Robert Charles Quotes

I've always worked very efficiently on small budgets, both in documentaries and in features.

I think we have to be very careful when we toss around terms like 'cut health care costs.' We would do very well to expect a cut in the rate of increase.

Sometimes little things can prolong an experience in a way that you run over budget. It's very scientific; a lot of people don't understand the science that goes behind making a film.

It is critical to bundle all future variable costs of supporting the customer in order to fairly estimate the future contribution.

When a project has an ample budget, I am interested now in using bigger units of materials.

If a manager can't control his costs, fire them.

My buildings are all on budget.

Virtually all Federal accounting is still oriented toward preventing fraud and theft, not toward controlling costs.

I always cooperate to complete a film within the budget. Not a single film of mine has overshot its budget.

Projects are usually undertaken to either solve a problem or take advantage of an opportunity. The probability that the project - even if precisely executed - will complete on time, on budget, and on performance is typically small. Project management is utilized to increase this probability. So in a sense, project management is risk management.

Law Number XXIV: The only thing more costly than stretching the schedule of an established project is accelerating it, which is itself the most costly action known to man.

My father-in-law just happens to be a global procurement guru. Now retired, he was the global head of procurement for some of the biggest companies in the world as well as our very own treasury.

All of us are going to have to find ways to do things more efficiently, find ways to get our costs more in line, and do it in a time of higher regulatory and environmental standards.

There must be some flexibility in the budget. You cannot have too much discipline.

I do not pretend to step out of my own sphere and to control the internal management of other departments, but it seems to me that as Secretary of the Treasury, I may ask, that, while peace continues, the aggregate of the expenditure of those departments be kept within bounds such as will preserve the equilibrium between the national revenue and expenditure without recurrence to loans.

Cost reduction and cost control are by their very nature sort of anti-social activities.

Budget drives everything that we do.

A plan must have the assumptions specified.

A colonel or general with 30 years of fighting and leadership experience and 3 years of procurement experience has to run a DOD procurement shop and go up against a company vice president, a divisional vice president, and the executive vice president who gets advice from a President—all of whom have collective experience of over 100 years screwing the government on contracts and procurement.

Austerity [in the Defense Department] meant that risks had to be managed, not eliminated.

I have not been selling. In fact, it might prove beneficial by making it possible to get cheaper labor and cheaper money..

The management structures in place to manage and monitor our contracts in Iraq have become subservient to the contractors themselves …. contractors saw themselves as above the law…. the contractors, instead of Department officials, are in command and in control.

They call it managed care but it really is only managed costs.

I really don't want the best people at the highest cost.

In the private sector, you have a budget and you stick to it.