Comments on: NASA has hired pest control! Woohoo!

By: Tyler Durden

Tyler Durden — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 20:13:47 +0000

” I assume that the dollar amount you quote was just made up. But in reference to your comment which implies you feel such money would be wasted:
How much do you think should be spent on janitorial staff for a place where 1,500 people work, and 1.5 million people visit each year?”

Let’s say you hire 100 janitors for the space center, at an average of $50,000 a year salary per janitor (well above the average for that profession.)

That equals $5 million. And seems like overkill, but I guess better safe than sorry.

Now add in an extra say $2 million for the higher salaries of supervisors to the janitorial staff, and administrative costs. That equals a total of $7 million.

But because NASA is overseen by the government you can automatically take that number and multiply by three. The actual cost for the janitorial staff will end up being $21 million per year due to inefficiency and nepotism.

By: Debra

Debra — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 16:06:31 +0000

Isn’t NASA a wildlife preserve???
“Pest control” seems oxymoronic to me!!!

By: Matthew Allain

Matthew Allain — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 18:37:09 +0000

@Ray Wagner

Yup, Ray’s got the details right. As an employee of a social policy research contractor who does 95% or so of our business with the federal government, I can corroborate that the Federal Acquisition Regulations require award announcements of a certain size to be posted on FedBizOpps, for public consumption.

One of my oh-so-envious tasks each day is to wade through large sections of that site to find prospects for new work in the government’s requests for proposal announcements.

Now, why NASA felt the need for a press release? No clue. My guess is that Phil’s hunch is mostly correct. NASA probably has a policy of announcing awards over a certain dollar amount.

P.S. – I, too, recommend reading FedBizOpps every once in a while (you can find a digest version at FBODaily.com, also). My favorite posting in the five years I’ve been doing this? A request by a parks administration for an animatronic Smoky the Bear.

By: Ray Wagner

Ray Wagner — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:50:02 +0000

The actual contract award announcement is published in Federal Business Opportunities at https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=90ef94f8b2290a578e76e1c443dd2f8d&tab=core&_cview=0
Note that award publication is NOT a press release but a legal requirement for a Federal agency contract award. The company may have published a press release — most companies (large or small) do when they get a contract award.
BTW, if you want to see where your tax dollars go, read through just a day’s worth of contracting opportunties announced on FBO.

By: Richard Drumm The Decimal Bum!

Richard Drumm The Decimal Bum! — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:36:38 +0000

@redx
Eep! :blush: Yer right! Thanks for the correction!
Rich

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:03:23 +0000

Consider the shortened blog blurb officially hated!

Just don’t have time to go to all the sites daily, and once per story.

By: Ken B

Ken B — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 14:15:38 +0000

Grr… And that’ll teach me to not double check that I have the correct close tags before clicking “submit”.

Well, at least we’re not going to see “everything is italics” because of it.