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jayandstacey

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Everything posted by jayandstacey

  1. Vern - agreed, to the extent that effective learning is certainly an engaged, active pursuit. Copious notes may never be reviewed, but the act of taking them forces attention. Asking questions may not seem to be the most efficient use of a class' time, but the interactions and dialog enhances learning. As I consider my own education, I credit two specific pieces as most important: Sentence diagraming: Learned in 6th grade, it forces one to understand the structure of language, which is half the battle in seeking meaning. (Predicate) Logic: Learned freshman year of college, it provides a way to understand almost anything - a sort of shovel for digging toward understanding. Both were really learning tools, applying virtually anywhere I choose to deploy them. I hesitate to criticize a younger generation, but if I were to seek any changes in education generally, it would be to ensure these kinds of tools are well-taught. Will they make someone WANT to learn more? Probably not, but with such tools, maybe a person will better understand why a teacher might talk about attributes and objects as evaluations are explored, because the person already understands the relationships between adjectives and nouns, and can understand conditional statements and such. Maybe.
  2. Hi Don, Yeah, you're right - the further you get into the definition, the looser the criteria. Under part (1) of the definition, taken by itself, I would disagree with your statement. But the later sections of the definition pull in a few nuances: modifications, combinations, and (key to your point) a relaxation from the corresponding commercial sale/offer being in the past. We may disagree in what part (1) says; I interpret that section to be 'of a type' and 'the item (not the type) has been sold or has been offered' -but the rest of the definition relaxes all that from multiple directions.
  3. I opened this thread and got exactly what I hoped to find: That while the regulation is quite clear, the intent behind it matters, and the intent is what is used pretty much invariably in the real world. If you follow the regulation to a tee, then it means that for any new widget, the Government should be at least the second buyer...the widget must first sell to a commercial buyer. There is some practical wisdom in that - the Govt doesn't want to be the guinea pig. BUT...let's say the widget is something like a longer accessory cable than what was available before, for an already widely available product. There were 6 foot cables on the market, and now a 10 foot cable is being introduced. Does the Govt really have to wait and confirm that the 10 foot cable was sold in substantial quantities to the general public before they can buy any? No - that would be crazy. It might also conflict with a DPAS order rating, or simply a mission need. So it makes perfect sense, to me, that a KO would (if they ever considered this at all) say things like "well, the shorter cable qualified" or "well, the main product qualified" or "well, the company making the cable doesn't custom make things for the government, sells a ton of stuff in the commercial market and that works for me." It is thanks to these judgments that no company I've ever heard of would put the Government 'back in line' for a newly introduced product, or delay sales to them until other sales have happened. And if a KO can't do that kind of common sense judgement call, then there wouldn't be a need for KOs.
  4. My gut tells me that the world (and the regulations) are filled with data, but what's needed is wisdom. Likewise, a given RFP is filled with clauses to comply with - but where are the risks or rewards within them? I'd imagine a tool that took a given set of contact clauses and built a scorecard nor dashboard for them. That scorecard might include things like - how often is this clause involved in protests or litigation, and what were the costs/settlements/punishments involved in losses? How often does it create an audit issue? Also, what % of companies in SAM say "comply?" (if that clause is included in SAM.) Is there other evidence of controversy, risk or volatility with this clause? Is there discussion out there (such as this site) on the interpretation of that clause? What are the common ways of establishing/maintaining and tracking compliance with this clause? How can I be alerted when the clause changes? What's the compliance cost typical in my industry? And of course, internal considerations like our own tracking, our own SME, our review history, etc. None of that really addresses the initial ask of WHICH challenges are major, rather, it assumes that the regulatory part is (overall) the biggest challenge and presents a wider perspective around it. Other challenges (competition, good selling, keeping pace with change, etc) are all still very real - but having such a scoresheet would be huge I think. And it seems theoretically doable. To more directly answer your question, my top list would be - Small business regulations / subcontracting / goals / graduations, etc - BAA / TAA / anything to do with country of origin or nationalist considerations (which are not unique to the US) - GSA MAS intricacies. It can get pretty hairy when combined with BAA/TAA and pricing considerations and various compliance risks. But of course these are the things that keep an army of lawyers and consultants gainfully employed.
  5. And to add to the original (interesting) conversation: While the growth of pages and words are one measure of complexity, I find that the number and degree of edits are what really drives challenges in maintaining compliance against a changing FAR. Simply put, next year's FAR could have the same number of pages and words but be wildly different via re-writes, deletions/additions, etc. Measuring that is difficult and would depend on exactly how such changes are reported/captured. But it might look like: # of words, sentences, pages, clauses or sections that have changes, or % of words that have been replaced or added vs. what stayed from the year before. If the last one could be pretty revealing - how long does it take the FAR to be 'turned over' (where the cumulative number of changed words > the total words in the FAR) - 30 years? More? Less? Is the rate of change increasing/decreasing/steady? Is there any trend in the nature of the changes, say from wholesale re-writes to minor tinkering (like to update thresholds or references)? My gut tells me there's a steady-to-rising increase in the changes YoY, and that the changes are more of the 'tinkering' type over time. But I really have no idea.
  6. I believe I ran into this via one of the classes often advertised at the top of this page. As I recall, it was in the form of a scenario - and I was called upon to present my opinion of that scenario in front of the class. As I presented, a number of classmates poked at my logic, suggested alternatives, just said I was wrong, etc. In the end, my fellow students did not agree with my assessment of the scenario. And where I feared I was being fed into the buzz saw of failure, it was instead a proud moment for me when the teacher (not you) told me I got it exactly right - the reasoning, the math, and the resulting opinion. I don't have fancy degrees and don't really do this stuff for a living, but...I can diagram a sentence. They told me that someday it would come in handy!
  7. Well, yes, that's one implication and now that I've re-read the OP, I can definitely see that. Mine's another implication, that the Contractor is being asked to submit proposals when there is a contract already in place that doesn't require such. (NB: The fact that it is an IDIQ and we're discussing a single task order leads me to my conclusion...that I can't believe that even the most clueless contractor would expect the entire IDIQ value to be consumed in a single TO, or even close to it....but much stranger things have happened...) At the root is who do we think is more in the wrong here - the govt or the contractor? Until the OP returns and provides clarity, we may never know!
  8. So, to see if I understand this correctly: Contrator has an IDIQ with fixed prices and is the only contractor on the IDIQ. The contract states minimum TO value and an overall minimum IDIQ value. It very likely also has a maximum value. Post-award, the Government now has a requirement that will be in excess of the minimum TO value and the minimum IDIQ value. The contracting folks are suggesting that a proposal be requested (and the contractor's response be evaluated) vs. simply issuing a TO. The contractor is declining to respond to the request for a proposal. There's a presumption here that lower pricing is expected, and certainly there will be an effort (cost) on the part of the contractor to deliver a proposal, even if the pricing isn't lowered. While there has been signaling from the contractor that a proposal would not be delivered, there has been NO indication that they wouldn't accept a straight task order against the contract (terms and conditions) as awarded. Do I have that right? If so, this seems simply like the contractor is saying "look, I already wrote a proposal and gave a price when I won the IDIQ. If you like what's offered in the IDIQ then take it as-is. I'm not going to negotiate against myself. If you don't like it, issue a solicitation elsewhere with more open competition." I see no indication that they won't perform under their contract as awarded, rather, I see a refusal to negotiate BEYOND the awarded contract. This seems to be in-line with the clauses Joel Hoffman has quoted. Now, if the contractor is issued a TO that's under the IDIQ maximums, is for the prices and terms in the IDIQ and otherwise is proper per 52.216-22, then yes, I'd expect the contractor to deliver on that TO and to be in breech if they don't. Does the IDIQ have any provisions for TO-level RFPs, continued negotiations or otherwise? I'd guess not (though I don't know) and the contractor is simply saying "we don't want to dance again, we already danced." On the contractor side, the computation for the pricing needed to win an IDIQ includes factoring in if there will be continued negotiation, competition or other price pressures post-award. If there is not any post-award changes to the pricing, and if it is winner-take all, then the contractor may very well have put their bottom-line pricing out there, and there's no interest in spending the money to create a proposal, let alone to adjust pricing. The irony here is that if the requirements went away from this IDIQ and were openly competed, the Govt may in fact pay a higher price than they would have under the existing IDIQ (since the cost of responding to an RFP for a single opportunity has to be factored in). Maybe not...but it is the chance the Govt takes here. The competition already happened with the IDIQ award. The Govt should either buy from the contractor's IDIQ or go do a real competition outside the IDIQ.
  9. It looks like, in the seventh post in this thread, that General Correspondence says "As stated, this is minimum ceilings at this IDIQ." Based on this, I'd guess the meaning to be "minimum guarantee" as the other dollar amounts mentioned are in excess of this. GC, some IDIQs come with a minimum guarantee that says you'll get at least that much business from the contract, or just a check. It ensures the contract wasn't a total waste of B&P resources. I don't believe that minimum guarantee acts a trigger for anything else, like CAS. But maybe it means something else. Maybe GC could provide a excerpt from the contract that puts the $10k into context.
  10. When you say NDA, do you mean a Non-Disclosure Agreement, or are you speaking of a teaming agreement? Or maybe something else? Assuming you mean a teaming agreement or something like it (since you mentioned "when pursuing government RFP" and "scope of work" vs the scope of information to protect), no, I would not use the NAICS code as anything beyond a *maybe* a reference to the RFP. NAICS codes are notoriously vague, overlapping and non-prescriptive - they are used primarily to create economic 'buckets' for reporting purposes, and of course become the basis for small business size determinations. They are NOT good (IMHO) at describing specific tasks, expectations or even boundaries of work to be performed. Worse still, if you were to use a specific NAICS code in a teaming agreement and the underlying procurement changed NAICS codes (this does happen), you may have voided your teaming agreement or at least caused it to become questionable. The only way I might use a NAICS code in a TA or subcontract might be to condition the agreement on the other company's continuing to qualify as a small business under NAICS code X...but even there, I'd rather use more direct language like "continuing to qualify as a small business in accordance with the requirements of the contract" or something like that. Bottom line: I would not do as you've proposed.
  11. This is a problem. What if I ask the wrong questions? What if the OP doesn't want to respond? What if the OPs answer causes more questions? The purpose of any forum is to provide "groupthink" - a range of answers, opinions, questions, suggestions. The smart OP gathers the information and considers it, understanding some of it may be biased, inapplicable or just plain wrong. Using the 'lost files in the storage unit' example...many good considerations came up after the initial couple of posts. Did that invalidate those earlier posts? Not necessarily. Collectively, they all seemed to help hone in on a course of action, even when some of the early posts jumped the gun. To throttle discourse in an attempt to eliminate less-than-perfect answers seems a fools errand at best, and a way to kill this site at worst. And in the long run, I'd argue that the very thing you seek, correct information, will be more distant than before. ...Just my two lurker cents.
  12. It would, it would just take a generation to get the full results. I believe the new proposal to conduct surveys after solicitations may also get to similar results with the existing workforce. If used effectively, I'd hope that such surveys would identify both best practices (top 10%) and worst practices (bottom 10%) and address them - maybe not with new regulations, but rather improved tools, training and sharing. At least at the beginning, it would help identify where the worst pain and best practices are, as identified by everyone involved. That's the hope anyway, time will tell.
  13. I manage the SAM registration for a large company and every so often I get a panicked email from an executive..."I just got this SAM email warning..." And I spend the next 15 minutes explaining how all's well and that yes, I am actually doing my job (that's the part that's most frustrating; it makes me look bad, like some escalation happened due to my lack of diligence) Is it a scam? Well, I dunno, if they do in fact make the renewal happen, maybe not. People (used to) pay to have someone else drive their car across some big bridges, right? Fear is the only impediment... I wonder though how/if the processing company reviews the actual Ts &Cs that are renewed - and if they advise the underlying company in any way regarding those Ts&Cs. Two other notes: - The new SAM affidavit template for indicating who's got authority to edit SAM entries has a check box to indicate that a third party may be given rights to do so. I'm not sure how many companies farm out this responsibility, I'm a bit surprised that anyone does. - Getting the spam emails is kind of nice in a way. It's a way I know that renewal is approaching - so they serve as nice little reminders.
  14. Agreed. One "good faith effort" is to create a portal, is it not? The subcontractor bids against others on pieces of the contract as they come up. If the subcontractor doesn't have the lowest qualified price, they aren't selected. The Prime enabled the sub in every way, providing a good faith effort; all the sub needed to do was to propose a better price. The clause has the feel that it was written by a prime. Like the Fox's security system for the Hen House.
  15. "Never confuse winning with delivering" A few observations on this (note, I'm being purposely vague here, I leave it to you, 76fj40, to research): You mentioned the SubK Plan in your first post - have you seen a SubK Plan were your firm is mentioned and committed? In my limited experience, the prime's commitment is to hit % subcontracting goals - while maintaining their right to choose how those goals are met (and with whom). The SubK Plan may provide a list of subcontractors and even indicate where TA's exist, but primarily to show that the Prime can be reasonably expected to deliver on their Plan - not as a binding commitment to the Government to subcontract business to those particular companies. I believe RetreadFed is suggesting recent rulings in VA where TAs were not considered contracts because they were "promises to make promises" or something like that...and thus generally not enforceable. Subcontracts are another story - but if you're subject to things like "at a reasonable price" or "as decided by the PM" or such, well, then they probably aren't much better and all you really have is a ticket to be considered...which may never result in any actual business. Yet - someone is doing the work. I'd talk to the Prime(s) and ask where it is going and why. I'd figure out how to be THAT guy (the one getting the business post-award) rather than the guy spending resources helping the prime win in the first place. And don't think that one has much of anything to do with the other. Its different decision makers, different care-abouts, different goals.
  16. Believe it or not, I love the idea in concept. It achieves your stated goals. It creates that "earned it" mentality you mention in the post above, where an employee will be a little more bought in to the company for having invested in the challenge of getting the job. It is well established that writing samples (typically in a shorter format) are an accepted, proven hiring tool. The concept has merit. You provided parameters that seemed to invite an application into the real world... a specific salary, a specific type of hiring company, etc. In fairness, I just think (in the spirit of a thought experiment) that an application of this approach in the real world would have some challenges to consider, and might not make it past the HR folks. Having conducted somewhat similar hiring, and having tried creative approaches when doing so, and having consistent resistance to such, maybe my spirit is just sullied. You didn't ask that though...you asked us to put ourselves in the shoes of an applicant, and I rather like the exercise as an applicant in the abstract. If it were tailored to my particular expertise I believe I would do very well, thanks in part to the aforementioned nuns. Sorry for ripping into it.
  17. Will do - Always good advice when the gedanken experiment takes an ad hominem turn. Have a good weekend!
  18. (realizing that Vern doesn't want to hear this...) If I'm one of the final 3 applicants and give a 6 hour/3000 word essay prior to being hired, there is a 2 in 3 chance that I just gave away valued work product for free, to a probable competitor (assuming I have a 1 in 3 chance of being hired from the exercise). Being that the exercise is to write to a 101 level essay, the facts therein may not be very proprietary. But the assembly and organization of it, and any insights, might be valuable to a company. Hiring is a very litigious area. As the hiring company asking this of applicants, I'd consider getting some kind of waiver from the applicant, and in exchange, I'd commit that their work would be destroyed if they were not chosen for the job. I'd have a contingency plan in case one applicant says "sorry, my time is too valuable - I can provide one hour, or samples..." and in doing so, I'd have to review all these steps against my goal: to hire the best applicant. Am I losing more than I am gaining? Funny thing, I like writing essays and would relish the exercise in my areas of knowledge. But if I were the hiring company, I would find other ways to be creative, enticing and low risk yet thorough in my search.
  19. Kind of reminds me of an episode of "The Office" where Dwight Schrute is training/evaluating Ryan, who wants to get into sales. Dwight takes the Ryan to his barn, straps Ryan into a chair and begins to grill him. At the end of the questioning, Dwight declares that to really sell, one must overcome fear. And as Dwight yells the word "fear" - Dwight's cousin jumps out of hiding, into Ryan's face in a threatening manner, wearing the word "fear" across his sweatshirt. Ryan gets up, shakes his head and walks out. I mean, yes, Dwight was right. His methods were just a bit unorthodox.
  20. I believe that in the real world, a "a large, highly reputable, and very successful corporation" will have some inkling of who's out there - by knowing who they've come up against. Such a company would have the luxury of hiring based on observed, real world results; results they seen work well for other companies. I also believe that such folks are hired for other aspects of the job, things like the ability to negotiate with management, to make compelling presentations, etc. To wit, such an exercise might in fact scare off the best-of-breed applicants. Remember the company is also selling to the candidate, and at this level the company profile becomes more and more important. And there is NO company that doesn't have a reasonable competitor alternative for such a job requirement - applicants will walk away from scenarios they feel aren't a good fit, even if the company is successful overall. The best of breed applicant might look at this and say "really, you're going to lock me in a room for 6 of my valuable hours to write you a 101 essay that you're going to possess BEFORE you offer me a job? Nope!" Instead, I think the savvy hiring team gets (close to) the assessments you seek through a series of coordinated interviews combined with market knowledge. The first interviewer asks a few questions to lead down the path of the essay topic. The first interviewer shares notes and the second drills down a little further. Etc. Maybe writing samples are requested (note - yes, they may have had help with their writing sample...but won't the successful new hire have help in their new position?) Might still be the same 6 hours but is more flexible and less likely to scare off the candidate. It also allows the company to remove candidates after the first interview or two, without the need to evaluate an entire essay. Having said all this, I think that such an exercise might be useful for existing employees to consider how/where to expand roles. For instance, a director has a team of 5 managers and they are looking to grow their existing their long-term support services business. The director uses Mr. Edwards' approach with the 5 managers to see who's a best fit for the new role AND to scoop up good ideas from the rest. Now to answer your questions: Do you think the challenge is reasonable? Overall, no, not for experienced, external candidates. Would you accept the challenge or walk away? I'd be really concerned about the kind of work environment I was getting into. Unless unemployed at the time, I'd probably walk away from the concept. It smacks too much of a company looking to get free work from me, or that has weird job requirements that I'm not able to imagine yet, or that likes to surprise the employees. If I'm a senior level applicant, I'm not too interested in the possibility of workplace/HR experiments, particularly while doing government related work. If you would accept, how well do you think you would do? On that particular topic, not well - it is not my background. On others, fairly well.
  21. Got it, agree. I recall coming out of the FAR Bootcamp thinking "Who knew that Sister Boniface's sentence diagraming would be the most useful skill in this course?" (BTW, great course, had fun and learned a lot. Get a nun to teach it and you'd really have something! ) The result, as you lay it out in the top of the same posting, also makes business sense. The gotcha is to get away from the notion that a cost evaluation must result in a single, fixed number. There's a strong temptation to distill a complex offer into a single evaluation data point, and that isn't always the right approach.
  22. I think we are assuming that these are %s that the CO has independently calculated. To me, it points to the idea that more offeror info/discussions/research should be conducted to break the tie and determine the most likely cost. I could be wrong about this, but I feel like these are simple %s applied to complex scenarios. To look to the future and say “there is exactly a 50/50 chance” between two outcomes in such a scenario seems either virtually impossible OR an admission that very little is known about the scenario. Are there real world contracting scenarios where a proposed cost may be A or B, and the chance of A or B is known to be an even 50%? I sense the writers of the FAR clause didn’t think such things existed. (Edit- using my own drawbridge example from above, then let’s assume a third offeror “Smith” has a drawbridge that’s open 50% of the time, thus creating the scenario you ask about here...in that case, if I’m the CO, I think I realize that the FAR doesn’t cover everything, it can’t. And I think I make the call that says “the tie goes to the runner” and I allow the Smith offer to be evaluated at the lower cost (with a higher ‘ding’ in the risk evaluation). I document the file as such, and if any other offeror also has a true 50/50 cost, I treat them the same. Having said that; I’d at least try to see if in fact the drawbridge is open EXACTLY 50% of the time, given the aging infrastructure and all that...) (a little more editing: I believe one of basic tenants of the FAR is that the Government is choosing. Choosing awardees, requirements, evaluation factors, etc. It is the job of the CO to choose in many situations. Often there just isn’t room for a “tie”; the Government can’t buy the same tank from two different companies. It has to choose one. I believe this clause is an instance of that, suggesting that the CO reasonably determine the most likely cost and use that as the basis for evaluation. It doesn’t leave room for a 50/50 because...it’s in the business of choosing. It instructs the CO to find the most likely cost; 50/50 is not following the instruction. Have I gone off the rails? It’s late.)
  23. I’m confused by this: the FAR citation I provided does say “most likely”, doesn’t it? Am I quoting an older FAR version? I agree with everything else you’ve said, including the slippery slope argument. I almost posted a longer version of my earlier post, which would have continued on...I would have taken the risk of the higher cost basis and shifted this into my risk evaluation. This is not to say that the Hoffman cost isn’t reasonable, or that any more math has to be done. Just that the Hoffman offer has a higher chance for a higher cost...and thus gets a “ding” (however that was defined in the RFP) in the risk evaluation. But in the cost evaluation section, they are both evaluated at $100m. I think FAR 15.404-1(d)(2)(i) instructs this. I also happen to believe this is a reasonable approach. While I understand probabilities, they also present us here with impossible numbers (for evaluation purposes) that is better addressed in a separate risk evaluation. To illustrate: let’s say we are evaluating Edwards’ and Hoffman’s ability to drive from their respective houses to mine. Both can do so in 100 minutes and both normally would do so. But both have a drawbridge that opens occasionally for 20 minutes. Thing is, Hoffman’s drawbridge opens twice as often as Edwards’. As an exercise I could get to 104 and 108 minutes as their time to get to me. But of course neither of these times would EVER be the actual times. I think it is more appropriate to say “both are likely to get here in 100 minutes. Both have a risk of a 20 minute delay. Hoffman’s risk of delay happens to be twice Edwards’.” Doesn’t that accurately describe the cost situation? I didn’t mention this as Don didn’t mention anything about how risk is considered in the solicitation. Nor am I a contracting officer...so I don’t have working familiarity with this. But if I were, I’d be reluctant to introduce manufactured numbers like $104m when I could factor the increased risk elsewhere. You mentioned that you’ve not seen a protest addressing combined probabilities used in cost evaluations...but why even go there (assuming there’s room in the evaluation factors to plug in general risk factors?) If this is a dufus question I won’t expect an answer. As a side note, years ago I almost did protest on a fairly similar instance; a talk with the CO shifted the thinking.
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