Boeing Protest

Boeing has filed a protest about the government awarding us the GOES-R contract. Their rationale for the objection is something along the lines of "We really wanted to win it", so another few million of your tax dollars are going to be applied toward an investigation and court case. And to prepare for it, my group has to provide a truckful of documents to support the investigation.

Obviously, I can't share any of the details here -- mostly because I don't know any of them. But I can tell you that I spent a good chunk of the day yesterday helping to prepare the documents to be reprinted for the lawyers. I suppose that there are perks to being a lawyer -- all the public adulation and respect you get when you walk down the street, for one thing -- but it would truly and utterly suck to have to read dull and boring stuff like an aerospace proposal (plus the even more egregiously dull RFP) so you could determine if the deciding agency had made a fair and equitable decision. You would definitely earn your $400/hour on that one.

As an employee and stockholder of the winning bidder, it bugs me that we have to put the project on hold for 100 days while a bunch of druids genuflect over these piles of books we gathered up. As a taxpayer it bugs me even more, because I guarantee you that a good chunk of the ultimate cost for this effort will come directly out of our pockets. And in the meantime, no weather is being tracked by the satellites we could've been building.

Oh well, I suppose the weather will do what it's going to do, whether we're analyzing it or not. And I still have some good friends who work for Boeing, so it's not like I wish them ill or anything. Still, I'll be glad when the thing is resolved and our smart engineering nerds can get back to their designwork and stuff.

In the meantime, we're still working on the next proposal. They've told us that we're not going to be asked to work over the Christmas break, but around here you can never count on a statement like that. We'll just have to wait and see. The good news is that I've finished all my Christmas shopping, have pretty much finalized my holiday meal plans, and am in a flat-out holly-jolly mood about the whole thing.

I just hope that Santa got my letter. (I doubt that he has time to read this blog.)

Keep smiling, and have a great day!