Blaming the inspectors

[EdMG]

Another group getting some unfair blame is the government inspectors
who were just doing their job reviewing applications to drill, and
making sure all the required boxes were checked. Imagine what would
have happened to one of these guys if he had said - "I won't sign
this. I believe that the risk is too high."

Let me tell you a story about my experience as a low-level government
employee trying to do the right thing at a big defense contractor. I
was asked to order some expensive parts with a spec that I knew would
be nearly impossible to meet. This one critical spec was important.
The parts would be useless without it. I wrote a simple, brief
specification, with strong emphasis on the one tight spec. It came
back a few weeks later from our purchasing division, complete with
detailed blueprints, and hundreds of specifications as to all the
unimportant details.

I circled the important spec, wrote my name and number on the
blueprint, and added a note to call me if there were any questions.
That got me in trouble with the purchasing division. The policy was
no contract between the vendor and the one guy who knew anything about
the PO. I tried to get the purchasing guy who wrote up the spec to
add a note or do something to avoid the inevitable waste I saw
coming. No good. He knew far more than me about writing specs for
this kind of equipment, and his attitude was that I was trying to tell
him how to do his job.

Four months later, the parts arrived. I took them to the lab, and
sure enough, they were no where even close to meeting our spec. That
put the purchasing division in a bind. The vendor was threatening to
sue if he didn't get paid, and purchasing couldn't make the payment
without someone from our division signing that the order met the
spec. I even got a call from the head of purchasing, but I still
refused to sign a statement that wasn't true.

A year later I was fired. It wasn't over this one instance, but being
older and wiser now, if I were in this situation again, I would just
go with the flow.

The cost to the taxpayer in my case was only $4000. Imagine what
would happen to that MMS inspector who refused to rubber stamp BPs
billion dollar contract.