David Ebner, A/E Contracts

         Army Corps of Engineers, Portland, OR

         (503) 808-4611, fax-4605

         David.A.Ebner@nwp01.usace.army.mil

        "The Best Information Leads to Success"

From: DudleyDevices@aol.com [mailto:DudleyDevices@aol.com]
Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2006 4:02 PM
To: Ebner, David A NWP
Subject: prices

Dave,

I'd like to haggle for the computer I have here. The purchase price was $2,388.49 in July of '04. Depreciation of computers is at a much greater rate than say for example, a drill press or a lathe, so it's worth considerably less now.

The reason I want to keep it is not that it's such a spiffy keen-o computer to use, actually it's not so impressive. I had very high expectations of an "IBM brand PC," but I was disappointed almost immediately. When I complained about it to IBM tech support and learned IBM was selling off their new PC division to the Chinese, I felt I had been duped...

I want to keep it as a support device for the one you have now. The exact-ness of this one to be like that one is what I want to preserve. If your guys want a software patch or change, I want to have this one here to work with to make the software patch or change for that one to have a greater degree of confidence in what it will do.

The latest letter I got from Rod indicates he doesn't care about the computers anyway; he's looking down the road at fixing all of the turbines in the country and doesn't want to be "nickel and dimed." Ed's only thinking about the index testing for units with GDACS, but making decisions that will affect all of them.

The Deal

I mentioned the I/O board in that computer was never invoiced. A replacement is $1,000; that's how much I had to pay for one to put in an aircraft test box 3 weeks before going to McNary to the field test. Unlike the computer, the price on these is going up.

I'd like to propose a straight trade - your 2 year old crutchy, old, never worked exactly right, decreasing in value IBM computer for my crutchy, old, getting harder and harder to replace, thus getting more and more expensive to replace National Instruments PC-1200 I/O I/O board. Straight across trade.[D.E.]   As I recall the reason the new I/O board wasn’t invoiced is because you did not first obtain permission from me to buy it.  If you did in fact do so, please refresh my memory, because my recollection is as stated. 

“Crutchy”?!  I’m getting a good chuckle over your descriptions.  Excellent.  Hey!  We don’t want to buy stuff that is obsolete.  Seriously.  You’ll need to find a replacement for your preferred “more and more expensive” NI board.  I hear there’s lots of good, reliable, cheap I/O boards available at a your local COMPUSA, Circuit City, K-Mart….

I still have your broken transducer. It has a broken wire inside of it and needs to be sent back to Druck for repair, test and recalibration. I'm using it as a fit-form & function model for the new manifolds. From conversation with the Team, it doesn't seem they want to use this transducer anymore, so what is to become of it? Do you want me to send a broken transducer that nobody wants back to you?[D.E.]   What do you recommend?  What is in the Corp’s best interest?

[D.E.]

The Counter-proposal

We swap the one-year warranty, to start the day the ITB is accepted [Hopefully the week of Feb. 5th], which will be the same day the development phase officially ends, and the I/O purchase (by-the-way, I just remembered telling you over the phone the price for the I/O board would have to come out of existing funds, because there wern’t no more.  I believe your reply was “Merry Christmas!”).  Oh, and any and all other claims, parts, pieces, nits and picks heretofore or forevermore possibly arising out of this here transaction for this here contraption, the trout, the whole trout, and nothin’ but the trout, so help me Cod!

Well?

Price for an ITB

You asked for pricing for ITB. Let me refer back to the contract Pg-4 list where we established some price guidelines.

Computer and Winter Kennedy transducer can be substituted, the price here is just a starting point. Software listed is what we're using in the current ITB.

 From $12,967.  For one extra part?  What was the part?  

Rod also wanted a price for a system without a Winter Kennedy transducer.

And a price for a Non GDACS version that uses independent transducer inputs for all channels. This price does not include the cost of transducers for forebay, tailwater, gate stroke, blade angle, flow or power. This price assumes all signals are transduced external to the ITB, and already "signal conditioned" DC Voltages are presented to the ATE Resistor and terminal board.[D.E.]   Could 1 transducer produce all required signals?

Rod also made mention of my reluctance to give a price for the ITB source code. Before committing to a price I'd like to discuss scope of supply with you. How many turbines are we talking about?[D.E.]   Couldn’t tell you until a successful version is tested on all the turbine types we’d want to test.  Recommend you be very careful not to price yourself out of the market here.  Overall cost is always a big issue with the government.  As if you didn’t know.  Lots of pressure from above.  You were not previously, but are now in the ballpark at $750K.  How much higher do you think we’ll go?  I believe appropriations recommendations have already been made for the up-coming three years for optimization.  The numbers I heard won’t currently support the analysis you’re suggesting.  The key to win-win negotiating is to understand the other side’s concerns, limits, and options.  That’s just my 2 cents worth. 

Anyway, I’ll start at $600K.  I mean if what we have to look forward to just two years after purchase is “crutchy, old, never worked exactly right, decreasing in value… …computers”, then it seems to me the value of the package just took a dive off of the BIG platform and belly-flopped.  Ouch!

[D.E.]

Let's haggle...

Best,

Doug