civ_1102

The ebb and flow moves very fast. Prior to ARRA, I at least thought it was starting to look like the trend would be against contractor acquisition support. However, in the past few months, I have seen job postings all over the country for 1-2 year gigs, some of which seeking to hire as many as 6-10 people per site. Well see if these contracts die once the ARRA money is all spent.

Just a minor correction, both Procurement Desktop (PD2) and Comprizon are now CACI products. CACI bought the PD business from AMS several years ago.

Not that he's a lawyer, I think that most of the administrators have been lawyers...just different to have someone from GAO

It appears that a senior lawyer from GAO is the nominee-go figure! http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?arti...;dcn=todaysnews

I don't know what a "fixed unit price" contract is. It is not one of the contract types permitted by FAR 16. I think sometimes folks use such terminology to describe what is really just a T&M contract. In any case, I believe you already have your answer. If you do not have all of the money that you need right for for the full period of service, have you considered breaking up your requirement into option periods of less than a year each?

Equally troubling, I think, is that the GSA CAO and Government Wide Policy head position were just merged...and the person appointed to it has about zero experience in government acquisition. Oh well...

Thanks, Don. That is pretty much what I was thinking, too. I wanted some outside advice since it is my first supervisory position. Most of the other management in the activity have spent most of their career in this office, so they do not have the perspective of working elsewhere, or doing more "contracting" vice purchasing.

I also think someone like David Drabkin at GSA would be great-he is especially charismatic, which would most likely be a good thing these days.

Let's also be realistic about the workforce here. I would guess that a good chunk of the 1102 community does not even know that OFPP even exists, nevertheless whether or not they realize it's been vacant this long. I think there are some great candidates out there that currently work in the Government. For example, I think Shay Assad would make an excellent OFPP administrator.

Well, first, I don't think that Ms. Doan is exactly an objective source on the matter. She has demonstrated herself to be a partisan hack, both during her tenure at GSA, and since. With that being said, considering how important the President indicated procurement reform was during the campaign, I think it is very unfortunate that no OFPP administrator has been nominated yet.

Right, FAC-C is the program used by civilian agencies. The training requirements are more or less the same. One big difference is that in civilian agencies, you need the 24 hours OR the degree in any field through Grade 12, and both for 13 and higher. Under DAWIA, both are supposed to be required at any grade.

I recently started my first position as a supervisory contract specialist/branch chief in a civilian agency. All of the employees that I lead are in the 1102 series. However, all of their work consists of very high volume but low dollar value supply buys that really would be more accurately described as purchasing rather than contracting (which in itself is a big change for me as most of my experience had been in R&D, program contracting, and professional services). Most of the employees have been working for quite some time. In such a situation, what do those of you who have had supervisory experience think would be in the value of getting my staff to pursue FAC-C certification? Also, any advice in terms of good reading for a new manager would be helpful? I did complete a year long program with lots of Franklin Covey material, but always open to good new material.

Good for you for not relying on the CON training. I completed all of mine before any of it went on-line. My courses came from a mix of contractor-provided offerings and a couple from DAU. Sadly, I would the training was mediocre, at best. Now that many of the courses are on-line, I don't even want to know how poor the quality of the training is. If there is an NCMA chapter in your area, it may offer some good programming. Go to www.ncmahq.org to see if there is a local chapter.

I realize that this argument may not apply to something simple like a pin, however, Reason magazine recently had a very interesting article on the counter-productivity of "Buy America" rules, especially for complex high-tech items. You can read it at, http://reason.com/blog/show/134921.html.

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I am definitely looking forward to my return to federal employment (I am currently a personal services/staff augmentation contractor employee performing closely-related-to-inherently-governmental functions...). After I made the post, HR told the selecting official that if I just provide copies of my DAWIA and training certificates, that everything should be under control (why I was not told that weeks ago, who knows...but the lack of good customer support from federal HR offices is another topic I suppose). Those, along with my 24 semester hours in business, are currently under review.

I have been tentatively offered an 1102 position with a civilian agency at the GS-13 level. I am a prior federal employee, who completed CON 202, CON 204, CON 210, and CON 353 (the Level II courses were taken 2006-2007, CON 353 was taken in 2008). I earned my DAWIA Level II in contracting before I left my previous government position. As a result of the re-numbering of the CON courses, the HR office at the agency is swearing up and down that I need a training waiver to determine that my prior CON courses are equivalent to the new ones. Has anyone had any similar problems? I honestly can't imagine why I would need a training waiver...any comments/thoughts?

I pointed that out to my colleague, who was evasive and could not give a straight answer as to why that meant my position, that vessel repair is not construction, was incorrect. I think my colleague is off her rocker, but I wanted to make sure I was not missing something. I don't think I am, but I have neither construction nor ship repair experience, so I did not want to be too presumptuous.

I am having a debate with a colleague of mine. This is for a civilian agency. Requirement is for repair of a small marine vessel (to transport employees between an island work location and mainland port). My colleague swears up and down that the repair of a boat should be construed as construction. I pointed my colleague to FAR 2.0 definition of construction, which explicitly excludes building and repair of any vessel from construction. Am I missing something here? Is there some empirical detail that would make a difference? My FBO search for the applicable NAICS showed many ship repair requirements being solicited as commercial, which means they are not construction.

I don't see how that could be allowable as a direct cost to a Government contract. It could potentially be allowable to an indirect pool, though, IAW 31.205-13 Employee morale, health, welfare, food service, and dormitory costs and credits.

http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=4034200 What are everyone's thoughts about the proposal to "in-source" the myriad of acquisition-support contractor personnel, by converting them to federal employees? I see a variety of issues, such are existing HR flexibilities sufficient to make this happen? How will salaries be set? I also wonder how many of these types of acquisition workers will want to be federal employees? For example, many contractor contract specialists are already retired federal employees or military-many I know of in this boat would rather just do something else than be a federal employee.

Thanks all-right on point for what my specific issue is.

Can anyone point to a good discussion or definition as to what constitutes an "agency" for purposes of the Economy Act. My office needs to negotiate a contract or agreement with a federally chartered inter-state transportation authority (not an actual federal agency). I do not believe it can be done through the Economy Act, but I would like some more background.

What does your contract say? Generally speaking, the answer to that would be no. I have seen CPAF contracts that permitted base fee deductions when performance was really terrible, but I think that is counter-intuitive to the purpose of having the base fee. If your contract does not specifically permit such an action, I would not do it.

I currently work in a major DoD field activity as an acquisition support contractor. I love my work. It actually seems here that us contractors get more respect than many of the feds!

Acq_4_life, are the off-site hourly rates actually intended for instances of the contractors working at the contractor facility? If so, if contractors are tele-working, I think a case could be made that the government-site rate would still be most appropriate. The contractor-site rates are often designed to re-coup costs incurred by use of the contractor's own facility-which would not be happening in this case.