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apsofacto

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Posts posted by apsofacto

  1. Hi, Vern,

    The Brooks Act approach works for engineering, and can work for IT. However, I have learned that the process has a few warts- primarily the virtual tie described in post #10. Then the evaluation process devolves into almost ridiculous parsing of the qualifications: who has the most years' experience, the most exquisitiely relelvant past performance, etc. (I edited post #14 to correct a typo on this subject- hopefully it is more clear now)

    Another problem is that it allows the process to become more politicized due to the large amount of discretion the Subject Matter Experts have in source selection. They often have friends in the business and the IT field is pretty tribal (e.g. "SAP BAD! Oracle GOOD!"). User groups do this too, should not pick on SMEs exclusively.

    If you have a marketplace with a contractor who is clearly superior to the others (even to our Subject Matter Experts) and an IT workforce of Vulcans who can evaluate qualifications in a manner free of animal spirits, then this process is perfect. Some CO's have this, and I think you are right that the CO should have the option to do this is he wants to- no process is perfect and options are a good thing.

    What are everyone's thoughts about the humble T&M MATOC? You can learn as you go through the project, have blueprinting/design competitions between vendors, quit ordering from vendors whose performance slides during the term, and who knows what else. I have done many Brooks Act-type procurements, but no IT projects in this fashion. It seems promising so I am due for a heavy dose of T&M MATOC horror stories, likely beginning with post #17 . . .

  2. I always caution my evaluators that they cannot 'un-know' something that they know, and that they should pipe up and tell the group if they have that information close at hand. I'm a little suspicious of any policy (such as redacting the company name) which makes our evaluators know less about what they are reading, rather than more.

    Upon reading this thread, I will also emphasize point 1. above, which I have not been doing as explicitly as I should . . .

  3. Putting IT on the Brooks Act list makes some sense, if we admit that the safety-oriented justification for that list (and that legislation) is bunk. My frustration with Brooks Act procurements is that the technical evaluations become a little ridiculous because you can no longer say that one company is as good as another- you must find ever more fine discriminators between the two companies. PM has two more years of experience, or another certification, the company's past performance is ever so slightly more relevant for some reason. None of it means a higher likelihood of successful performance, but you need *something*.

    I'd love a mix between the two, some sort of option to revert to considering price in the event of a technical tie.

    Update 7/17/14: Changed "ever more find discriminators" to "ever more fine discriminators".

  4. Odessa's procurement sounds like a professional services qualifications-based process. I deal with those often and struggle with the lack of price competition.

    Vern's comments remind me of the sometimes expressed hope that the United States will have airport security which is as good as the Israelis. The Israelis have *one* airport, and the only allow the very best in the business to work security there. This is why they appear to be absolute security ninjas, while our airport security seems fairly pedestrian.

    Can you imagine how good the contracting shop would be if there was only one medium sized agency in the Federal goverment? This shop could be an amazing crew of highly paid, highly trained practitioners with the best tools available. The FAR would not be the size that it is today.

    This is a dream, though. Vern is absolutely correct that an elite workforce fixes almost everything, but this solution is *not scalable*. I'm part of the problem, of course. I'm not very well trained (though I'm certainly curious!). My background was not in this field, and I don't really have many good tools at my disposal. I'm a decent, journeyman-level practitioner who has to look things up and ask a few dumb questions, and I am legion. There are not enough Verns, formerfeds, etc. to go around.

    Regulations are scalable. Prescriptions are scalable. Excellent people are not. Barring some magical moneyball-type talent evaluation tool for COs, or barring scaling back the Federal Government to some managable level (i.e. dissolving the SBA, Dept. of Energy, and a host of other agencies), these problems will persist. There is no innovation, there is no hope. There are only tradeoffs using the resources available, and whatever incremental improvement which can be gained through the hard work of personal improvement.

    Sorry to be kind of a downer.

  5. Is it possible configurethe database to delete all information older than three years? I know we are supposed to consider the currency of past performance information, and this would be in concert with that. But more importantly it should reduce the stakes of a negative past performance rating for the offeror- hopefully reducing the number of challenges. Google never forgets, but CPARS vertainly could.

    I've sent out this trial balloon in a few different places, but no one has really shot at it, so it's hard to tell if this is a good idea. I bet a platinum WIFCON member has some ammunition handy.

    (A second thought: Sometimes when you and your Contractor sue each other, you settle and agree to not say nasty things about one another. Don't think this accounts for much of the data problems, but it is bound to come up occasionally.)

  6. Requirements doesn't seem appropriate- you have a minimum order chambered and ready to go, so why would you imply that this is the only vendor you can buy these systems from?

    If there is certainty you need four systems, you have the opportunity to be the first person in the office to utilize FAR 16.502. You said subject to need, though . . .

    I would respond to the queries in the following manner: " IDIQ : Risky! :: FFP + Options : Safe and comforting!" Then ask to be excused due to a medical condition.

  7. Hi, Boof.

    I'm researching this myself- the first step seems to be that you just acknowledge that you will never be able define your requirement sufficiently in advance, and are therefore paying your Contractor by the hour (or on a cost reimbursible basis). I don't understand why the normal procurement process can't accomodate this- it seems very simple. There is probably an art to packaging the work via task order that I'm not fully appreciating, but again, nothing that the current processes cannot accomodate.

    There are also some claimed efficiencies in consolidating the deliverables (e.g. annotating source code sufficiently enough to eliminate reports) that I don't claim to understand.

  8. I'm not addressing the legality of anything here, just floating a trail ballon. The cost realism analysis seems like a thin reed which is required to support a whole lot of weight.

    • They require a lot of knowledge from the Project Management side as to exactly how the Contractor will perform the work;
    • They are very subjective; and
    • Are therefore susceptible to pressure from within and without the contracting office; and
    • They are performed for requirements which, by their nature, are difficult to get a handle on (hence the CPFF contract type).

    I'm sure there are many good cost realism analyses floating around, just worrying they are outnumbered by the bad ones. *In particular* Steward's are probably quite good since he has a track record of avoiding overruns, but the tool *in general* doesn't fill me with confidence about mitigating the moral hazard issues Vern raises.

    Also, sorry for the premature posting- still getting used to the forum. Thanks!

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