Deaner

It looks like Kickstarters does follow the reach funding goal then get paid model. Below is from there website.

Yes it is, every word of every line... and in some cases of every page.

Crowdfunding isn’t all that new, but it didn’t really get big until recently. I’d bet there isn’t anything specific that addresses the use of government credit cards for Crowdfunding projects. The way crowdfunding normally works is when the project meets the funding goal, all the backers will have their credit cards charged, and then the project starts. So in your scenario, the project is funded, the GCPC is charged and then work begins. Would you consider that an authorized advanced payment?

My thought process was 2 fold. What if you needed 100 days of phase in/out services, could you use the clause twice? And could you use it on the last day of the contracts POP to have the incumbent contractor start the phase in/out services for 90 days? I did error in thinking the clause extended the contract for 90 days, but after reading the clause again I don’t think that anymore. I think the way the clause is intended to operate is you use it for the last 90 days (or however long) of the incumbent contractors contract to start the phase in/out services with the successor contractor. Sorry IAMBATMAN, I'm not trying to hijack your thread.

Can you use the continuity of services clause more than once? If I extend the contract with this clause, then would the contract now expire at the end of the 90 day extension? While not an option, It doesn’t say you can’t use it more than once like 52.217-8 does.

Honestly I wouldn’t worry about that. There are lots of people I’ve met that have 10 years of contracting experience, but what they really have is 1 year of experience 10 times over. It’s not necessarily a good thing if you’re looking to expand your knowledge and try new things, but if your only concern is your experience level being behind your future peers, that, in itself, would not be a reason for me to leave the army with only 5 years until retirement. You’ll learn and get up to speed fairly fast whether Government or contractor, regardless if it’s now or in 5 years.

Money, schedule delays, nothing. It depends. Sometimes contractors will ask for the Government to delay issuing a NTP for various reasons, and sometimes the Government might delay issuing a NTP for various reasons. Anything else you might want to elaborate on?

Yes Mt. Hood is very nice. A little cloudy today but I can see if from my office window. I hiked to the summit last year. Going to do Mt. St. Helens later this year. Full page photo.pdf

If you're talking about Individual Subcontract Report (ISR) and Summary Subcontract Report (SSR), there are user guides and webinars here that may or may not answer your question. http://www.esrs.gov/ I'm not up to speed on anything that changed in Jan 2017, I'd have to research it.

Vern, Thank you for the very detailed response. I appreciate you taking your time to provide it. I agree with that, but when you have to dig through the whining or smart ass comments, well, for me at least, it will make me think twice before participating in a discussion on a website. I'll turn to other places for discussions. If I want to listen to those types of things I can just home to it. I appreciate everyone's input on this topic. I have nothing further to discuss on this matter at this time.

I don’t exactly know how to respond to Joel’s and Gordon’s comments without just pissing them off. They don’t add any value to me or anyone else. This theme I see of the senior guys here complain that people don’t think or ask the right questions or just do what has been done previously, and it's a problem. I guess my new question is why do you think 1102’s knowledge of these types of things have gone downhill? Did you senior guys create that problem? I can find a way to get past my problem, but it still doesn’t answer my question. Sure I can move forward, but if I don’t understand the answer to my question, even though I found a way to move forward, I still have the question. I have some good responses in this thread, but I also got a response that obviously was from someone who got butt-hurt because they think I had gotten a response that should have answered my questions, and that person responded like a child by editing/deleting their response.

Probably, but I still don't know that I'm ready to give up the ability to hold discussions if I want to. I don't know if I've drawn that conclusion or not yet. I was going to post a follow up question for why responsibility-type factors are used when using LPTA with a SB set-aside, but I wanted to ponder the idea a little longer first. My initial thought was if it's not that uncommon to do, why is it done? technical acceptability and responsibility can be based on the same thing was my first answer to myself, but I don't have concrete answer to your question just yet.

I kind of want to reserve the right to hold discussions. I honestly don't have much confidence trying this with the office I'm working with on these upcoming requirements. The last time we solicited using trade-offs with this office the technical evaluation I received back looked like it was done with my kid's Brick Red Crayola, and the consensus ratings were a struggle where I ended up having to just make the final decision more or less by myself as the SSA. None Taken and you make a good point. The construction requirements range from new buildings, renovations of existing buildings constructed in the 20's with no as-builts. Required to achieve two green globes or silver Leed, some involve demo. They're all different, I don't want to get into too much detail as I think it's getting away from the general question I intended to ask. I think at the end of the day my question was, is it common to use responsibility type evaluation factors, which Napolik points out, is not uncommon.

If you're in a bind, ok round that corner, but the article says "didn’t want to spend time learning how to delete it" IMO that's a piss poor excuse.

We do that too. The regs don't always refer to self perform any more tho, they now mention "similarly situated" which is more or less the same thing telling us in a different way 15%.

Maybe the better question is, why use LPTA instead of sealed bidding in an LPTA environment set-aside for small businesses? Off the top of my head, i want to hold discussions.

Please don't hold back. I'm a grown man and can take any butt kicking you have to dish out. I understand i could use bids, trade-offs, creative eval factors, etc.But that's not what i'm trying to get at. experience, we're talking about 7-15 mil project, which probably equates to 3-7 projects in a lifetime. Idea is experience might be 10 years, which is 3 or so projects from start to completion.

I had a brainstorming function the other day where we discussed what evaluation factors we would want to use in a few construction requirements. The usual evaluation factors that seem to be universally used came up such as Résumés, Experience, Past Performance, Bonding etc. The RFP will be set-aside for small businesses and the evaluation method is going to be LPTA. What’s noticeable about the evaluation factors we came up with is that all but one of them could be tied to one of the general standards of responsibility at 9.104-1, which would require the referral of any lowest priced offeror rated technically unacceptable to the SBA for a certificate of competency. I don’t take issue referring matters to the SBA, but at the same time I also don’t really like the idea the SBA gets the final say or force me to go through a different process if I disagree. I’m not really looking to solve any problem but more out of curiosity. Whether actually applied or thought up off the top of your head, what are others using for evaluation factors for LPTA (construction or other) solicitations set-aside for small businesses? I did briefly look at a few solicitations posted to FBO and it makes me believe evaluation factors that amount to matters of responsibility are widely used.

It looks like the guy amended his FBO posting to state "Cancellation of Non-Requirement"

Not necessarily, and you can go over SAT and stay in part 13 in certain circumstances. I would generally agree if you're using FSS or SAP you'd use quotes. when in part 15 you'd use proposals, but see 13.003(g) "(1) The simplified acquisition threshold for other than commercial items, use any appropriate combination of the procedures in Parts 13, 14, 15, 35, or 36, including the use of Standard Form 1442, Solicitation, Offer, and Award (Construction, Alteration, or Repair), for construction contracts (see 36.701(a)); or (2) $7 million ($13 million for acquisitions as described in 13.500(c)), for commercial items, use any appropriate combination of the procedures in Parts 12, 13, 14, and 15 (see paragraph (d) of this section)." So it looks like you can use RFQ's or RFP's when using simplified acquisition procedures.

Unless the quote has something specific in it or was already accepted (which it does not sound like), I do not see why they could not reject an award. I've seen primes "bid shop" after they get awards and have their subs back out and not want to do business with the prime. I don't have all the details or know what was included in the quote, but from a high level view, on the surface, it does not appear to be improper.

That is sort of what is happening in my office. We starting having contractors submit a list of self-performed tasks with expected dollar values, and subcontracted tasks that exceed 5% of the contract value. While this tells us how the contractor intends on complying with subcontract limitations, I think it is very rarely monitored. I do not know if it is entirely unique, more of an alteration of 44.201-1.

I think it's $10 mil now. Is there a place to find where and when the limit has been increased? Interested in knowing how it increased so much in 10 years.

I do agree with that statement, but to have some type of EDI with a contractor (who has completed a NACI) for the purpose of downloading .jpg photos isn’t all that high of a risk in my opinion. I think I steered us off topic in this thread… o well. Perhaps I’ll start a new discussion.

I've done something similar with photo's to verify before and after conditions. It did work well, but the one thing that I didn't consider was my agency's email restricts receiving emails with attachments that exceed 5mbs. Of course I could have received 50 separate emails, but we ended up getting discs mailed to us as the number of pictures in my particular case totaled ~250mbs per month. Doesn't sound like that big of deal right, except the notebooks my agency uses don't have disc drives, so the contractor then setup a cloud service so we could download the pictures, nope agency restricts file sharing websites. Work order to make an exception to file sharing websites on one computer and to get an external disc drive went no where with our IT office. Then we started getting flash drives mailed to us. Plugged that in landed me in remedial training as flash drives are not authorized to use on our network. Ended up getting a couple hundred pictures printed and mailed to me for about a year. Seemed like a hassle to solve such a small problem. Maybe I should have used a personal server...