Matthew Fleharty

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds..." Too much consistency is a sign of stubbornness, a lack of learning/thinking, and/or a lack of adapting to changing environments.

Famous last words: "To this point it has worked well..."

In that case, why wouldn't a prospective offeror simply wait to ask questions until after your deadline passes so that they are the only ones with that information?

What do you mean by "will take and answer" and "an individual basis"?

See FAR 2.101:

Your search shouldn't be endless unless your contract is endless (which I doubt is the case). As someone new to this, I cannot overstress the importance of reading your contract(s).

This is a Contract Award Process question how exactly?

I find it interesting (and antiquated) that there is this separation between any type of contract financing and the word "incentive." Since cash flow is a vital part of a company's return on investment and cash flow is impacted by financing arrangements the two seem inseparable (to me). This incongruity is probably what drove policies like we saw here with PBPs.

I'm curious to hear the story behind why this became the Problem of the Day. Also, will this be a recurring thing?

PBPs don't serve as a cap that a contractor bills against gradually as they incur costs. They're binary - when the contractor completes the event, they receive payment equal to the amount in the payment schedule for that milestone; until then, they don't. See paragraph (a) of the clause you reference 252.232-7012 (emphasis added below): Assuming the following clause is also in your contract, see FAR 52.232-32( c )(1) (emphasis added below):

I don't think the OP is the government's contracting officer. See the following (emphasis added):

Stating "the contractor front loaded their costs" is a misnomer - you probably meant to say "the contractor front loaded their payments" (because if the contractor front loaded their costs, they likely wouldn't be trying to invoice for payments in excess of costs incurred). As such, it may be worth noting that the contractor does not unilaterally determine the PBP schedule - those milestones and their amounts are agreed to by the contractor and the government's contracting officer.

What if the contract was awarded prior to the passage of the 2017 NDAA? In case this turns into a law vs. regulation discussion, here's a previous topic on that issue:

To each their own I suppose, best of luck to you charles.

So instead of asking five questions in your original post and creating a lot of noise, why not simply ask: What was your original question? I counted five...is it the one that came first, last,...? EDIT: Clearly my use of the word "silly" got to you which wasn't my intent so my apologies for that. I'd edit it out of my original post, but then that would simply make your response look, well "silly"

What are you even trying to ask? Your previous sentence cites the two ways an offeror is notified of their lack of success: either by a required notice or by requesting notification. Assuming an prospective contractor wants to know whether she was unsuccessful, why wouldn't the contractor simply "request award status?" The premise of your line of questioning is silly.

This is not uncommon (emphasis added below): Take a moment (or two) and think...assuming single points of failure are bad, why wouldn't an agency be permitted or have an interest in eliminating/reducing them?

No one is going to be able to provide you adequate advice on whether or not FAR 6.302-3 applies without significantly more information/facts and your colleague’s rationale/argument. Why does an exception to competition that is in statute raise all kinds of flags for you? It isn’t like your colleague made this exception up. Just because you haven’t seen or done it before doesn’t make it wrong...

I don’t see why he would have as that applies to “orders placed under multi-agency contracts” (emphasis added below) Please re-read the first two sentences of the OP’s post and explain why you think we’re dealing with multi-agency contracts.

Just for fun, I looked up Tribute Contracting (DUNS: 079098386) in the System for Award Management and there was/is an exclusion covering the period of 08 Jan 2016 through 07 Jan 2019; however, the additional comments state the exclusion is effective within Government Printing Office (GPO) only. I don't know about others, but a reasonable Contracting Officer should do more due diligence when they see an active exclusion regardless of the exclusion's inapplicability to one's agency. Mission impossible or not, that is common sense.

For any reviews and/or clearances, assign any necessary member(s) from the clearance/review official's staff(s) to the source selection team from the beginning to provide concurrent advice and guidance. Completion of a review or receipt of business/contract clearance would, ideally, become a one day event where the clearance/review official receives a short, joint memo or brief from the assigned staff member(s) and the Contracting Officer that states the acquisition is good to go or details any remaining areas of disagreement for the official to adjudicate. The intent is to avoid the weeks or months long process of trading paperwork between the field and the staff.

Read the rules (which I now just broke...sort of):

Idea: Use as few evaluation factors as possible. Hypothesis: More evaluation factors likely results in more lengthy and/or complex proposals and the subsequent evaluation of those proposals.

I'm currently reading "The Golden Passport" by Duff McDonald which is a full fledged critique of Harvard Business School (HBS) and some of the thoughts that have come out of there, like the notion that shareholder value reigns supreme (I'm a regular reader of HBR so I'm trying to learn where my "blind spots" might be). It's a lengthy read, but a worthy one which argues fervently against commonly accepted material that permeates MBA programs (including yours apparently) since HBS is a "thought" leader when it comes to business schools. If you get your hands on it but don't want to read through all 600+ pages, Chapter 42 "The Murder of Managerialism" focuses on Michael Jensen [one of, if not the most prominent promoters of the premise] and shareholder value. Here's an excerpt: And this one seems to fit your MBA experience:

To further illustrate the timeliness of this topic, I reached the end of my Jan/Feb HBR magazine and stumbled upon the following article: https://hbr.org/2018/01/the-triumph-of-spin-over-substance It includes a few reading recommendations that those interested in this topic may enjoy.