But I'm an engineer—not a contracts lawyer!

摘要

Industrial partners, commercial vendors, and subsystem contractors play a large role in the design and construction ofmodern telescopes. Because many telescope projects carry relatively small staffs, engineers are often required to performthe additional functions of technical writing, cost estimating, and contract bidding and negotiating. The skills required tocarry out these tasks are not normally taught in traditional engineering programs. As a result, engineers often learn towrite Request for Proposals (RFPs), select vendors, and negotiate contracts by trial-and-error and/or by adaptingprevious project documents to match their own requirements. Typically, this means that at the end of a contract theengineer has a large list of do's, don'ts, and lessons learned for the next RFP he or she must generate. This paper willpresent one such engineer's experience writing and bidding proposal packages for large telescope components andsubsystems. Included are: thoughts on structuring SOWs, Specs, ICDs, and other RFP documents; modern methods forbidding the work; and systematic means for selecting and negotiating with a contractor to arrive at the best value for theproject.© (2012) COPYRIGHT Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). Downloading of the abstract is permitted for personal use only.