AAC

I want to just say that I have been more of a reader of the posts on WIFCON than actually responding to posts. I hope to change this in the future. Having said that, I have appreciated the responses from Vern that I have seen over the years. In order to survive while working in the Government contracts profession, you must be open to the advice of professionals who have been in this business for many years. You have to be able to throw away the perception that someone with more knowledge than you is trying to make you feel small when rendering their opinion. You have to continuously grow and learn. I have been involved in Government Contracting since 1986, hold 2 certifications from NCMA, and would not have survived this long if it were not for the efforts of the professionals on this website to keep our profession moving forward. If you look at the responses Vern has graciously offered over the years, you can see he is trying to move us to clarify the questions. Yes, we know that means getting a response from Vern that may rub one the wrong way. But this is not what he is trying to do, he is tying to make us think before we act, he is trying have us learn something. There are better ways of responding to people that you feel rub you the wrong way. If your customer, contractor, or subcontractor rubs you the wrong way I am sure the response would not be such as what was provided to Vern.

What is the basis of the protest?

What has been the extent of your search? Just curious to know if you have done a Google search or gone to any other websites.

He floated the idea of having contracting professionals rotate between government and the private sector. Was he only talking about the contracting professionals on the Government side going back and forth? The best he can come close to with this is the Training With Industry (TWI) that the Army used to send selected contracting professionals to train with industry for a year. Don't know if they still do this or not. If he was also including the contracting prfessionals on the private industry side..........forget it. What private firm would risk getting themselves in some sort of conflict of interest situation that may prevent them from bidding on future government work. Yep, this is not a good idea.

What exctly is the criteria for a person in DOD to obtain a warrant?

Thanks Vern. I have read the property clause and will act accordingly. As always, your comments are very insightful and so inspiring.

Thanks everyone for your insight. Since September 2009 we have been having problems with the GFE provided to us from the USG. We have provided formal notification to the Contracting Officer (5 letters) , detailing the facts and circumstances. We further have asked the USG to provide us with assistance in trying to understand how the internal mechanisms in the GFE work to help us understand whether the results of our testing is due to some issue with the internal mechanism inside of the GFE. This type of assistance from the USG has not been forthcoming. A few weeks ago we started to receive some assistance but no determination has been made on whether or not the GFE provided is defective. I have the Government Delay of Work, FAR clause 52.247-17 in my contract and perhaps I should be citing this clause to file a claim instead of a REA. We tried to work with the USG to avoid schedule slips by trying to push forward to figure out the problem on our own. However, we are now getting into schedule slips and of course additional cost issues.

We are incurring unplanned costs and schedule slips due to defective GFE equipment. We have done a very good job of documenting the issues with numerous emails/briefings and formal contractual notices to the USG. We are still working the issue to avoid incurring costs and schedule slips. I have DFARS Clause 252.243-7002 Requests for Equitable Adjustment in my contract. Therefore, I would have to act IAW with this clause should we decide to submit a REA. If this risk is realized, it will occur first with our subcontractor and I am sure we will be paying them before the USG gets around to dealing with the REA which hopefully results in getting us paid. Does anyone have experience dealing with REAs? Any idea on how long a REA can take on average?

Check the clause at 52.247-15 As stated in 47.207-5 (e) Loading and unloading: The contracting officer shall insert the clause at 52.247-15, Contractor Responsibility for Loading and Unloading, when the contractor is responsible for loading and unloading shipments

Does anyone know of a specific FAR clause that addresses Counterfeit Parts

Thanks for the response. This satisfies the question I had. My fault for not including the specifics.

The defintion of Inane is as follows: 1 : empty, insubstantial 2 : lacking significance, meaning, or point : silly <inane comments> I always thought that there was no such thing as a "silly" question. It seems that Joel thinks otherwise. Please do me a favor Joel. If you take pleasure in answering questions in this manner, please do not responsd to questions I ask on these boards. This is supposed to be a place where people feel free to ask questions among professionals for those of us who are seeking more knowledge in the profession. I posed this question as general question and I suppose you could replace fee with profit but if that would make things easier. However, If I have a T&M contract is the material portion of the contract allowed to have Fee or profit applied to it or is the fee or profit built into the labor portion of what is billed for the time portion of the "Time" and materials contract.

Under what conditions would is fee be applied to material?

This is a follow on 1 year extension to an existing contact. The POP will expire by end of year. There was no option to extend the existing contract out for a year. I inherited this contract so I would have brought this issue up to the CO had I been here at the beginning. The one year extension is being used to cover performance until we can get a the next follow-on contract in place which will have additional scope added to it.

The defintion of a Service contract (FAR subpart 22.1001 Defintiions) means any Government contract , the principle purpose of which is to furnish services in the United States through the use of service employees............ If I have a contract that is primarily providing services in a foreign country in support of an FMS contract then is my contract subject to the Servcies Contract Act?