I am in the position of quoting projects to customers of all sorts. Most of the time, this is a fairly benign process - the customer tells you what he wants, you do design work if necessary, and figure out the cost and how long it will take to provide the product. In our case, the product is pumps, or pump systems mounted on a base. We take our cost, apply a percentage to it, and tell the customer how much and when. They buy the pumps, we fill the order, and everybody is happy (usually).
When dealing with an engineering company, you run up against a paper mill that is nothing short of incredible. We just got an order for three vertical turbine pumps. That's it - just three pumps. These are by no means huge pumps, but the order is for about a quarter of a million dollars. Our supplier can build these pumps easily in about 18 weeks. The order's ship date is some 11 months in the future, so delivery is no problem. Easy.
Except - the request for quotation came with specifications 1 1/2" thick - I just measured it. For three pumps. Now that we have the order, the specifications that came with the order measures about 1" thick - so the bidding process thinned it down a bit. There is a list of documentation required with 85 line items on it, 3 1/2 pages long. For three pumps!
That list has items like "Barge Load Plan", and "Past Experience", and "Preliminary Training Plans", and "Final Training Plans". For three pumps!
I have around 20 subdirectories on my hard drive with documents that went back and forth in the six months it's taken just to quote this job. 44 MB of data - before we even got the job!
The end user is paying an awful lot of money for a crew of engineers and MBA's and lawyers and clerks to generate all that paperwork, and then to require us to provide even more paperwork, for three pumps. The overhead cost to the customer on this must exceed the price of the pumps by a fair amount, in terms of salaries, organization, office space, etc. But it will be very, very well documented.
They could save an incredible amount of money if the facility engineer just called us up, gave us his design characteristics, let us select a pump, provide our warranty, fill the order, and be done with it. But instead, I'm going to have to hassle with these three pumps until this time next year! The pumps will outweigh the paperwork - but maybe not by much. And all of it will have to pass through my hands.
Oh well, it's a living.
-Pop
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2 comments:
My time at NYU -- corporation first, then university, no matter what the motto says -- introduced me to the wonders of bureaucratic paperwork. It's no wonder websites like craigslist have sections dedicated to barter; if you've got what I need and vice versa, can't we just trade and be done with it? Or the Mitch Hedberg joke where he ridicules the idea of needing a receipt for the purchase of a donut . . .
By the way, thanks for adding me to your blogroll!
Hi, TexanNewYorker -
You're welcome - and thanks for reading my blog!
-Pop
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