With the American military...
I once asked engineers developing an aircraft system how much heat the internal parts could handle.
“95 F”
I told them they would need to redesign it since there was no cooling system.
“Why?”, asked the engineer from northern NY state. “How often does it get hotter than that?”
I pointed out that in much of the US, and in places like Saudi, it gets far hotter than that on a flightline for months at a time.
They told me it wasn’t in the contract. And this is critical - I replied it would fail operational testing and not be bought, so they could fix it or never sell their system to the government.
They went back, figured out which part of the electrical system was failing, and made an upgrade for a couple of dollars that would keep it working past 160 degrees.
“With the American military...
I once asked engineers developing an aircraft system how much heat the internal parts could handle. … They told me it wasn’t in the contract. And this is critical - I replied it would fail operational testing and not be bought, so they could fix it or never sell their system to the government. …” [Mr Rogers, post 49]
Problems bedeviling all acquisition.
Contractors hire the highest powered legal counsel they can, with contract-law experience. Few SJA types have any experience in contract law, and anyway are too busy with other tasks. If it’s not in the contract, it doesn’t exist. Endured situations just like Mr Rogers came across, but we could not induce the design engineers to use their imaginations.
Another problem: there’s a pecking order among engineers. Various specialists compete for the top spot all the time, but all of them hold systems engineers (who alone have the training and imagination to detect such problems before they become deadly, or impossible to fix) in contempt. They don’t consider the systems engineers to be “true” engineers, and often make it a point of pride to ignore what everyone else is doing.
And all of them absolutely hate and fear operational testing. As a pass/fail system-level activity, it deprives them of the opportunity to tinker, tweak, and fix: grossly unfair, by their lights.