Hi,

These have been all very helpfull and informative replies.

I was involved with this project about 2 years ago, but due to faults of the client and mine as well, that project was abandoned.

My client and I have a relationship that goes back 11 years and during this time we have come to appreciate each other as more than just a consultant and a client. When the project failed, we both "walked", licked our respective wounds, and moved forward.

After that, he put out the contract for bid and I was out of the picture except to assist whoever would develop the solution with technical and business matter (I had become a domain expert by then).

I have made it abundantly clear to my client that I cannot and will not do any development work on this project because that would pretty much wipe my credibility, not to mention that it obviously puts me in a very vulnerable legal position. My goal was NOT to take the work away from anyone but to help my client assess the situation - something he wasn't able to do because he was continually told that everything was fine and at the same time that the budget was being blown away quite badly and the deliverables were anything but what he had expected.

Right now, the client's plan is to have me work with him to create a model of his business and help him clean up the existing database (normalize, etc) to make it possible to hold the dam for the time being using the existing system.

The design created by the project manager is not really usable as is to develop the system - he claims that he has created documentation suited for this but in the course of my findings I asked repeatedly if the documents I received were "everything" and his answer was always "yes". "Everything" includes an er design that is very incomplete (just two pages of diagrams) and lacks in other aspects as well, just to mention a few of its deficiencies. A design that took well over three months of non-stop work to complete. Then, there has been gross mis-comunication between the project manager and the developers. In addition, there is a large number of bugs and omissions in the delivered pieces so far and a dose of mismanagement.

I will be hired to develop a full set of design documents including uml diagrams, use cases, "the works", and THIS will be given out to other contractors to bid on the actual development work. The model of the business that I mentioned above will be used for this.

After that, I would act as project manager to ensure that the time constraints, the budget, and the deliverables are in agreement with the expectations.

Thanks again for all the replies!!!!!!

Alex

PS: As far as I becoming the fall-guy, I will make it clear in the next meeting that the decision is not mine. I was hired to make a recommendation and that is exactly what I will do. Besides, I didn't hire them, so I don't have the power to fire anyone here.