Wizard of Id by Parker and Hart for May 18, 2014

Strangely enough, this is how the company I work for gets its bids for construction work.

The really cheap bridges are earmarked for letting the Huns across.

About 30 years ago, they decided to tear down an old bridge here as “unsafe” and build a new one. It took roughly three times as long as estimated and cost more than twice as much. Why? because the wrecking ball kept bouncing off the thing without any damage. It was virtually indestructible despite what the engineers said.

Some of you may know that we have just had an election inflicted on us in Ontario. The head of one party is running on the very interesting claim that firing 100,000 people will create 1,000,000 jobs. Math is not my strong suit, but somehow it does not add up…If there is someone out there mathematically inclined who can explain the math in words of one syllable, please do so.

@LadyKat the math works IF the one person fired was doing the work of ten.

They bid the job at a loss and engineer it so that there are many change orders(which are all “cost plus”)

“Just think of all those astronauts who flew on Space Shuttles which were built by companies who won the business as a result of submitting the lowest cost bid.”~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~The story went; “Colonel Glenn, any thoughts before the launch?”“Yes. I think about the fact that this project went to the lowest bidder!”True or not, in most of my dealings with ‘lowest bidders’ in my US Gummint dealings, the project usually turned out to be TWICE the cost and time of the highest bidder. I preferred the French method; “pick the middle bidder and get on with it..”

I don’t know about bridge, but when dealing with Congress, we certainly need a club.

First backward auction I’ve ever seen.

I remember one ad, when a rich man was auctioning an in valuable vase. He said at the end: “Going once, going twice, one million! Sold!” and he accidentaly broke the vase with the hammer.