You're quoting me a little out of context here --
But what I meant [without a doubt] is that when we subcontract the services to civilian 'for profit' companies as a contract, the cost gets higher and when we use the service we will pay a higher out of pocket expense ...
But, that may not include the direct DOD employees -- that is, the employees that work directly for the feds -- those are employees, and do not include the profit factor as the prime mover for independent contract civilian companies ... we know absolutely that civilian companies will build in a profit, and also a "if we find this, it's additional" clause, and then search as hard a possible to find add-ons.
For example: We recently built a new elementary school in town. The excavating contract was the "low bidder" but in his contract ($11 million) was a clause that said: "Excavation bid does not include digging and removing from site any underground rocks." We'll never know how hard he searched for the underground rocks, but .........
The buried rocks that excavator found added a huge amount to the contract payout -- and were done on a per-ton basis. A very large extra -- so large, we had to go back to town meeting to get authority for additional money. And, that illustrates how the private sector raises the low bid pretty significantly on contracts --
In addition: Private sector companies will not use volunteers [trade for sites] to lower to costs to the campers either -- one more way we can keep the campsite costs down.
