JPulvino

Boston I think you have two completely separate questions here which i'm not sure why you are tying together. Starting with the Commercial item question, I would say regardless of whether the prime contract is for a commercial item or not, the sub contracts can be for either. For example a radio can be classified as a commercial part, but the individual components might not be commercial, especially as you get into commercial items that meet the 3rd Commerciality Definition "Minor modifications of a type not customarily available in the commercial marketplace made to meet Federal Government requirement" With regards to the Adequate Price Competition, H2H covered that perfectly I think. As the prime is doesn't have to submit due to adequate price competition , then neither do the subcontractors. While they can request "data other than certified cost or pricing data" to assist with price analysis, they shouldn't even be requesting certified data.

I think, like apsofacto said, you might have to look at this from a different direction. For question 1: are you talking about individuals with FAR knowledge on the procurement team, or just an average buyer/member? From my experience most procurement agents with FAR knowledge and who work with compliance personnel will avoid "purposely" evaluating to favorite vendors. However if you get an engineer, or non-professional, involved this if more frequent: where they have a reason for wanting a vendor and will skew towards them where possible. Hence having a diverse team will tend to lead to a more impartial view of the situation. ex: Lead-time, technical knowledge or past performance vs just finding a vendor easier to work with. For question 2: This again depends on the nature and frequency of the questions. While lots of procurement agents may not love seeking answers to the questions, if the are well thought-out and not overly burdensome to the procurement process they won't affect the award. However a vendor that questions every solicitation and specification may be somebody that will slowly be viewed poorly if those questions are deemed frivolous by the customer.

sdvr, While it's true that each event occurs separately, since the question is what is the chance that "at least one win occurs" you have to looks at all of the probabilities combined. As has been mentioned there are two ways to do this if you think in simple coin flips terms.... Chance of 1 heads in 4 flips, or chance of NOT all 4 flips being tails. Most statisticians will say the 2nd is easier then the first... here's why. One could work out all the separate cases – one head in four tosses, two heads, or three or four. H,H,H,H or H,H,H,T, or H,H,T,T .... etc until T.T.T.H But it's much easier to find the probability of no heads, and subtract that from one: or not T,T,T,T In our case Pr (at least one win in 4 cases) = 1 – Pr (no wins in 4 cases) = 1 – (0.8)4 = 59.04%. Since you have to look at all events, the number isn't just 20% as you start losing cases and then move to level, your next 20% chance is basically taking 20% of the 80% failure to get a L,W scenario. Hope that helps a bit.