LucyQ

These, of course, are not the only issues. They have had a consultant before and they basically said everything is wrong lol. I now have to come in and implement changes to fix everything. This is just one of my thousand other To-Do's and was hoping someone here had experience within their organization since my experience is limited to two options that aren't viable in this situation. You are correct, that spending money in this would be a long term solution, but knowing about it now will help me know choose my battles and set up my pitches in the next 12 months. If I have enough successes I'm more likely to get a budget to streamline processes and get my staff's attention elsewhere. Thanks all.

Apologies, I said approved supplier to mean a supplier that had been vetted and was able to meet the requirements. They usually upload Reps and Certs, DDTC Regs, Small Business Certs, stuff like that on there. They are then an "approved supplier". I think the naming probably came from the mix of ISO and CPSR requirements along the way. As far as excluded parties, there are outside companies that do this for you so you don't have to physically go and look up every vendor. That's part of the sign up process. I'd like to know if anyone knows of these types of softwares or services that can be used. For example I know of Ariba, but not any other supplier management softwares that could be acceptable for Supplier Management under a CPSR. Like I said before, the system that was built in-house at a previous company was enough but I don't have other experience outside of Ariba. Perhaps a better questions would be, how do you guys manage your suppliers in CPSR compliant procurement systems?

Hello, Does anyone have recommendations on software or purchasable solutions for the following? I'm essentially getting a department ready for a CPSR and they have nothing yet. I've done this with a company before but we did our excluded parties searches by hand and created our own approved supplier list. But given that this new company doesn't have the resources of the old one, a purchased options seems better. 1) Approved Supplier List (we use Unanet as our ERP) 2) Excluded parties searches 3) Financial Capability (DNB) Thanks!

I'm the only contracts person in my company. We do lots of SBIRS that lead to long engineering services contracts to implement the technology in other ways (How the company got started). We've ventured into repair and overhaul contracts (biggest one is 10 year IDIQ) and into supplying landing gear parts (hopefully another 10 year IDIQ). I want to be marketable when I leave this company, I've been here 11 years (started as an Accounting Clerk). I'm often complimented on all of those skills but you can't exactly put compliments on a resume.

Yeah, I'm asking around in many places but I always respect the people around here so I thought I'd ask here too. Also, American Graduate University isn't AACSB accredited.

No, I work for a contractor. The most they'd be willing to pay is 5k a year and that's with a promise to stay for 3 years but I know I'll be moving before then so my employer isn't an option. I suppose another question would be what type of Master degrees do people have here? Did they find them useful in their career? and would they do it again for today's prices?

Hello all... I have a BS in Business from Washington State and I'm thinking about masters degrees. It seems that MBA programs are geared towards people doing Finance or Consulting and a JD might teach me what I want to learn but it is too costly given that I have no intention of being an attorney. My goals are to be a better Contracts professional and I believe business law, contracts, and legal research classes would do that. I've been looking into an MS in Legal Studies like the ones available at USC, Purdue, or Pepperdine. Of course, all law school graduates laugh at these degrees but in theory it seems that a Contracts professional might be able to make use of these classes. Does anyone have any experience with these and what value they can provide? I don't want to take student loan debt for a degree that won't help me get anywhere. I am also worried that while the degree might give me useful information and make me a better professional the industry will laugh at this degree and will essentially add nothing other than personal enrichment. I can google for personal enrichment, no need to take on debt. I believe an MBA or a JD look good as I try to go forward in my career (level: Manager +) however it seems contracts is right in the middle of the of those two. ... Forgot to mention I have an Advanced Contract Management Certificate from San Diego State and a CFCM certification.

No, we didn't agree on price. Perhaps they knew it might take some time to finish negotiations and wanted to secure something else. I just wanted to know a reason for a chance at rebuttal. Thanks!

Touchè lol

We have an IDIQ with a set of NSNs. They wanted to add more NSNs and they had us submit a quote. After negotiation they said the price was too high and will not award. Is there anything we can do about it? I'm assuming they found the price to not be fair and reasonable but can we ask the exact decision why they won't award. If we don't agree with that decision, is there any way we can protest somewhere? This is under 10M and I guess it would have been a scope change because they would have added NSNs to the contract where they could then issue DO's under.

This was a very fun read, thank you for that. How did you know about this? Is it using the search option or did you remember having read it? I ask because I'd like to add more tools to my tool belt and reading these as soon as they come out might give me an extra reference for later. If you searched for it, what were your search terms? If you remembered it, kudos and thank you again.

Yes, I feel this is the correct way to handle things but it's not my call to change our approach on proposals. I suppose I was hoping for a far off argument somewhere.

This has happened to us before - that is our only evidence. They have an IDIQ contract saying it will include many requirements and they only ever plan to contract out a few of those requirements. Yes, I know they're allowed to have a ceiling but by adding scope that will never come and knowing that price is a portion of the factor, this will make (at least my Boss) have to lower her price to offer a price discount based on all this work that won't come.

My Boss recently came to me to research a topic that she has found when we're putting in several solicitations. The question is whether the scope of a RFP simply include the Government's requirement" (FAR 15.203 (a) (1)) or if it must be exactly for the government requirement. Proposal A REQUIREMENTS: 1,2,3,4 Proposal A became Contract A and was awarded for Requirements 1-4. We were part of a losing team on that proposal. A big part of that proposal was Requirement 4 which highly impacted price and promised to be the entirety of Aircraft X's widgets. Proposal B (Authority 15.101-1) REQUIREMENTS: 4,5,6,7 A new proposal comes out with a scope including the highly advertised scope requirements which we know for a fact is in Contract A. Now, this has happened to us before, the government overestimates their scope and the price that we give them as to include discounts for this huge requirement that they could have but we know for a fact will never actually be given under this contract because they already have another vehicle. We brought this up to the CO and their response was, " [Requirement 4] has been identified so that offerors understand that there is a difference in the requirement associated with these parts. For these items, requirements for procurement on [Contract B] will come from one of two avenues, 1) [Contract A]'s contractor will have the option to purchase these items through [Contract B] at their discretion, and 2) the Govt needs to maintain the ability to procure additional assets to support pipeline shortages as well as support FMS / OS requirements that cannot be fulfilled on [Contract A]." Again, my question is, how is this fair? We know that they won't actually be buying these parts off of this contract however they are including this scope requirement which will inherently lower price. I don't see this being strictly prohibited in the FAR so I suppose it's discretionary but FAR 1.102 (b) (3) requires that the system be fair - How is creating fake competition fair? Anyone's thoughts on either scope or "fairness" would be appreciated. Thank you!

Darn you're right. We are the prime. I meant, "if we're looking for our contract".

It's possible, but I promise not on purpose. The passage I quoted is within an IDIQ contract in Section H. The authority of them to put it there is something I guessed at but feel free to correct me.

We are the prime. We are looking to finance our military depot which is our subcontractor due to a Partnership Agreement. Unfortunately, our subcontractor is technically government so we have to pay everything upfront because of federal law. Still, our CO doesn't want to allow costs for work that hasn't been completed and which the ACO can't issue a CAR to. Which puts a this small business in a very difficult position.

As a slight defense - There is a law that requires that we 100% pre-pay military depots for their work. We received a small business set aside, FAR based contract, which would require us to to use a USC Title 10 agreement with the military depot. The initial costs could end up being a significant portion of our annual revenue AND the CO still doesn't want to allow costs that we only have to pay because of a federal law. One must get creative.

Can "Material" as defined by FAR 52.245-1 be actual money? Money is property which can be expended. “Material” means property that may be consumed or expended during the performance of a contract, component parts of a higher assembly, or items that lose their individual identity through incorporation into an end item. Material does not include equipment, special tooling, special test equipment or real property. If we're looking for our contract to give us money without using progress payments can it not be done as GFM? I found evidence of something similar being done on a Hill AFB contract http://www.hill.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120119-037.pdf. Under Section H they included "CONTRACTOR UTILIZATION OF PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERING AS GOVERNMENT-FURNISHED SUPPLIES/SERVICES (April 2010)" (Pg 7-8) which states that, "When proposals for TOs include utilization of public partner-provided resources, a copy of the public partner’s price and availability (P&A) shall be provided in the TO proposal. The Government will review the agreement, and if approved, will fund the DoD source directly as a Government-Furnished Supply or Service (GFS/S). Upon award, the implementation agreement between the public partner and the DESP III prime contractor will be incorporated into the TO as the basis for which the Government will provide the GFS/S. However, the dollars for resources provided by a public partner shall be separately identified within the agreement and will be added to the DESP III prime contractor’s proposed price as part of the price evaluation process for the specific TO." Now, I tried to look up Government Furnished Supply or Service (GFS/S) because I had never heard of it and I honestly couldn't find much. So I assumed since it was in Section H that it was Hill's interpretation of a GFM.

I forgot to mention we do have implementation agreements which serve as BPAs and then we will individually issue purchase orders for work. The PA states that it will not become a subcontract until there is an IA attached. Ultimately I am doing this because there is already a contract vehicle in place and we're looking for a progress payment to get the work going. This is a small business set aside, the depot is asking for 100% pre-payment, we came to an agreement that the depot work with 1.5 yr POPs would be split into sections so our pre-payments are smaller, THEN the CO said they won't issue progress payments for the depot work even if we float the money until each smaller section is completed, and they also said we can't split the work into smaller sections to our subcontractor. Obviously other methods would have been cleaner but that's not my job, I'm suppose to make this happen with what we currently have. What we currently have is a Progress Payment clause that says I'm allowed to bill for amounts payable to subcontractors for completed work. It did, however, occur to me that payments to the Depot are made out to the US Treasury not directly to the Subcontractor. I will not be pointing that out to the CO but I'll have to prepare an answer in case they ask. If anyone knows where to start looking, help would be appreciated. Thank you all!

FAR 44.101 Defines Subcontractor as , "any supplier, distributor, vendor, or firm that furnishes supplies or services to or for a prime contractor or another subcontractor ". 10 USC § 2474 (b) allows Depots to enter into Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) and further says that they may provide, " (A) For employees of the Center [...] (under contract, subcontract, or otherwise) work related to the core competencies of the Center, including any depot-level maintenance and repair work that involves one or more core competencies of the Center". Now, Title 10 allows the depot to enter into subcontract however the definition of "subcontractor" under FAR doesn't include, "an entity who has entered into an agreement to provide supplies and services under a prime contract". Can my depot be considered a subcontractor because they are allowed to subcontract EVEN THOUGH they are not a supplier, distributor, vendor or firm? Or can I simply argue that a since "supplier" isn't defined it must simply be is any entity who can provide supplies or services? I know this seems pretty basic and that there are established processes for PPP agreements, however I'm stuck to arguing this path.

There's no addiction here. I think you're trying to comment on the fact that I identify with one of the labels. Even if it's based on junk science that would mean that it works much like a horoscope. The people who identify with the labels do so because they find truth in the distinctions and their descriptions rather than a fervent belief that the stars dictate something about your personality. I identify with both INTP and at times INTJ which doesn't mean that I approve of their science methods more than the unique ways they can describe something about myself. I could also say I identify with Spock as a half human half vulcan or The Green Lantern Corps for their ability to harness the energy of willpower. Would I change my personality or accept a suggestion based solely on the "INTP" label rather than my personal situation? No. Do I find suspect that a 150 question test can have hidden insight into myself? Yes. Do I think people can be categorized into only 16 categories? No. Is this framework a good place to start when you're in your early 20s and starting to get to know yourself? Yes, I believe its a decent place to start. Supplemented with the ability to google and find the flaws with the labels, adding a healthy dose of philosophy, ethics, and self reflection, it's a decent place. More importantly, the INTP label isnt the point of my post at all. My broader questions were How do people build and craft careers? Is it happenstance or carefully calculated steps? Given that I identify with the label in the manner described, is there any advice one can offer on career building/crafting?

Progress payments clause 52.232-16 says, "payment office will make progress payments". There are exceptions when progress payments arent due but none of them are relevant in my case. If the government hasn't issued a progress payment after it's due date for reasons not valid under the clause, what would be the recourse? I know progress payments are finance payments which don't get interest but what does "will" mean in this case? If they don't perform as directed in FAR do we then go to the disputes clause? My personal opinion is that yes, we would go to the disputes clause because 52.232-16 is in our contract so we have, "as a matter of right" a claim to payment which has not been met.... but I've never seen this before so that's just my personal opinion. Any thoughts?

As a small business prime, we tend to just tell them it's for a proposal or give them the FARs in our contract and ask them to quote with an email which includes our SOW. Once they send the quotes then I do a PA and we go through the contract FAR clauses to see which belong in there and if they have to provide any other information (like certified pricing). "Solid" really depends on the price and type. Non commercial over 700k is where you start asking for things in the DFAR adequacy checklist. I just did a proposal for eng svcs for Boeing which basically had their own version of that checklist. If you're looking for somewhere to help guide you then you go to a proposal in which your company was a sub or you build it off the adequacy checklist. (Companies mark them proprietary so I doubt you'll get a link with one)

My boss is the one that deals with GSA and she's not back from vacation yet. Thank you!!!! Now I gotta learn how GSA works so it doesn't happen again.