REA'n Maker

Wow. That is literally 180 degrees from the doom-and-gloom of the 1990's whereby they were worried 1102s would literally die out because there were so many old fogies in those job series. I left the federal workforce in 1999 and returned last year. As an added bonus, they have made me start from zero and work my way through the entire curriculum required for Level III. Some observations: Training isn't near what it used to be. Multiple weeks of in-class training from an experienced AFIT practitioner is now a 10-day slideshow on a crappy web platform provided by a contractor who isn't even familiar with the material, with content that was scraped from DAU which teaches civilians the DFARS down to the PGI level. Seriously. Leadership is made up of those who really don't understand contracting. I have spent more time explaining my agency's own rules to my leadership than they have provided anything resembling guidance. Most of them stopped learning or even being somewhat curious years ago. The good, smart, ambitious 12's & 13's are not rewarded or appreciated, and in fact are seen as a threat; 'CBD' doesn't mean what it used to. 😁

Now THAT's what I call some serious histrionic. Yikes. lol

This topic has been going on so long the original clause under discussion was replaced in September with one of the most significant re-writes I've ever seen. But as a contractor, my issue was that a service contract is constantly in flux simply because of that one big annoyance in contracting: people. They come and go, meaning the prime/sub workshare changes from month to month. So the best you can do is manage it over the long-term. Simply picking a point in time to evaluate the workshare is the definition of arbitrary and could certainly be viewed as capricious in certain circumstances.

Cost impacts won't be known until after the contracts are modified. My Department is requiring all service contracts be modified immediately, and I suspect that others will as well. When I said "not end well" I was referring to cost impacts (and yes, the mods are supposed to be bilateral), not dire mortal consequences that will doom us all to eternal oblivion. As Constricting Officer points out, those of us who have awarded A&E contracts outside the major cities are fully expecting some level of impact on the workforce. Saying "they don't have to accept it" ignores the simple fact that doing so places the requirement at risk for the government. Cutting off your nose to spite your face sorta thing.

So if this impacts a contractor's workforce to the point they can't perform the contract they signed before the mandate, I T4D them? Heck; I know of Feds who say they will quit rather than get vaccinated. I predict this ends badly.

I have a customer who didn't pay a full invoice amount on a CR contract because the program office didn't budget the funds to cover the additional efforts that were imposed via a unilateral mod issued under the changes clause. Contract PoP has expired. No funds left on the relevant CLIN. Did we mod the contract to require additional IT testing due to Covid telework? Yes. Did we receive a benefit? Yes. Did the vendor account for and submit the basis for their full invoiced amount? Yes. Were the additional costs reasonable? Yes. Pretty simple really. The fact that they are a SB and the amount was only $9K made it easier. Currently available funding and an expired PoP are irrelevant in regard to the government's responsibility to pay for supplies and services required and received.

'Responsive' is a term that only applies under Part 14.

We could call it the Kinda' Sorta' Part 36 Without Ranking of Offerors Procedure. I like it. Now the cynical thoughts creep in, namely the above reference to the Part 16 FO process: Maybe I've been doing this too long, but 1102s seem to have a pathological need to convert every competition to a Part 15. As a consultant, I saw an entire agency operating under the belief that Part 16 FO competitions had to be conducted in accordance with Part 15. When my team inquired why, the answer was a collective "I dunno'; we've always done it that way." Even more recently as a Fed (again...) I had a Branch Chief effectively convert a Part 36 source selection into an advisory multi-step Part 15 out of pure ignorance and hubris (he has been at the agency for decades and yet I was explaining the agency FAR supplement to him after I was there for only 8 months). Which is to say, I'm not hopeful that the contracting workforce at ANY level can substitute good business sense for rote procedure. There are simply too many people in high places who stopped learning decades ago and who are also convinced that they are God's Gift to Federal Contracting.

I think the issue might be with your definition of "corporate experience", which typically refers to an offeror's corporate capabilities, not merely past projects. In my opinion, when viewed properly, corporate experience doesn't cross over any of your other factors. "Past customers liked that we marinated the steaks for 3 hours instead of for 2 hours..." isn't a corporate capability, it's a statement supporting an approach. Which you are free to ignore when evaluating corporate experience for all the reasons you mention. In fact, based on your examples, it's not a matter of "cross-over", it's a matter of "past customers liked..." isn't speaking to corporate experience OR technical approach. Maybe their past customers are a bunch of rubes. Besides; unless you said you were going to evaluate corporate experience as part of the evaluation of the technical approach, what's the problem? There's no requirement to enumerate what you're NOT going to evaluate. (Cue the scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Brother Maynard* ceremoniously recites the procedure for how - and how not to - count to three). [My hypothetical is less opinion-based, such as this one from my past: "Based on our past experience, loading the solid rocket booster propellant under vacuum prevents voids from forming in the cured propellant which would cause hot-spots when ignited, resulting in total system failure". That's a fact-based assertion derived from specialized experience which supports an approach and is intended to increase the government's confidence in that approach, not 'corporate experience' in the typical context.] * Patron Saint of Contracting

Because the incumbent will protest anything to profit from the CICA stay. The additional revenue from the bridge/extension more than pays for the 20 minutes it takes for a staff attorney to file a protest. Note how GAO almost never sustains on grounds of 'improper evaluation' alone. They don't. They guess. Some protests even invoke evaluation factors that never actually existed:

By "Compartmentalizing" I mean treating the factors as being completely distinct and separate, e.g., expecting an offeror to discuss an approach without referring to their past experience with that approach. That's not a mortal sin. (Edit: including past experience to validate your approach is not a 'mortal sin'.) You should certainly evaluate PP and technical approach separately, but anything which imparts understanding should not be ignored or discouraged; that's not the same thing as relying on a PP reference in a technical approach to determine the PP factor rating. "We found that the approach of using the strongest horse was not conducive to good performance, because big horses tend to be obnoxious jerks who throw their riders without warning."

It sounds to me like the OP is focused on process and not outcome. How is compartmentalizing evaluation factors in the best interests of the government? If including past experience in a discussion of technical approach helps demonstrate understanding of the requirement, it is a good thing; if it doesn't, the offeror is just wasting valuable proposal space. That's on them. A CO's job is to practice good, consistent, business judgement, not just memorize regulations. As Duke Ellington used to say, "If it sounds good, it is good". It seems to me that many procurement professionals are practicing Source Eliminations, not Source Selections.

"Logical follow-on" applies to one scenario only: when a contract is awarded to a particular vendor because it is not "logical" to award a phased effort to anyone else: It is definitely not a term used to describe a successor/continuation to an existing vehicle or requirement, nor does it describe a situation where the CO believes it's "logical" to keep requirements with one vendor because it's administratively cleaner ! I believe this thread is in for a do-over, with the discussion focusing on the LSJ and not a "logical follow-on".

I, for one, welcome our Robot Overlords.

FWIW, I think that is a great and usable definition, which can easily be mapped to acquisition scenarios. Subjective = I'm looking for intangibles; AKA, the "I'll know it when I see it" philosophy, which assumes that the proposal/quote will educate me on things or approaches of which I was not previously aware. Objective = I know what constitutes superior performance before I ever look at a single proposal. One of my concerns is that I have seen COs state that they are being "innovative" by having the prospective vendors provide oral presentations in response to silly on-the-spot challenges which have nothing to do with the scope of the effort ("contractor team will have 3 hours to develop a response to an example XXX scenario") . Might as well have them engage in Feats of Strength. Too often 1102s get wrapped up in everything except what actually matters. "Lazy" and "innovative" are sometimes too close for comfort.

From my experience, the primary advantage of the SF-1449 is that the commercial clauses/provisions under 52.212-1, -4, & -5 can be incorporated by checking Blocks 27a and/or 27b. But if you're not under Part 12, it's not that useful.

Honest assessment: that article could have been titled "Preparing for the Future of _____" and any random profession could have been inserted into the blank. NCMA once again meets its mission of Purveyors of the Incredibly Obvious (AKA, The FAR Restated, Only Much Longer and Lacking Any Noticeable Point).

Karma always catches up with bad people. It may take years, but it always does. My story is about the person who accepted a job offer but never showed up, and then ghosted us. 4-1/2 years later, at a different agency, guess whose resume came across a colleagues desk? The name was stuck in my head like glue, so needless to say, the resume immediately went into the round file. And all was right with the world.

I certainly get your logic in that context, and don't dispute it. A rental is definitely delivered in much the same way as a purchase, and the only real difference is that a rental comes with an end date. My perspective is based on how the 'thing' is procured (as quantities, or rates/time), rather than how it is delivered (the relative labor component required, or lack thereof), as well as the fact that Part 2 defines “Supplies” as "all property except land or interest in land".

I believe DLA Defense Fuels took that over once kinetic operations* in Iraq concluded. And to your point, the contract in question was for restoring Iraqi oil production, not providing fuel. So the overcharging allegation was unrelated anyway. * Coolest. Term. Ever.

Oral discussions? Do you mean oral (proposal) presentations? Discussions need to be memorialized and any outcome that affects the interests of other bidders needs to be promulgated equally in writing, so video and audio recording are not really viable (i.e., you wouldn't ever release a verbatim record of 'discussions' as defined in Part 15). Oral proposal presentations are memorialized by the presenter providing hard copies of the presentation. So the answer is that audio/video/transcripts aren't really useful or viable in either scenario; just take good notes and publicize any resulting Q&A related to the RFP.

The amazing thing is that even after 15 years, nothing she asserted has been shown to be remotely true, nor was there any actual professional attempt on her part at the time to support her belief that sole-source was not appropriate (i.e., market research). All that stuff about Haliburton overcharging for fuel (which was never substantiated) had nothing to do with her so-called objections to the original award strategy. The EEO settlement she received had nothing to do with the validity of her claims, but of course the media used their Jedi powers to conflate the two in the mind of the reader. "These aren't the droids you're looking for"

The media reporting on this reminds me of how they lionized a former Army CO many years back because she had made notes in the margins about why a contract was improper and then obviously signed the contract. Of course, all they did was expose her as an incompetent fraud who failed to perform the most basic responsibilities of her job, but hey, it made the Bush administration look bad, so no worries! "She wrote that the original "emergency" contract should be limited to one year, with no options after that. She says when she got the final contract back, it was unchanged. So she wrote her reservations on it in ink." http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/18/AR2005101801796_4.html?tid=a_inl_manual It's probably worth noting that the protagonist in this little fantasy teaches at a community college, and is not highly thought of.... https://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=1898096

So when you contract with a dedicated carrier for Transportation Services (IAW FAR 47) you "acquire a tangible item" (the truck), ergo, a supply? “Service contract” means a contract that directly engages the time and effort of a contractor whose primary purpose is to perform an identifiable task rather than to furnish an end item of supply. Primary purpose: provide a backhoe for a specified period of time.

Is the point of this question that the MPT is $3500, the GPC may be used for procurments under the MPT, but the GPC limitation for actions subject to the SCA is only $2500? If this thread was about proper use of the GPC, that would be relevant; however, as it relates to the question of whether an equipment rental is a supply or service, it doesn't seem relevant. I'm not following the meaning of GPC rules and MPT thresholds "differing". They are two different things.