Thursday, 22 October 2015 09:20 AM
WESTPORT, CT / ACCESSWIRE / October 22, 2015 / The October 12, 2015 issue of 'Aviation Week & Space Technology' includes a commentary by former Editor-In-Chief Anthony L. Velocci, Jr. concerning the huge negative consequences of pervasive sole sourcing in defense contracting and noting First Aviation Services Inc.'s efforts to reverse this trend.
Velocci conservatively states that approximately half of the Defense Department's $3 trillion of maintenance contracts over the next decade will be sole sourced. In fact, DOD's own 3rd Quarter Publication of DOD Competition Reporting showed that NAVAIR and the Air Force's Materiel Command - the two largest spenders of aircraft maintenance dollars - sole-sourced 80.8% and 72.7% of their contracts (respectively). That's approximately $36 billion spent without competition in just three months.
Velocci states that DOD justifies this sole sourcing by claiming "that only original equipment manufacturers (OEM) hold the technical data to perform maintenance." But, as Velocci then points out, "when potential competitors are shut out, the work almost always goes to the OEM, effectively giving it a lifetime monopoly" even though the maintenance could be performed by any number of independent maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) firms such as First Aviation.
Over the past three years, First Aviation has opposed DOD's sole sourcing through multiple protests that sought full-and-open competition for contracts that were inappropriately bundled and sole sourced based on DOD's belief that it has no technical data rights. In particular, First Aviation has urged the government to enforce its laws and acquisition regulations which "mandate that the government has unlimited rights to repair and maintenance data, including the right to provide it to third party contractors." First Aviation's initiatives have also revealed that some sole source contracts exist where the contractor (the OEM) "outsources essentially all the work to subcontractors" essentially disproving DOD's sole source justification that only one capable source exists. Furthermore, as Velocci avows, First Aviation discovered that "DOD has taken delivery of hundreds of C-130Js without obtaining FAA airworthiness certificates, despite Pentagon budget requests to Congress describing the aircraft as 'FAA-certified'."
Velocci notes that "the implications of First Aviation's protests are gargantuan when applied to hundreds of billions of dollars in defense spending over the next ten years and the potential savings that…would flow from opening up MRO contracts to full and open competition" and that this "might actually be the key to accommodating much needed weapons systems modernization."
While government leaders "bemoan the upfront price of weapons systems, the reality is that the life-cycle cost of military hardware is 2 - 3 times as much", and furthermore "setting aside the issue of fairness or even the legalities of government contracting, the issue begs the question of whether DOD leadership is serious about challenging the status quo and traditional ways of doing business."
First Aviation appreciates Mr. Velocci's attention to these important issues.
About First Aviation Services Inc. (www.firstaviation.com)
First Aviation Services Inc. (FAvS), located in Westport, Connecticut, is a leading provider of repair and overhaul, rotables management and related engineering services to the aviation industry worldwide. FAvS's principal operating subsidiaries are Aerospace Turbine Rotables, Inc. (AeTR) in Wichita, Kansas, Piedmont Propulsion Systems, LLC (PPS) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina and Evolution Aerospace, Inc. (EAI) in Wichita, KS. FAvS also owns a minority interest in Aerospace Products International, Inc., based in Memphis, Tennessee. More information about FAvS and its subsidiaries may be found on the company's website.
CONTACT:
Larissa Strautman, Corporate Secretary
First Aviation Services Inc.
+ 1 (203) 291-3300
[email protected]
SOURCE: First Aviation Services Inc.