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Dareon posted:"self certify as a small disadvantaged business" is connecting to gender identity in my head, which is making the cynical part of my mind think some of those businesses are identifying as attack helicopters, i.e. taking advantage of the system for their benefit without actually being an entity the system is in support of. Many are lying about it but there’s not that much value to being a fake SDB, unless you’re in the 8(a) program. SDB does have a specific definition though and requires social and economic disadvantage. If you identify as an attack helicopter that doesn’t mean you face both social and economic disadvantage. Attack helicopters would probably fail the economic disadvantage component, but may pass the social disadvantage component. However they would not qualify for presumptive social disadvantage, a specific list of socially disadvantaged groups.
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Apr 19, 2022 04:37
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CRUSTY MINGE posted:Form an LLC, put a veteran (with a disability rating) in as CEO, claim veteran preference. The government loves giving preference to small veteran businesses. Yep. A minority, female service disabled veteran who lives in a hubzone, works from home and the only employee is her son who lives at home. Get in the 8(a) program. Then you’d qualify for basically every set aside and preference.
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Apr 19, 2022 04:39
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TooMuchAbstraction posted:
Oh absolutely, it got the point across but I really wish I could have thought of literally any other metaphor that could have bridged me from "self-declaring as X" to "declaring as X with intent to defraud". e: To be clear, I apologize for the attack helicopter reference. Dareon fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 04:53
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Dareon posted:Oh absolutely, it got the point across but I really wish I could have thought of literally any other metaphor that could have bridged me from "self-declaring as X" to "declaring as X with intent to defraud". Years ago there was some asshat claiming service connected veteran preference, he claimed to injure an ankle in a service academy, fought it hard enough to get a 0% rating from the VA (basically admittance it could've happened on gov property), and he never served a day in the actual military. Tammy Duckworth reamed his rear end for it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6CYhNDdGJ0 https://www.msnbc.com/the-last-word/tammy-duckworth-rips-irs-contractor-seeki-msna64626 E: forgot, this guy was also convicted of murdering his wife a few years later, staging it to look like she hung herself. CRUSTY MINGE fucked around with this message at 05:04 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 04:59
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CRUSTY MINGE posted:E: forgot, this guy was also convicted of murdering his wife a few years later, staging it to look like she hung herself. So he was a real troop after all 
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Apr 19, 2022 09:21
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Idiot co-worker has 550sq ft of vinyl plank flooring.he never used because he 'didnt want to take up his cabinets' apparently he didn't realize he could just go up the the cabinet and then lay down some moulding. The flooring is now useless because he is now doing his cabinets but doesn't have enough flooring and it's not being made anymore. Hahahahhah
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Apr 19, 2022 11:48
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CarForumPoster posted:OP mentioned Iowa. In Iowa there are 479 active construction (NAICS 26) contractors on SAM.gov. Prob most will be a small business. Further, of those, 140 self certify as a small disadvantaged business. (Prob 50% don't meet that definition but that's not the topic here.) I wouldnt call that a tiny pool of contractors. I suspect Zydeco will say they have a policy of asking for 8(a)/HUBZone/WOSB/EDWOSB first, but I am curious if he says theres some preapproved short list of unknown origin (maybe the list may be created via kickbacks?). You can certainly find some areas where there are plenty of small business contractors but once you get into some of the military contracts the field of competition gets much smaller. The vast majority of acquisition money is in the DOD and only like 20% of that is MILCON. You can easily get in a situation where half a dozen groups can repair a given aircraft part but only 2 are eligible for the small business set aside.
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Apr 19, 2022 14:10
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3D Megadoodoo posted:So he was a real troop after all He'd fit in well with russian conscripts.
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Apr 19, 2022 14:21
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Leviathan Song posted:You can certainly find some areas where there are plenty of small business contractors but once you get into some of the military contracts the field of competition gets much smaller. The vast majority of acquisition money is in the DOD and only like 20% of that is MILCON. You can easily get in a situation where half a dozen groups can repair a given aircraft part but only 2 are eligible for the small business set aside. Yea aircraft repair is a whole other deal. OP specifically said that at the VA in Iowa he was required to use a small pool of general (construction) contractors before going to full and open competition (FAOC). If the pool of construction contractors that could meet small business set aside requirements are in the 100s, why a small pool? Is it because they have a policy of issuing RFQs to other set-aside having GCs, narrowing the pool? VA Whistleblower Dan Martin claims that he was pushed or coerced into using certain contractors that were on a list due to kickbacks. Hence wondering: why a small pool? I don't think anyone but -Zydeco- or another VA person dealing with contractors can answer that.
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Apr 19, 2022 15:12
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CarForumPoster posted:Yea aircraft repair is a whole other deal. I work aircraft not hospitals but I would think that the number of general contractors for a VA hospital is going to get narrowed to people who can deal with stuff like oxygen systems, clean rooms, morgues, and electrical systems that are multiple redundant. Unless you're talking about a VA office building a lot of general contractors aren't up to the standards that the VA needs.
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Apr 19, 2022 15:32
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Leviathan Song posted:I work aircraft not hospitals I can tell. Your speculative posts that contribute nothing to the question remind me of the bad PMA/PMO customers I used to have or the DCMA reps that didn't bother reading the emails I sent but now want to stop everything until they review. EDIT: Sorry for making GBS threads up the thread with gov contracting stuff. Here's some content: https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1706-Bevis-St-Houston-TX-77008/84065447_zpid/    CarForumPoster fucked around with this message at 15:53 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 15:44
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I don't even know FRIENDS and I kinda like it.
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Apr 19, 2022 16:36
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I love that they went all in on something they really like. It's a pretty good execution. The fact that that thing was Friends...
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Apr 19, 2022 16:54
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As I said it's not my thing. But shine on you crazy diamond.
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Apr 19, 2022 16:59
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It's actually not crappy. Weird, perhaps, but everyone is allowed to have their thing.
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Apr 19, 2022 17:00
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Dareon posted:Oh absolutely, it got the point across but I really wish I could have thought of literally any other metaphor that could have bridged me from "self-declaring as X" to "declaring as X with intent to defraud". The real magic is when a disadvantaged business with no actual technical capability wins a contract from a larger company that's had it for ages, then subcontracts the work to the larger company.
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Apr 19, 2022 17:28
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Awful idea but good execution
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Apr 19, 2022 17:29
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CarForumPoster posted:Yep. A minority, female service disabled veteran who lives in a hubzone, works from home and the only employee is her son who lives at home. Get in the 8(a) program. Yeah, these exist. I don't know about one checking every box like this, but a few years back I worked for a contracting firm that was minority female vet owned. She wasn't involved in the day to day of the company at all, it was actually run by her kid who was the biggest dudebro fratboy you've ever seen. God that company was terribly run. Could sure as hell pull down and sub-contract gigs, though.
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Apr 19, 2022 17:34
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CRUSTY MINGE posted:Form an LLC, put a veteran (with a disability rating) in as CEO, claim veteran preference. The government loves giving preference to small veteran businesses. Literally did this last year. Slow going but we hope to have some work in the near future. Blue Footed Booby posted:The real magic is when a disadvantaged business with no actual technical capability wins a contract from a larger company that's had it for ages, then subcontracts the work to the larger company. Classic pass-through fraud.
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Apr 19, 2022 18:44
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Tunicate posted:Awful idea but good execution It's quite tastefully done, as absolutely tasteless things go.
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Apr 19, 2022 19:15
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Arrath posted:... Sometimes it's this. Sometimes it's the contract getting flagged to go to a disadvantaged business without consulting the customer, and there not being any companies in the industry that are both eligible and capable. So you get a gaggle of dipshits with no prior experience literally putting in their proposal "we'll hire all the people who'll be out of the job because you gave the contract to us." Then they win by default, but the workers won't play ball. I've often wondered whether the people who designate which contracts get this treatment are in on it, but I think that might actually be enough degrees removed to not technically be pass-through fraud.
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Apr 19, 2022 21:04
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CarForumPoster posted:Yea aircraft repair is a whole other deal. Sorry I went to sleep after that post. Yeah there may be a large number of contractors on sam.gov, but we're looking for GCs with specific health care experience and we had to go with also had to have people actually bid on the jobs. There may be hundreds out there, but they actually had to want to work in Des Moines, on the project we have, for the price we want to pay, and what's their capacity and skill? I'm not going to recommending some guy who runs $10K roofing jobs to do a $10M complete lab remodel. Also, I'd assume that most of those contractors specialize. At least in health care you see the same face over and over again because those few companies had cornered the market due to the SBO set-asides. It wasn't worth other people trying to muscle in because they either couldn't bid, or couldn't show relevant experience. How would they get experience? Win a contract they cant bid on and do some work. We never had a situation where there was any kind of pressure to go with a particular contractor. We were actually in the process of trying to terminate-for-default, T4D, to get out of the contract with the contractor we had since they were so bad even though it would take more money and the project completion would take months to recompete. We were working on heading the issue off when I left, but writing more stringent RFP requirements and also refusing to write our overall criteria as " Best Value at Lowest Cost,", instead of "Lowest Cost, Technically Acceptable" which allowed us to go with more bidders that were more expensive, but actually had the skills and manpower to do the job correctly. I'm still getting robbed, but at least I get what was actually designed more or less on time instead of wrong at every step and 100% extra time on top. My overall experience with the VA, and to a large part the DoD when not dealing with Pentagon pet projects, is that there is not enough of the right kind of money that needs to be done, and more importantly, not nearly enough people to actually manage the projects the way they should be managed. That just sets up an environment where everything is falling apart all the time and every one is overworked and we get ridiculous turnover, 75% in the two years I was in Des Moines, because who needs that poo poo when I can be making 30% more pay in the private sector and you end up with stupid people like me who would rather deal with the BS to avoid having to deal with the profit motive and a bunch of crusty old guys who are completely checked out who will bitch about how bad things are, but are past actually trying to do something about it. The entire system is broken on a fundamental level and that causes good people to go elsewhere and bad people to thrive, either by being incompetent on the Gov side or by basically robbing the Gov on the Contractor side by being willfully undermanned and hiring incompetent people and overworking them because it saves them money, not to mention outright fraud like double billing for completed work or billing for work that hasn't been done yet so they can use the money to buy the actual materials they need since the underbid the contract so bad to win it that the only way for them to turn a profit is if they scam us. I have opinions on the current state of construction in the Gov.
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Apr 19, 2022 23:08
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Blue Footed Booby posted:Sometimes it's this. Sometimes it's the contract getting flagged to go to a disadvantaged business without consulting the customer, and there not being any companies in the industry that are both eligible and capable. So you get a gaggle of dipshits with no prior experience literally putting in their proposal "we'll hire all the people who'll be out of the job because you gave the contract to us." Then they win by default, but the workers won't play ball. The Contracting Officer (CO or KO in the DoD) assigned to the contract, with Legal's input if there is some added weirdness, selects the winning bidder. They make their choice based on the input of the Source Selection Board (SSB) which includes the Contracting Officers Representative (COR, AKA project engineer, AKA me), the technical expert assigned to advise the CO, any other relevant experts, and usually at least two other engineers to round it out. The COR also writes the SOW and source selection criteria and the SSB collectively writes the interview questions. I never got a straw man bidder in Iowa , but I have gotten them (12 man prime contractor AE subbing to an 800+ general engineering firm on a $2.5M contract? Don't worry, were totes going to do the required 50% of the work. Yeah right, gently caress off.) in Virginia. They're fairly easy to spot when you know to look though and since we caught one huge firm running 12 separate straw men we've been make a specific effort to weed them out. They'd be tolerable if they did good work, but usually it ends up that the individual projects are so small compared to their overall workload that as soon as there is an issue they side line it to focus on projects that are actually making them real money while the on-paper prime contractor twists in the wind since he has no leverage on the sub and the Gov twists in the wind because we have no contractual relationship with the sub and thus have not leverage either. -Zydeco- fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Apr 19, 2022 |
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Apr 19, 2022 23:24
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Hey sorry this isn't about government contracting fraud, but    quote:We are renovating our kitchen which had a soffited drop ceiling that we wanted to remove. During demo we found duct work in the soffit. Contractor said it was going to be ok. Today I came home to the hvac guy having cut large amounts of the joists out that support the second floor. The contractor assures me this is fine because it's a small spam but it seems far from fine to me. Nearly half of the joists in this room have been cut and the vertical riser goes through the top of a bearing wall. Is this actually OK?
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Apr 20, 2022 06:31
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Good info on notching from this old house: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/woodworking/21016155/how-to-properly-notch-structural-beams
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Apr 20, 2022 06:36
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All that joist notching and it wasn't even done to attract 
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Apr 20, 2022 11:38
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Vim Fuego posted:Good info on notching from this old house: https://www.thisoldhouse.com/woodworking/21016155/how-to-properly-notch-structural-beams If memory serves, the 1/3 of the joist chord also counts for multiple (smaller, like spade bits for romex) holes within a given distance of each other. wesleywillis posted:All that joist notching and it wasn't even done to attract You can't know that. may come running.
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Apr 20, 2022 16:39
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PainterofCrap posted:If memory serves, the 1/3 of the joist chord also counts for multiple (smaller, like spade bits for romex) holes within a given distance of each other. Chicks dig central air.
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Apr 20, 2022 23:33
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Tunicate posted:Awful idea but good execution visit r/ATBGE (awful taste but great execution) for more in this vein
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Apr 21, 2022 03:58
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Would sleeving a drilled hole or a notch with a strong piece of pipe or angled steel maintain the strength?
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Apr 21, 2022 04:28
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AlternateAccount posted:Would sleeving a drilled hole or a notch with a strong piece of pipe or angled steel maintain the strength? As long as you're drilling and notching the beam or joist in the correct spots, you're not appreciably weakening it in the first place. If you did notch or drill in the wrong places and you're trying to fix with a sleeve of steel, your next biggest concern is how to attach/bond that steel to the rest of the beam as strong as you possibly can.
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Apr 21, 2022 05:22
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AlternateAccount posted:Would sleeving a drilled hole or a notch with a strong piece of pipe or angled steel maintain the strength? Not really. You seem to be thinking of it like a tunnel or a stone archway where everything is in compression, but some of the wood is going to be trying to pull away from itself and nothing is going to stick them together well enough that anyone would trust it.
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Apr 21, 2022 06:09
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AlternateAccount posted:Would sleeving a drilled hole or a notch with a strong piece of pipe or angled steel maintain the strength? Cat Hatter posted:Not really. You seem to be thinking of it like a tunnel or a stone archway where everything is in compression, but some of the wood is going to be trying to pull away from itself and nothing is going to stick them together well enough that anyone would trust it. As an example, take a book and hold it with the spine up. Put a bookmark in it somewhere (to represent your sleeve), then press the book down onto a table, spine still up. Congratulations, a librarian is now angry with you.
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Apr 21, 2022 06:24
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AlternateAccount posted:Would sleeving a drilled hole or a notch with a strong piece of pipe or angled steel maintain the strength? No.
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Apr 21, 2022 08:36
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AlternateAccount posted:Would sleeving a drilled hole or a notch with a strong piece of pipe or angled steel maintain the strength? The top of the beam is in compression. The bottom of the beam is in tension. At the center of the beam, the forces are minimized, so drilling a hole there doesn't change its strength much. Thus the hole itself is not the problem, it's where you put it. Any reinforcement would have to match the loading needs at that spot.
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Apr 21, 2022 13:43
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found a really amazing bathroom (and kitchen(???)) setup. the show is japanese but the apartment is in france https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxWl1nmXMlDcBzqvyIfPXfgPeD5j0cbjUj
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Apr 21, 2022 22:58
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Someone please explain the hallway sink. What in the name of lovely indie games that are just silent hill knock offs?
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Apr 22, 2022 02:16
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value-brand cereal posted:Someone please explain the hallway sink. What in the name of lovely indie games that are just silent hill knock offs? It's for the closet toilet across the hallway. Wouldn't want to have to walk all the way to your kitchen bathroom to wash your hands.
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Apr 22, 2022 02:25
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Lutha Mahtin posted:found a really amazing bathroom (and kitchen(???)) setup. the show is japanese but the apartment is in france I'm the quadrilateral bathtub. The gently caress you even find such a thing?
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Apr 22, 2022 05:23
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PainterofCrap posted:I'm the quadrilateral bathtub. The gently caress you even find such a thing? I'm gonna say it wasn't a bathtub from the start. I'm betting industrial offal trough from a meat processing facility
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Apr 22, 2022 05:27
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