Environmental Science & Engineering – June 2003

Sea Kings mutate
into a Low Bid Ethos

A comedy/drama coming to a
budget near you

The Sea King helicopter fiasco
should become the benchmark
to measure the true financial
and other costs of the Low Bid
Ethos (LBE) in environmental procurement
decisions. LBE describes
any procurement process in which
engineering or scientific design proposals
are rated on lowest price tenders,
rather than quality, experience or
reputation when proposed environmental
treatment plants are being tendered.
I once asked a purchaser: “If
you were contemplating a vasectomy,
would you shop around for a low price
surgeon, or would you seek professional
expertise and reputation?”
Wincing at my hypothesis, he retreated
behind his high school Shakespeare,
saying: “This could be the unkindest
cut of all,” but he conceded that the
answer was painfully obvious.

In 1993, Prime Minister Chrétien
quickly scrapped a contract signed by
the previous Conservative government
to buy EM-101 military helicopters
from Agusta-Westland. “Canada does
not need Cadillac aircraft,” he said. To
rescind the original contract cost
Canadians some $500 million not to
have helicopters. To these substantial
costs must be added the growing and
immense costs of maintaining 40 year
old aircraft which are often older than
the crews that fly them. The bravery of
our air crews – and the ingenuity of
maintenance engineers to keep them
flying – are redolent of Junk Yard Wars,
rather than military operations. Ten
crew members have been killed in
crashes of Sea
Kings which were
designed to seek out
and destroy submarines
as well as
search and rescue
operations.

By their very
nature, helicopters
are complex, intricate
machines
which have to take
off on a variety of
operations, including
the heaving decks of ships in heavy
seas, to seek-and-rescue shipwrecked
crews in atrocious weather conditions.
As anyone with an older car knows,
repair costs escalate exponentially as
optimum mechanical life-span dates
are passed.

It has been estimated that it now
could take 30 hours of maintenance on
Sea Kings for every operational hour
in the air. While this sounds like an
exaggeration, it is one I have not seen
challenged. In a car, this would mean
that a five hour drive from Ottawa to
Toronto could require 150 hours of
maintenance – a total of 300 hours for
a return trip. Were the high maintenance
costs of aging, complex
machines like military helicopters ever
factored into the already costly $500
million cancellation of the original
contract? Remember, they were
required for search and destroy missions
– not to be destroyed while
searching.

The most recent evidence of this
farcical situation was when the
Canadian destroyer, HMCS Iroquois
set out for the Persian Gulf. Its Sea
King took off, faltered, then crashed
back, damaging the helicopter, the
destroyer and Canada’s international
reputation. It reportedly cost about
$150,000 to ship another Sea King to
the Iroquois in order to complete its
mission. Earlier, in 1999, a Sea King
had to sit out NATO exercises because
of mechanical failures. These aging
helicopters have a litany of embarrassing
breakdowns. Our air crews are not
Kamikaze pilots. They should be decorated
for repeatedly performing dangerous
rescue missions in such antique
aircraft. Modern helicopters are
necessities, not luxuries. Besides our
military commitments, we have the
longest coastlines in the world where
shipwrecks requiring rescue in atrocious
conditions and turbulent seas are
commonplace.

Now the Federal government is
belatedly reviewing its process of buying
a new fleet of helicopters, and new
situations are now being debated.
Should the government buy threeengined
EM-101 helicopters from
Agusta-Westland, with their complex
electronic equipment already in place –
or does it adopt a split procurement
approach whereby the electronics and
other hi-tech equipment are installed
by another company? The original helicopter
selection has three engines and
is therefore better able to cope if an
engine fails. It is also able to operate in
the Arctic and has de-icing capabilities
on its rotor blades.

Defence Minister John McCallum
said, after consultations, he came to the
conclusion: “It’s more efficient to proceed
with a single contract rather than
two…because with a single contract
there’s less risk and therefore likely to
be a lower cost.” It appeared that, at
last, a sensible procurement approach
was emerging from Disneyland on the
Rideau. Then déjà vu loomed like
Marley’s Ghost, haunting Scrooge. As
part of the initial procurement process
discussions, Ottawa talked of awarding
the contract on the basis of lowest-cost
compliance. As Talleyrand said of the
Bourbons, after they regained the
French Throne following the revolution:
“They have learned nothing!”

As ES&E has frequently noted, the
Low Bid Ethos has been extremely
costly both in environmental deterioration
and massive waste of money in
governments of all levels, municipal,
regional, provincial and federal. Welldesigned
environmental projects usually
last for decades while effectively
protecting public health, the environment
and the public purse. The
Walkerton drinking tragedy has
already topped $64 million – and still
counting – on Environmental Inquiry
Commissions, legal fees, compensation
and other costs, not to mention the
pain and suffering of many residents
and losses in real estate values.
Moreover, the legal costs are far from
over. For a fraction of this huge sum,
there could have been hydrological
inspections by consultants, upgraded
disinfection equipment, laboratory
analyses, systematic water mains
inspection, swabbing and regular
replacement programs and, finally,
regular operator training courses.

Lowest Cost Compliance is a new
term for me but it has the same sinister
ring as the Low Bid Ethos. As the
fabled Hollywood director, Otto
Preminger once pleaded with his staff:
“Don’t try to save me any more money
– I can’t afford it.” Canada too, cannot
afford a mindset based on price instead
of quality.

This gives me an idea to recoup
some of the losses incurred over the
helicopter contract fiasco. We could
make a serious documentary film of
the Sea King epic, beginning with the
PM’s proud announcement: “We don’t
need Cadillacs.” The documentary
could depict the contract signing and
subsequent cancellation, followed by
actual and protracted replacement
costs of the Sea Kings. However, there
are so many absurdities involved, it
may have to be filmed as a series.
The movie could be dramatically
interwoven with actual film clips of
our crews braving mountainous seas to
pluck people from sinking ships in helicopters,
with voice-overs, smugly
talking about cutting costs. This would
be a drama needing no special effects.

Existing TV archives already have
some gripping footage of helicopter
rescues from shipwrecks which match
the finest of Hollywood fiction in
action and drama. This film could
either be an eloquent conclusion to the
procurement debate, or a comedy like
the Monty Python films. Perhaps both.
Moreover, like the original split-procurement
discussions, it could even be
a dual purpose film, serving as both
comedy and tragedy, giving taxpayers
the illusion of getting two benefits for
the price of one, a fiscal illusion to be
sure, yet one which might be pleasing
to procurement accountants.

Actors could capture the self-satisfied
smirks in Parliament when the
original “money-saving” contract cancellation
was announced, followed by
the looks of consternation as the
tragedy unfolded over a decade like a
reoccurring decimal. Ample supplies
of red ink will be needed by set designers
during shooting – the Feds probably
are already getting high volume discounts
on the stuff.

Much more foolish is infrastructure
neglect, which, unlike crashing helicopters,
is out of sight and therefore
out of public scrutiny. If our neglected
water and wastewater infrastructure
had a fraction of the same exposure
and media coverage as the Sea Kings
fiasco, public outrage would resonate
across Canada.

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