Developers: Getting the big contracts

[rmills]

Interesting site Clinton. What I noticed first was the Vendor Spotlight specifically where it says

NE GA Temporary Service,Inc. is 100% minority woman owned and was started in 1983.

In the Canadian procurement process (and I guess the US too) there are certain pots of money earmarked to hire minorities, poeple from specific geographical areas, disabled persons etc. A noble goal but also ripe for abuse by consulting companies. Not that all consulting companies are bad mind you but the majority know how to play the system.

[JJ70]

Errm, I'm one of the Government project managers who has overseen big money IT projects. PRINCE II is a project management technique that was developed soley for IT projects.....it is now the standard project management tool for all goverment projects - social services etc which it was not designed for.

The answer is an absolute yes you can sell government a load of shit for huge sums even in todays tight market.......can't make this post too long but could go on all day....take Kays point on government waste as true (stupidity as well) and times by a million.

The reality is though, when your looking to make money, that selling shit for huge amounts of money is very appealing. Therefore very competative, everybody can supply shit but are you good enough to sell it! Although their is a huge amount of government legislation on procurement to ensure best value and and no left handed handshakes it does come down to who you are and who you know more than what you are and what you know.

God, the stories I could tell you about this.

JJ

P.S. you don't need to be a developer to sell this shit either

[JJ70]

Sometimes there are talented people within the organisation who could do a better job for a fraction of the price

Last project I managed, we paid 4k for a website without rights to change content, so everytime it needed updating we were contractually obliged to pay each time.

I put forward that I could build, host and register it for £50 (not including my time but I had the time anyway and wouldn't have been paid extra). Regulations ment I couldn't do this, and it was paid out of my budget....which is your money.

This was recently and nothing on the scale I have been involved in....just a web site for a very small service.

JJ

[tke71709]

In the Canadian procurement process (and I guess the US too) there are certain pots of money earmarked to hire minorities, poeple from specific geographical areas, disabled persons etc. A noble goal but also ripe for abuse by consulting companies.

A company can be owned by a visible minority (aboriginal is big here in Canada), employ nothing but white males and still qualify as aboriginal company under the rules as they stand in Canada.

[Dave McM]

I'm sure it's quite easy for contracting web developers to hoodwink the decision-making entities in government into hugely favourable contracts. How about Business Link at £35m a year?

But it's true; civil servants simply don't seem to be capable of making sensible decisions when it comes to IT, websites and technology generally.

I remember I was working in one government body's local branch when the admin section presented their "mini-site" on our intranet. It was to laugh, as the Germans say. Within about 20 minutes (yes, I could have been using my time more productively) I'd made a reasonable fist of a "Who we are" page for our section which knocked their equivalent page into a cocked hat. Hand-coded, too - unlike theirs, which I'm pretty sure had been done using MS Word.

And that particular government department's online reference pages are a nightmare. Entire volumes of procedure on a single page, delivered over a cripplingly slow intranet (security, you understand). Aargh!

[aneil4lom]

I'm not a developer so I don't know how your world works, but ... how do you go about attracting the more lucrative contracts?

I mean, I know you can chase mom and pop businesses and convince them to pay you $200 to design a template specifically for them. There's no fortune awaiting you in that.

Was reading this BBC article today. It seems that some developers do very well indeed. Particularly those with government or local government contracts. The sky seems to be the limit with huge sums of money being poured down developers throats for shoddy, useless work.

The UK cabinet office has this breakdown for one government site:
Yup, they get paid for the design and build of the website every year after they've built it! Sounds like a nice piece of pie. How do you pull something like that off!?

OK, the site gets six million visitors a month. But, heck, that's not a lot in the big scheme of things. I've handled that kind of traffic on a couple of modest $200 pm servers.

Are you one of those fat cat developers? Care to tell other developers here how they can get in on a cushy number like this?

Here's how it works in Trindad (and most small developing English-speaking countries i suppose)

There aren't that many big developers, but most of them were started by well-heeled entrepreneurs in the mid-90s who were well-connected.
Most people that want to get into web development simply don't have the connections to get big jobs and end up working for the already established big firms where their pay is more secure.

The way to get government contracts here is basically to support a political party and throw your weight behind them. People that did heavy online campaigning in the last election for the current government got a ton on contracts.

One of my friends recently founded a firm to try to take on some of the big agencies down here and it failed miserably. His entire firm got just a few more jobs than i did during the last quarter of 2011 ans he has much more overheads than me.

My strategy to get fat cat contracts over time is to do solid work consistently and aim for bigger and better jobs.

For eg. I recently got a deal with a local brewery (the company that makes Angostura Bitters) to advertise on one of my websites. My plan is the push for better deals with them and offer other services until they're willing to hit me with a big contract.

[Clinton]

aneil, thanks for bumping this thread. It reminded me that since the thread was started the UK government has decided to make it easier for small companies to bid for government contracts: article.

The way to get government contracts here is basically to support a political party and throw your weight behind them

That seems to be the case here as well, it's just that it happens more subtly.

[aneil4lom]

aneil, thanks for bumping this thread. It reminded me that since the thread was started the UK government has decided to make it easier for small companies to bid for government contracts: article.


That seems to be the case here as well, it's just that it happens more subtly.

I wonder how transparent the process would be though?

For alot of contracts here and even government jobs, the policy is generally open-door so it looks as though competition exists; but the company that's getting the contract to do the job has been decided long before other companies submitted tenders.