CSJas

Okay, thank you. I just found out it's common for my agency to not allow attrition rates in the order.

Hello, I am working with an order that requires conference rooms and equipment as well as a reservation on hotel rooms with fixed rates. The Government will pay for the conference rooms and equipment, but the hotel rooms will be paid by participants. A hotel submitted a quote with an 80% attrition rate, meaning if the reserved hotel rooms are not booked at least 80%, the hotel will charge the Government for those rooms or some penalties. The problem is that not all participants are Government employees, so we could run the risk of not meeting the 80% attrition rate. Also, if there is a Government shutdown, we would be at a loss here. My question is both legal and ethical. I understand why hotels do this because they could lose money if the participants fail to fulfill their reservations. However, can the Government legally pay for services not rendered associated with this attrition rate? On another note, if the Government cannot pay for these unused rooms, is this unfair to hotel businesses?

Hello, I am working with a FFP task order with one base year plus one option. There is a management piece to this requirement where the management costs are uncertain over the base year and option period for various reasons. However, the contractor knows how much the management services will cost over the life of the order. My question is, how can I arrange the FFP CLINs so that if the contractor does not use all of the management funds during the base period, they can use those funds for the option? Or vice versa, they end up needing more funds during the base and less during the option? Is it allowable to reallocate funds between periods of performance?

Hello, I think I know the answer, but I would like to double check this one. My customer originally wanted 52.217-9 options for a five-year order if all options are exercised with each line item equally lasting a year long. However, now they are requesting to only have options for every other year: Base, Year 3, Year 5. Can I create a purchase order using 52.217-7 while no work is being performed in between the options? Thanks, CSJas

Oh yes, the -7 option clause. This helps a lot. Thanks!

Hello, I had a requirement last year for annual data buys in which we receive a delivery at the end of each fiscal year for one data package. We do not require anything else from the contractor between deliverables. Last year, we cut an Order for a base year plus four one-year options to cover the future deliveries, and the base/options ended the day the delivery was due. I was just informed by my customer that they forgot to submit a requisition to exercise the first option, and the Order is now expired. I am trying to figure out how to prevent this from happening again in the future by figuring out if there is a better way to structure this Order. Since the options do not need periods of performance because they are single deliveries, how can I structure this Order? Should I have the options state a delivery date and a note that they will be exercised "no later than XX days before delivery"? Is it even permissible to have a multi-year order for deliveries? We can not cut an IDIQ or BPA for this type of purchase. I know that for non-severable work, we could have one CLIN that extends past a year, but we are not sure if we need all future deliverables, hence why we had options added. Thanks.

Wow! Is the information about this public? I would love to read an article about this.

Good information. Thank you!

Hello, I have only ever worked at one government agency where each CO works with a CS for every procurement. However, I have been job hunting and I noticed that one agency seems to only hire COs and there is no record of any CS positions. I'm trying to figure out why this is. So my question is... is it possible for a CO to work alone? As in, can COs fulfill all presolicitation and preaward requirements and sign the documents on his or her own? My assumption is that this is allowable since COs have the actual procurement authority and since the FAR does not mention Contract Specialists. However, I do know that this could be a bad idea because there should be checks and balances in place for ethical reasons. I'm newish to procurement (less than 3 years) and I thought I'd ask the pros... Can COs work on their own? Thanks!