> So, it's hard for (very) small businesses to get a secure foothold,
While I can't speak to the what the big guys do, the government itself is an enemy of the smaller businesses from what I have seen.
Every government contract I have seen always has the equivalent of "We can cancel this contract and quit paying you money at any time."
That misaligns the incentives immediately.
1) A small company can't commit a significant fraction of its resources and risk getting yanked. Any small company that does is run by an idiot.
2) From the small company perspective, the primary useful goal is to do nothing as long as possible while collecting as much money as possible and deliver as little as possible to fulfill the contract. The ideal outcome is to do nothing and have the government actually yank the money and default on the contract. The secondary outcome is to collect all the money and do all the work in the last month of the contract.
3) The small company will pile everything into change orders and charge the government a fortune up front on those.
The problem here is that those are rational behaviors when the government behaves that way in its contracts.
If you meet your SoW, you will get paid. The FAR is very, very clear on this issue.
1) All of my resources are committed to the gov and I am not an idiot.
2) This is simply not true. It doesn't matter what flavor of contract you have: time and materials, cost plus fixed fee, etc. You have milestones and deliverables that are defined by your SoW. If you don't meet the milestones, you will not get paid. There is no incentive to "do nothing and wait for the last month of the contract"
3) This is an especially idiotic statement. These are called ECPs, which are a contract mod, which if there are enough of, the contract can get re-competited. Adding ECPs is a very, very bad idea.
You clearly have no idea what you are posting about wrt to gov contracts
Source: I own a small R&D company that works for the DoD and IC
> If you meet your SoW, you will get paid. The FAR is very, very clear on this issue.
I am glad for you that your experience does not match mine. However, I'm going to stick by my statement.
I have had my funding pulled on a budgetary rearrangement. I have had Congressional staffers threaten my contract to score patronage after an election changeover. I have had already completed and signed off milestones suddenly get reexamined as not complete. And, while contracts are very well specified, there is not a lot of point in trying to litigate a contract on someone in the government who is determined to break it.
While my commercial contracts generally work beautifully (not always, but probably less than 5% cause serious issues), all but one government contract I have had longer than 12 months has had some government-initiated disaster (short contracts are better but you often waste too much time acquiring them for the amount of money involved).
I am glad you have never been high enough on anyone's radar to hit this or that you have a powerful champion as your protector. However, I have talked to more than a few people about this and I can tell you that I'm very much not alone.
> Source: I own a small R&D company that works for the DoD and IC
The difference may be R&D vs production. Someone is always looking to score political points by slapping around a supplier.
While I can't speak to the what the big guys do, the government itself is an enemy of the smaller businesses from what I have seen.
Every government contract I have seen always has the equivalent of "We can cancel this contract and quit paying you money at any time."
That misaligns the incentives immediately.
1) A small company can't commit a significant fraction of its resources and risk getting yanked. Any small company that does is run by an idiot.
2) From the small company perspective, the primary useful goal is to do nothing as long as possible while collecting as much money as possible and deliver as little as possible to fulfill the contract. The ideal outcome is to do nothing and have the government actually yank the money and default on the contract. The secondary outcome is to collect all the money and do all the work in the last month of the contract.
3) The small company will pile everything into change orders and charge the government a fortune up front on those.
The problem here is that those are rational behaviors when the government behaves that way in its contracts.