "How can we prevent this from happening again?"

And all stakeholders-government, defense contractors, and the taxpaying public-need to exhibit patience as a parent does when acknowledging that his or her child will need time to learn the desired behavior.

Make this a collaborative partnership. After all, we're all on the same "team", and we all want good results.

Learn more about this author, Rick Leigh.
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