June 11th, 2010, 3:34 pm
QuoteOriginally posted by: trackstarQuoteOriginally posted by: frenchXHow much are you ready to pay for that ?Does anyone else get the sense that the French have never heard of an RFP? This involves a *competitive* bidding process. What happens dans La France:The Government makes an official visit to the National Labs and says - "Oh, you have been doing such splendid work in the name of France! We have $x hundred million euros to spend this year. Can you build us some more fancy lasers and other gizmos that we can show to Parliament et notre chers citoyennes?"French National Lab: "Ah, let us see, yes perhaps we can do it. We might have some cost overruns, it is the nature of scientific innovaton, you see..."Government: "Excellent. Well, we will see you with your PowerPoint slides in a year then. Merci et Au Revoir."tsss mauvaise langue va! Actually it's more:DGA (french equivalent of DARPA) : "So now you are under contract with us for two years with the possibility to be re conduct for again 2 years. WE WANT RESULTS! You have X? and you have to justify how you spend them. In the contract the objective is A"one year later ..."So you have reached the objective A , it's good but not enough now we want B or the contract won't be reconducted."one year later "So you have reached the objective B , it's good but not enough now we want C or the contract won't be reconducted."and again and again ...Those guys ALWAYS want more.Quite exhausting to work for them believe me ...