LTman you made my case for me. Government inefficiency at its finest can't raise prices when needed or figure out how to charge and off set higher cost deliveries. Now geting offended I see it shows when you attempt to act like you know how I would react to rate increases. Nope I don't mind paying for quality service.

Once again funny how UPS has 100% employees paid healt insurance or at least did a year or so ago when I was talking with my friend that's worked there 22 years. Infact the best health care coverage I have ever heard of.
But the government ran services is having problems.

I've shipped a couple thousand packages through USPS selling on ebay over the years and maybe 5 have gotten lost (I think a couple to HI actually got stolen at the residence) and maybe 5 more that took a couple weeks to show up. The post office here in suburban land is much easier to do than either FedEx or UPS. DHL, h..., I've never seen one of their trucks in this metro, although I did see and photograph their big air hub somewhere in Ohio once.

For a long stretch of time packages would show delivered to my house and after a week or two my wife would file lost package paperwork. And about 40% of the time it would show up about a week or so later.
After a while if there were shipping options available it was the last choice. That was about a 13 month stretch.
make a trip to the post office and it may or may not be open. Mail may come daily or every few days.
I suspect it's a local man powered issue. Mostly the post ovf being open depends on if the people chose to show up to work.

I was guessing the drivers skipped sections of the rout either because of being short handed or they took the day oof and delivered it later. I figured I was taking the day off paid since the package showed marked delivered and they had not been and they wanted them to look like they had been. I can't be sure of why only guess to that. But they were not delivered when they said they were.
Edit. this is the post office...

Post office is way more convenient here, even though their hours are odd, they are generally cheaper for small packages and much closer. Ups is reliable and cheaper on large and/or heavy packages, but an hour farther away. Fed Ex is the absolutely last option, their employees are bottom of the barrel, aren't smart enough to read addresses and the packages are always beat to pieces, not surprising, whenever I have been here when they deliver, they open the back of the truck and nothing is on the shelves or organized, just a big pile of packages on the floor they paw through until they find (hopefully) the right package. Plus everything shipped Fed Ex regardless of where it comes from goes to Troutdale Oregon (about six hours west of me, and most of them are coming from the East and have to be trucked past me) and kicks around there anywhere from a day to a week or two, before it comes back to me. I always cringe when something I order is coming Fed Ex, and to ship using them I would have to drive even farther than for UPS.

I've seen a DHL truck on the interstate while traveling before, but wasn't even aware they delivered to noncommercial don't think they do this area.

USPS here gets to Kansas City then just sits there. Sometimes we dont get any mail delivered to the post office. No mail. None. It goes to Ottawa first then here to burg. Never gets to Ottawa some days. I dont know what is going on in KC but its bad. UPS and FEDX both deliver to the house. USPS will not. UPS and FEDX deliver when they say they will. USPS is more often than not a week late. Have to go to Lawrence today because my wifes W2 has disappeared into the black hole of KC distribution.

Fed ex is a joke, just had to drive to Arkansas to get what i ordered cause for two weeks they hauled it back and forth. Goofy girl driver last week drove out on a iron bridge on an abandoned road and got stuck in the fed ex van and had to get a wrecker to get it out, she was charged with dui, lol. No clue how fed ex stay's in business. Quit fooling with ups probably 25 years ago.

Private industry isn't always the solution. It baffles me what is passed on as good work by the private engineering firms we deal with. I am an Engineer for a public entity, not federal but state. We design and construct a majority of our projects but we can't design them all. I think we have 47 active projects right now and there are only 3 Engineers in the department. We designed probably 30 of those 47.

One project that I am putting out for bids soon is a consultant/private designed project. 20 million dollar project. It is almost 2 years behind schedule because it took them 4 tries to get their erosion control permit, 4 tries to get through county/city permitting, and 3 tries to get through health department permitting. All of the issues they had were very simple things that should be elementary for Engineers.

The cherry on top is that when they sent me their final plans for construction they were pitiful. Misnumbering of sheets, their keynote callouts didn't match the legend, storm drain pipes that decreased in size as the run went on, you name it. Just pitiful quality control on a set of plans that is YEARS in the making. This consultant on just this project has been paid more than what our entire department budget is yearly.

It's not just that company either, we have had very similar experiences with private engineering firms on the last 4 or 5 projects. Heck, last year we started designing a culvert project at the same time that a consultant was hired to design another culvert project.

The culvert we designed has been designed, bid, constructed, and final permitted. The consultant designed culvert doesn't even have a complete design yet, and now they are asking us to do the construction administration and inspections on it.

People only see construction timelines and don't realize all that goes on behind the scenes to get to that point. Private industry is not always the fastest route. In my field it is usually a way to spend more money and double the time it takes to get something done.

Passing an audit for all govt offices should be mandatory. Within DOD we have failed now I believe for over 5 years. Billions of dollars unaccounted for. Getting rid of the FAR restrictions and cutting govt contracts would be what I would start with. Allowing field employees to give input to DOGE would be a great idea of how to cut expenses. Eliminating much of the restrictions and non-sensical regulations would help. Common sense would be good. DOD just issued guidance on what a man and woman is - seriously.

Sometimes , but not always , a successful company that is busy won't bother to bid on government projects due to all the red tape ...leaving wannabes to step in

Not saying that's your situation .....but something to consider

Unfortunately we can't bid out professional services. We bid out construction.

We have to put out requests for qualifications for engineering services and then select the highest qualified firm. Money does not even come into the conversation until after they are hired.

Just because a firm has been around for a hundred years and is the most qualified on paper does not mean they actually will provide you with a quality product, but our qualifications selection process is set up to favor those that have been around a long time doing similar projects.

I've noticed newer firms with younger engineers provide a much better final product because they want/need your future business.

Sounds like government can't even figure out how to run a selection process to get a good company from what you've said. Government sets up selection process, makes selections bases off the results, then blaime those thay selections they selected for the incompetent job preformance.

Sounds like it's the selection process and folks doing the selections failure to me.
Do they ever read Google reviews, or word of mouth reference, and why don't you have firms that have done good work for you in the past continue doing the work?

Well heck since you know so much, do you want a job?

In all seriousness, I will agree that the selection criteria we have to follow are frustrating. You can't always pick who you want and at the end of the day the final decision is up to the department whose project it is. For example the fire chief makes the final selection on the design firm for a new fire department. We give our input but that isn't the final word.

And I have also learned that word of mouth/references cannot be trusted. Even firms that have done good work in the past. It is such a volatile field that a firm that did good work for you 3 years ago can be made up of completely different people now.

Or a firm that did good work for you can assign a different engineer to be the leader of the project and they can have a completely different level of competence than the last engineer you dealt with.

Really you don't know until you get into it and see who the project team is and how they are working. If there was a way for us to terminate a contract after a couple months and select the next person things would probably go a lot smoother, but that won't ever be allowed. Really we need to be selecting the smaller firms that are hungrier for work and do a good job, but qualifications based selection processes are set up to pick the large corporate firms that have been around forever

Sounds like a mess. And I didn’t think about how much people change jobs and turn over in companies these days. It to bad you can't make selection based on the individual doing the job more than the company they are currently working for. That way if a guy you really likes changed companies or maybe starts his own your geting the individual or team rather than the company. Would give companies incentive to keep high performers happy and working for them as well.

Not long before I retired we had a new building built. It didn't go to the lowest bidder, it went to a HUB Zone (Historically Underutilized Business) bidder. It was a Charlie Foxtrot from the beginning. Part of the contract was for a basement/storm shelter under the building. When construction was 80% complete the "Engineers" did an inspection and realized that the basement was not handicap accessible and therefore we couldn't have it. They paid the contractor to haul the same dirt back in and FILL a newly constructed basement. The rates they charged for doing this was OUTRAGEOUS too.

160 I can beat that , we are trying to get a new shop building for equipment Maintenace. It requires 14 foot doors for the big forklift to fit, its designed as 60 x 24 with single slope roof low side at 16 foot eve. On the 90% plan call I asked how 2 14 foot doors can both be rolled up on the drive thru bay when the building is only 24 wide. Then the engineer from the government caught that the rafters hung down 2 feet below the eves making it a 12 foot clearance. Was asked if we could just get new equipment so it would work. And the cost will be 4 or 5 times what private sector would be because of the FAR

Not all engineers graduate at the top of their class..
My son is a mechanical/systems engineer for a top military contractor, he just recently had to reassign one of his team because of shoddy work, so even at that high level they get clunkers.
His best friend is management civil engineer , he's always complaining how hard it is to get good engineers, not all engineering schools are top level, so lots of misfits graduate and start entry level jobs where the bosses hope they can catch up to what they should already know.

When I worked construction and inside my plant now Typically engineers are arrogant and cocky. They tend to act condescending and can't see the potential problems that are obvious or the simple solutions. Most of the time I believe it's because they get out of school and think now they have that degree it means they are knowledgeable. They are wrong it means they are educated. But they lack any practical hands on field experience. If they had field experience not just theory they would be better served as would the people they work for.

Me and my brick crew laid 9,000 brick Saturday. Am I still a worthless engineer with no real world knowledge and no work ethic since I work for the government??

I have found that the best engineers are rather nerdy and not arrogant, they are a different breed, helps too when they have some real world experience rather than thinking they're special cause they just got a degree..
GOOD engineers are rare...most can get by with a little time, and some should be dishing fries at mcdonalds...

Hey you might get lucky and have it awarded to a minority owned and woman owned business that gets their first govt contract! They are always a joy to work with. Don't worry, I am sure your contracting office will take care of you.