apsofacto

The author of this report gives an excellent interview on EconTalk.

It appears GSA is doing this as a Schedule 70 BPA: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&tab=core&id=e0807fc8a69115f0e352f6f0c135697a Perhaps we will never need this training, as GSA will have procured this for us . . .

Thank you both for those references. One fixed-price technique in particular jumped out at me: the practice of fixed-pricing an "iteration" or "sprint". I'm aware of one disadvantage of T&M- that it incentivizes ineficiency because you are fixing the price for the contractor's time, or one man-hour. When you fix the price of an iteration, three team-weeks, don't these disadvantages still exist? Ji, is this why you state above that (emphasis added): The 'fixed price, fixed scheule, variable scope' concept seems to have more in common with T&M than what I normally think of as firm-fixed price. You are just fixing team-weeks rather than man-hours. Since you are not specifying outputs, you are requiring inputs and specifying a process- aiming in a general way for certain outputs but not tying yourself to the mast. Thanks again- I'll continue to poke through these materials . . .

Hello, ji, Can you enlighten me? I always have trouble describing the work prior to soliciting, other than some sort of 'we'll agree to agree later'-type statements. Am I over-emphasizing the learn-as-you-go characteristic the Agile nerds describe?

Academic question: If the contract did not even contain FAR 52.212-4(a), wouldn't any customer have the right to compel a contractor to re-perform? Or in this case return/replace the customer's lost property?

From what I have read, I cannot tell how "Agile" programming is prohibited by anything in our regulations, once you decide to do a T&M or CPFF contract.

I think market research should be accomplished jointly when possible, but no one will ever have the resources to actually do that. That notwithstanding, I don't think sending the Contractor your agencies Ts&Cs is market research. You are asking for the Contractor's Ts&Cs if you are doing market research, not the other way around.

I've only been at this for about 14 years (unlike many old hands around here), but unbalancing concerns I have had thus far have all been in the RFP environemnt involving large numbers of line items where the quantities will vary. The gremlin has almost always been unit of measure issues which were a result of a lack of clarity on our part. Just to attempt to answer the original question, I just graph the % variation from the IGCE and look for spikes and troughs. It's a place to start . . .

Defining requirements is a skill which requires practice, monitoring/feedback, and further practice. I'm happy to hear there is trial-by-error, that's how you learn! You may find the training is never good enough without practice. If COR functions are an ancillary duty, sufficient practice will never occur. Also, why do people pay for surveys which you know the answer to?

Occasionally, we procure consultants who in turn procure goods and services for my employer. These are things like insurance brokers, health care benefits consultants, energy consultants, etc. We find sometimes that these consultants don't in turn procure the way we do. I saw the posting of Latvian Connection, LLC B-410947: Mar 31, 2015 on WIFCON's home page today, which reinforces that these firms do not have carte blanche to practice business as usual when working on our behalf. We have been able to prevent this kind of thing though monitoring and inserting language in our agreements which require full and open competition, but I'm paranoid about missing something like this. Worried in particular about these consultants deliberately not obtaining quotes from firms they dislike, etc. Full disclosure: I work in local government now where we have no small business set-aside or Certificate of Competency regime, where the exact Latvian circumstances don't apply. I have also been out of the Federal side for a few year, so I apologize if my knowledge is a little stale. Question: Are there any other instances of procuring procurers which I may be missing? Thanks in advance for all of your help. My initial list is Energy Consultants Reverse Auctioneers (to an extent) Insurance Brokers

I will now think of the animal husbandry interpretation when we procure consulting services for Noise and Vibration analyses. Thank you, Vern.

Hi, NoDegree, If you are purchasing 20 staplers, I hope that acquisition plan is very short. That may have been the type of simplified acquisition your HCA was thinking of. If you are purchasing a 250K study, then you are defninitely on to something. But to reference another Vernism, if you are an 1102, you should never purchase staplers. The clerk should. You should be writing awesome acquisition plans. Precise and complicated plans . . .

Hi, Deaner, The circumstances sound unusual, but my guess is that by awarding the PO, the CO overrules the techncial panel and thereby declares them acceptable. By accepting the PO (eigher by signing or beginning work) the contractor has to perform in accordance with it. If they default, then you terminate them. Sounds like that was a rough one . . . glad it is behind you.

It sounds like you accidentally snookered them into accepting your offer to perform the work and eat the cost of the parts. Follow-up question: How much money we talkin about *in parts*? (Not the grand total)

Does not sound like a technical acceptability issue. Was this a purchase order? Was the quote incorporated by reference?

Sounds like it's not neutral though. There is past performance information, and you know that the resources used those surveys will be used under your contract. Is there anything besides neutral or excellent they can rate them as which makes some sense? Still, these ratings are guides to decision-making, not gospel. It's the strengths and weaknesses themselves which are most important . . .

Formerfed has a point. Getting the requisitions into GSA by a certain date will be challenging. Also, this will also magnify the damage a bad Contracting Officer can do, right? These folks will have to be *good*. CO talent evalaution is hard, and the Feds have to get it right (they cannot easily get rid of the bad ones). Retaining good COs in GSA may also be hard. Splintering these purchases around the agencies and the general CO workforce yields a predictable and managable level of dysfunction, some good puchases, some bad. Consolidating into one office will raise the variance in both directions- both good and bad. Does not make it a bad idea. I'm focusing on the negative here because they are harder to see than the positives.

This passage Joel Hoffman highlighted in a previous discussion remains: Not a fan. The Vernian solution described here is superior to the fixed-price technical competition. My misgivings about the Brooks procedures are minor- the problem which may be solved is major. My MATOC cage-match idea is more of a contract administration idea than a source selection idea anyway.

Hello, metteec, Thanks for that additional information about the FSSIs- I was not aware of the tiered discounts. My understanding of SS aligns more with what johnmjohnson and odessa describe above ("Discounts come with acutal work"; "consortium purchasing"). Is there anything about the FSSIs which assist one agency to jointly purchase with another? If all requisitions go to some holding tank at GSA for 30/60/90 days where they are consolidated and purchased together at one time, then that would be SS as I understand it. What you describe is very important- seems to be mostly along the lines of reducing transaction costs, which is a huge issue in itself. It's praiseworthy these vehicles tackle that problem. Just a different issue from SS I think. . .

My understanding may be limited, but is this really Strategic Sourcing? I thought someone would have to consolidate a bunch of disparate requirements, standardize some specs perhaps, gather them all into one larger order and procure them at once. Looks like GSA has established another round of vehicles to order off of. That is what we had before, except fewer of them, and there seems to be more care taken in negotiating the prices. That is something to be proud of, (a movement away from the "hunting license" model) but not my understanding of what SS was. I've been out of the Federal game a while, but if I'm off track I may not be the only one. Just curious what you all thought.

I submit the removal of FAR 19.6. It has baited small businesses into arguing in public that they are not responsible firms. It's gotta go.

Hi, Joel! You think that spot checks are OK and I agree with you. The oversight regime thinks that spot checks are not OK. They could very well be correct- I just don't understand why because they do spot-checks themselves. I don't know their business well enough to criticize too strongly, I just never understood this discrepancy. (However, I part ways with you a little on self-certification. Unwise or not, we rely on the information they provide in their reps and certs like size status.)

I'm out on limb here, but I have never understood this thought process from auditors/IGs. They don't audit all Buy America contracts, just 50 because that is a decent sample. They learn the agency does not monitor roughly half of them (23/50). Should they infer that the agency monitors a little more than half of all Buy America contracts? Isn't more than half a decent sample? Why the 'minimum sample size for me but not for thee' thought process? I don't know why 100% monitoring is always the standard when the IG does not audit 100% of the contracts. Apologies- more of an auditing question than a Buy America question, but I think that issue may be behind the defferences between Don's posting and Vern's response.

Why turn perfectly respectable 1105s into 1102s? Has the work they perform drastically changed? Sorry about getting off-topic . . .

Hello, metteec, I think that may work for one procurement, but be ineffective over the course of many procurements.