bob7947

On September 12, 1962, President Kennedy told us On July 16, 1969, after a tumultuous decade, we, NASA, its contractors, and astronauts met President Kennedy's challenge, landed on the Moon and returned safely to Earth. But, what were we ready to do after that? While I was waiting for Captain Kirk to send us into warp drive much of the nation wanted a break. There was a national letdown. NASA's budget was put under pressure and they were asked to work more closely with the Department of Defense (DoD). Time for a compromise, time for The Dump Truck to the Stars, time for The Space Shuttle. Just something to keep manned space alive. The Space Shuttle was a very complex Space Transportation System (STS). It was composed of the orbiter (Space Glider), external tank in the middle and 2 solid rocket motors on each side of the system. The external tank was comprised of 2 inner tanks that fed liquid propellant into the orbiter's 3 engines. The liquid system could be throttled up and back down within limits as needed. The solid rocket motors were built in segments with an engine and then joined together. The 2 SRMs were made with propellant that was mixed and cured and provided the shuttle with about 70 percent of its thrust. The solid propellant surrounded an inner core that was empty. At the top was a much smaller solid motor that would be ignited and then burn the fuel from the outside in and using the inner core as an exhaust outlet. Once the SRMs were fired up there was no stopping them until the fuel was spent. To give you an idea of the size and weights of the shuttle and SRMs, here are some approximate numbers when all propellant was loaded. the entire system weighed about 2,200 tons and was 184 feet high, the orbiter weighed about 120 tons, the external tank weighed about 700 tons, each SRM was about 154 feet tall and weighed about 600 tons. The Requirement In the 1980s, I wrote and taught a course called Introduction to Procurement for GAO auditors. The course highlighted some gimmicks used in federal contracting. One of those gimmicks was the Fixed-Price-Incentive-Contract which I wrote about and how it was abused years ago. Another was concurrency -- "the fact of two or more events or circumstances happening or existing at the same time." To show concurrency to my class, I would place an image of the system acquisition process on an overhead projector. Yes, back then, we used overhead projectors to show images on a wall. After I explained the process, I would walk to the image on the overhead projector and squish it together. All that remained after the squishing was the beginning and end of the process. I'd turn to the class and tell them: That's concurrency. Here's another gimmick but just a little different. It is a quote that I used in the Fixed-Price-Incentive Contract article but it is perfect now. The source for that quote was the President's Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Procurement (Packard Commission) from 1986. Although it refers to defense acquisition it can be applied to many acquisitions in the federal government. My purpose for the course was to give GAO auditors the desire to find problems with federal contracting and report those problems to Congress. Whether I was acting as General Bullmoose trying to intimidate operational test and evaluation analysts to approve a system that couldn't work or whether I was trying to make a point I would pour my heart and soul into teaching every class. Maybe, I could prevent a future disaster from happening. When we reached the section on systems acquisition, this SRM procurement was my first example. I call this example "Selling Your Program." Let's get right to the requirement. Fortunately, that is memorialized in GAO's protest. It's time to call up your calulator on your computer and do a little math because I have an important question to ask in Part 4.

My road to Huntsville was simple enough, drive through Tennessee, pass into Alabama, and find the Tourway Inn on Memorial Parkway. Those were the exact directions given to me. "Find the Tourway on Memorial Parkway." I had a paper fold-up map to find Memorial Parkway. So it was drive up and down Memorial Parkway to find the Tourway. There, I would meet our staff from the Atlanta Regional Office and they would fill me in on our work. This was my first trip into the deep south, and with my Philadelphia accent, it was as if I had an arrow pointing at me with the words "yankee here" as soon as I opened my mouth. We met outside of the Tourway at 7 AM and drove to Marshall Space Flight Center's Building 4200. Inside the cafeteria, we picked a large table for the 5 or 6 of us. I was told, we were there to audit the Source Evaluation Board's (SEB) evaluation of the Lockheed Propulsion Company's and Thiokol Corporation's proposals for the Solid Rocket Motors that would be developed and used to send the Space Shuttle into orbit. Thiokol Corporation had been awarded the contract and the Lockheed Propulsion Company had protested it to the General Accounting Office (GAO). Remember, this was 1974, ten years before the Federal Acquisition Regulation and the Competition in Contracting Act. The Federal Procurement Regulation was in effect for Civilian agencies and the Armed Servies Procurement Regulation (ASPR) was in effect for DoD agencies. Specifically, a GAO audit team was there because a powerful contingent of Senators and Congressmen asked (told) GAO to evaluate NASA's decision to award the contract to Thiokol. The Space Program had come to a standstill waiting for us to get done. NASA didn't want us there and I didn't want to be there. There I was, a 25 year-old auditor, away from home, working with strangers as part of a team, who were holding up the Space Program. It was early February and we would hold up the Space Program until the end of June. Wifcon.com was more than 20 years in my future. After watching my new colleagues slurp up their grits while I ate my chocolate covered donut, we walked to the Source Evaluation Board (SEB) Building. There had been over 200 members of the SEB so they needed a building and several of them were still working in the building. Then I was shown the Proposal Room where the proposals were stored. It was a large room with rows of 3-prong thick binders. The Proposal Room held the proposals from the four competitors: Thiokol Corporation, Lockheed Propulsion Corporation, Aerojet Solid Propulsion Company and United Technology Center. Fortunately, we only looked at the proposals from Thiokol and Lockheed.

United States ex rel. Schutte v. Supervalu Inc., et al.

I am attaching this OFPP Directive on interagency acquisitions for further use. The title is Development, Review and Approval of Business Cases for Certain Interagency and Agency-Specific Acquisitions.

For FY 2022, the Congressional Budget Office said that the U. S. spent: Iif we project the same amount in FY 2023, then NIH's annual contract amounts of $2 trillion under that procurement would cover 32 percent of the amount that the U. S. spent for everything and more than the discretionary money for FY 2023. CBO defines discretionary funding as With those contracts NIH could cover the entire discretionay funding for FY 2023. "An electronic chcken in every pot." That makes me feel warm and fuzzy.

Why 305 to 510 awarded contracts? I haven't checked any previous procurement but I expect a lot less than that number of contractors ever getting work to do. I admit my math could be better. However, 305 to 510 contracts with orders of $50 billion could exceed $20 trillion. Who's kidding who? Now, for a true story. A contracting agency had about 6 IDIQ contracts with maximum order limits of $50 million each. One contractor was going to exceed the $50 million limit because it received most of the awards. The other 5 contractors received next to nothing. The contracting agency believed that increasing the maximum order limit for the one contractor would be improper and get the other contractors to take legal action. What to do? All 6 contractors had their original contracts maximum increased to $50 million even those who never received any business. That reminded me of the $50 billion number.

I'm astonished that only formerfed said anything about this procurement.

400 contracts x $50,000,000,000 (billion) = $20,000,000,000,000 (trillion) I've never been great at math but I estimated the number of contracts at 400 with a maximum of $50 billion. Possible 10 years = $2 trillion a year. Is my math correct? Does the solicitation state that all contracts awarded could be worth $20 trillion?

Keeping the GAO Protest Unit busy with 311 protests under Solicitation 75N98121R00001 Department of Health and Human Services, National Institutes of Health Chief Information Officer-Solutions and Partners (CIO-SP4). Notice the GAO's protest number under Infotrend Inc., B-419956.301, May 11, 2023.

There are a few various display names that use wifcon as part of their display name. Since they don't use it verbatim, I let it go. Tonight, I deleted a display name that used "wifcon" period. Don't do that!

By Dan Chenok Last week, I had the honor of speaking at the retirement celebration for Steve Kelman, longtime Kennedy School Professor and globally leading government management expert, who I’ve been fortunate to know for over three decades. The event was a remarkable tribute to Steve, who: * * * * * changed the face of government procurement for the better, as outllined by Kennedy School Professor and event moderator Jeff Liebman; * * * * * See the article from IBM Center for The Business of Government

The good part is: the discussion search is corrected and I can use the events page again, the SSL was extended to the discussion pages, and finally all pages are now operating correctly under the SSL Certificate and it will last for a year. and now, i can move on to upgrading the non-discussion pages of the site. That will take me some time.

After spending one of the worst wekends in my life dealing with the misinformed. The SSL Certificate was correctly installed and tested. I'm going to take a well-deserved nap. Good Night.

The SSL Certificate has not kicked in yet. It shoud late tonight but I still expect that it won't work correctly and I will have to seek someone to correct it on Monday. It's been like that for 25 years.

On 5/5/23, Wifcon.com's Discussion Board was finally fixed after years. Then on 5/5/23, its SSL Certificate expired. Because it expired, I was warned every time I tried to use this site and had to fight with google to see it. To renew the SSL certificate, I had to renew it with Network Solutions around 11 PM on 5/5/23. After it was renewed by Network Solutions, they gave me a lengthy registration number to take to my Web Host which is Inmotion. I took it to Inmotion and they didn't know what to do with it, at first. Finally, Inmotion's Advanced chat figured it out and added the registration number to my DNS server--yes, we all get numbers. Then, I had to go back to Network Solutions to check with them. It was now after midnight whn I got the all clear from Network Solutions that everything is correct and all I had to do is wait 24 hours to ave the SSL Certificate take effect. The 24 hours will end late Saturday, 5/6/23 but I still see the little red https. If you have experienced any problems seeing Wifcon.com, don't worry because soon the SSL Certificate will take effect if Network Solutions and Inmotion know what they are doing. Maybe, by the end of the weekend I will get a break from Wifcon.com.

The technical problem has now been corrected. I've tested it and it appears to work.

After some time, my expert told me that the problems you encounter when trying to use the search function are caused by defective ads. To test this theory, I deleted all ads and watched how the theory held. The same issue existed after I removed all ads. I've notified the expert about my test and I've given up.

Few, if any of us, have been impressed with the current nominee for Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition. I decided to look at the acting (of course) Assistant Secretary of Defense for Acquisition. I found several blurbs on her background: and here is the second blurb from an earlier position She appears to have more acquisition experience in industry and government than the current nominee. If you read her experience, you will have some of the same thought as I have. I'll add one more blurb when she was named to her current position. Maybe experience is a detriment. What do you think?

I was being sarcastic about her FMS background and her pedigree.

Well, she was the Acting Deputy Director at DSCA--Foreign Military Sales. The foreign nation identifies the contractor they want to use, sends the U. S. the money, and the U. S. processes the paperwork at the other end. Other than that, she has an Ivy League pedigree.

DoD initiated a comprehensive Defense Contract Finance Study at the end of 2019 to assess defense industry financial performance over a twenty-year timeframe. This study has 16 recommendations.

It was Friday, February 1, 1974, when out of the blue, my supervisor asked me: Do you have anything against going to Huntsville, Alabama for a week? The person that asked that question was the one that I needed to file my paperwork for promotion. I immediately said no and asked when do I go? Monday was the answer. Since it was Friday and I was in Washington, D.C, I had a couple of days to get going and hundreds of miles to drive. Stunned, I left my office space amd began walking around the dismal GAO Building in a stupor. Over the years, I found that the halls of the GAO building were a wonderful place to think. The halls were dimly lit and neary devoid of people. The one week in Huntsville lasted for 3 months and I almost died there in the April 3, 1974 historic tornado outbeak. I would be working on the above mentioned bid protest with our Atlanta staff in Huntsville, Alabama at the Marshall Space Flight Center. Few people know it but this protest was the last time that GAO's General Counsel was stupid enough to involve GAO auditors in a bid protest. They now do desk top reviews. At the end of our work, GAO issued a 98 page bid protest decision. To my knowledge, it remains the longest bid protest decision that GAO ever issued. When I retired in 2003, I was the last person in GAO that had worked on that protest and I became a momentary celebrity in GAO's General Council. It's nearly half a century since that protest and now, after giving it much thought over the years, I am writing about my experiences on that protest. Many of my experiences are personal but many others are protest-related. The only protest-related source material I am using is my memory and the original protest decision. Additionally, I am writing this entry in parts so that I don't end up with something so long that no one would even attempt to read it. Monday, February 4, 1974, came quickly and it was time to go. I told my friends and family where I was going, packed my 1971 Datsun 240Z with as much as is would hold, and headed southwest through Virginia.

From a Court of Federal Claims Protest entitled: Defense Integrated Solutions, LLC v. U. S. and Strategic Alliance Solutions LLC, No. 23-64C, April 5, 2023.

The https (the little lock) now appears on all pages of the discussion forum. The second part of my request is still being worked upon.