Vern Edwards

@Sascha KemperFAR Part 13 BPA's are agreements, not contracts. Do you understand the distinction under FAR? As mere agreements, they are not binding on the parties, do not buy anything, and do not obligate any funds. That's why they are not "awarded" and don't have periods of performance. They need only be reviewed, and updated if necessary, on an annual basis. And that's why you don't need a J&A to extend the agreement.

Seventeen pages to deny a motion to dismiss. The ultimate decision is going to be a whopper! Our legal system is a swamp of procedure, and there is nothing to be gained by complaining about it. In fact, our whole government is a swamp of procedure, administrative and legal. Consider the months-long (if not years-long) source selection process. Again, there is no point in complaining about it. All efforts to "streamline" procedure have failed. America is in the grip of a cult of procedure. See: "The Procedure Fetish," by Nicholas Bagley (2021): https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-procedure-fetish/ For a longer version see Bagley, The Procedure Fetish, 118 Mich. L. Rev. 345 (2019). The article has been cited 103 times. https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol118/iss3/2/

@formerfedIf I were still in civil service I would not accept a supervisory position under any circumstances.

@formerfedInteresting. That sounds rather like a supervisor. I did not expect that. I expected something more along the lines of a guide or tutor. Someone to discuss things with.

@formerfed What do you think is involved in being a mentor? Write a brief SOW for mentoring here, so we can see what you're talking about. The mentor shall...

@joel hoffman You don't need to provide an example. The topic is fully discussed in the references I listed. All the questioner has to do is look them up. Their legal office should have access to them. It is rarely necessary to write "treatises" in response to questions here, unless you just want to. But I agree that OP's don't know how to write inquiries, and I sympathize. It's pathetic, and makes you wonder what they're teaching people in college. I have long planned to write an article about how to ask questions, and have bought and read several books and papers about the topic (there are almost countless numbers of them), and made many notes, but I don't know that I will be able to do it now. Organizations like NCMA have sold the world on the notion that professionalism is a matter of "certification." But it's not.

Three ways, from least to most difficult: Supplemental agreement to delete the unneeded work. Deductive change order. Partial termination for convenience. One more referece: "Deletion of Work 𑁋 Change or Partial Termination: Gotta Be This Or That," The Nash & Cibinic Report, August 1988. From the article: This was an easy question, and a chance to educate. Wifcon needs a new set of people to answer questions. The Old Bunch is worn out. And my time is running out. Jamaal? I'm looking at you.

Instead of "descope," the proper term of art is "deductive change." See Government Contract Changes (August 2023 Update), by Nash and Feldman. § 4:15, Deductive change vs. convenience terminations § 16:16 Separately priced contract items See also, Person, 01-08, Briefing Papers 1: "Deductive Changes" (2001)' See also, Nash et al., Administration of Government Contracts, 5th ed., "Deletion of Work Through Termination for Convenience, Changes, or Other Clauses," pp. 1071-72.

Can you specify your requirement in more detail? What do you mean by "prepare"? What do you want attendees to learn? There may be a course that meets your need, but that is not entitled as a "bootcamp" for KOs or KO candidates.

I do not know of any commercial course that is advertised as a contracting officer"bootcamp", and I am in the acquisition training business. But there may be one of which I am not aware. I presume that you have done an online search. But I gave the response that I did because I do not think any week-long course taught by anybody can "prepare" anyone to be KO. But that's just an old man's opinion. Good luck with your search. Someone here will offer you some better info.

A weeklong course will not prepare you to be a KO. Not a real KO. But in today's workforce you don't really need much to prepare you to be appointed a KO. Agency managers talk about KO knowledge, but it is mostly just talk. The are not insincere; they are not able. To be a competent KO you must know: concepts, principles, rules, processes, procedures, and techniques pertinent to the acquisition mission. But you cannot learn those things in a week. You must read books and articles. Many, many of them. Over the course of many years. Begin with concepts. Conceptual knowledge is crucially important and underlies everything else. What is a "contract"? If you had to get up before an audience of trainees and teach them the concept of contract in American law, how long could you talk? Fifteen minutes, an hour, a half-day, a week? Interrogate yourself, make a list, then go learn what you need to know. At home. With books. You will never be finished. Never! That's why people talk about "lifelong" learning. Start with a good book about contracts. There are lots of them. Start a professional reading group of 4 or 5 colleagues. Others here will offer different opinions.

@pconnerWhy do you want to include your assumptions in the contract? What legal effect do you think that would have?

Anything might work if the parties understand and agree to it. The key is the ability to define terms and agreememt on definitions. Thus, in order to conduct a transaction for the purchase of "effort" the parties should define it and agree to a method of measurement. But in competitive procurements the government likes to enter into contracts without discussions. Agreement without discussion is an interesting idea. Socrates died in 399 B.C. The government doesn't seem to have learned much since then.

How about this? Productive hour means an hour of physical or mental activity devoted to the achievement of the principal contract objective as described in the contract work statement, excluding all administrative and clerical support such as purchasing and document preparation.

Here is one definition of "direct productive labor hour," quoted from Department of Commerce FAR Supp. 1352.216-71: And the following is from the EPA FAR Supp. clause, 1552.212-70, Level of Effort-Cost-Reimbursement Term Contract (APR 1984):

Yes. If you are going to use "hour" as a unit of effort, I think you should specify what you mean by effort. Is it any activity done by anyone doing anything? Or is it activity in direct pursuit of the contract objective, excluding support activity? Or is it something else? If you exclude support activity from the LOE you will still include it in the contract price or estimated cost, but you will not credit it against the LOE as service received. There is more to this that I will write later.

@formerfed Thanks! Your response is entirely consistent with your definition of "effort" as exerted energy. The reason I asked my OP question is that contracts like the FFP/LOE/Term (FAR 16.207) and the CPFF Term form (FAR 16.306(d)(2)) often, if not always, specify the level of effort in terms of hours. That's the only set of rules and guidance in FAR about LOE contracts. That's a convenient unit of measurement, easy to use, but it gives rise to issues. Is "hour", without additional definition, a true unit of effort? Any old contiguous 60 minutes counts? The first contracts I negotiated as a GS-05 Copper Cap trainee in the mid-1970s were sole source ("selected source") FFP/LOE lump sum contracts under the old Armed Services Procurement Regulation (ASPR) for research (but not development). We specified LOE in terms of hours, but defined "hour" in the contract as an hour of "productive labor" (physical and mental) devoted to pursuit of the contract objective by persons with specified qualifications𑁋 sometimes by specific persons (Dr. So-and-so). But we did not explicitly define "effort". In any team endeavor, some people must wait for other people to complete their work before can do theirs. I was taught that we did not count "wait time" or "idle time" or "down time" towards fulfillment of the LOE. Our FFP/LOE lump sum contracts did not include hourly rates, and the contractor did not bill on the basis of hourly rates. The contractor was entitled to payment of the lump sum upon delivery of the LOE and an acceptable report. There was a clause providing for acceptance of the work and payment of full price, without adjustment, if the contractor's actual hours inadvertently fell short of or exceeded the LOE by no more than five percent, as long as the research report was acceptable. Because the price was lump sum, there was no monthly billing. If the contract term was lengthy the contractor might receive progress payments based on costs. The work of administrative and support personnel ("ancillary" or "support") were expressly excluded from the hours that counted toward delivery of the LOE. Their costs, and the costs of materials, were negotiated and included in the lump sum price. Today I call such LOE contracts "project LOE contracts." The contractor is hired to perform a specific task with a specific scope to the LOE within a specific time. But there are also what I call "support service staffing LOE contracts", under which the LOE specifies the amount of staff the contractor must provide to perform some support function during a certain period. Those contracts account for very large number of annual actions and percentages of contract obligations. Yer FAR says nothing about them and published guidance is minimal. A recent article, Bodner and Midboe, "Speeding Up Services Procurements: Strategy and Tools to Award Quickly, Survive Protest, and Execute Efficiently," Public Contract Law Journal, Vol. 53, No. 1, Fall 2023, pp. 1-94, addresses those kinds of LOE contracts at length, and the authors say what I considered to be surprising things about the idea of "level of effort" and hours. See Section II.B., "Describing the Government's Contractor Workforce Needs," 16 - 49. See, especially, Section B.1., "Total Hours: An Essential Element of Any LOE Service Competition," pp. 17 - 21. I have also read some RFPs posted to SAM.gov that seek to procure such services. They are often advertised as LOE contracts, but they do not conform to the descriptions in FAR 16.207 and 16.306(d)(2). I have also read several court, board, and GAO decisions that involve what are called LOE contracts. And I have read some old GAO reports congressional hearing transcripts. The article, the RFPs, the decisions, the reports, and the transcripts have led me to question whether I have always known what I was talking about when I have talked about LOE contracts. It also explained some of the questions and comments I have seen at Wifcon. FAR does not explicitly address such LOE contracts, nor did the ASPR before it. I have not found any published comprehensive guidance. (What's the difference between a project statement of work and an LOE support services statement of work, if any?) The article I cited above is exclusively about support service LOE contracts, which are nowhere mentioned in FAR or in any agency FAR supplement. However, I have learned that NASA appears to have been a pioneer in their use. It is what I read in that article and in those RFPs, decisions, reports, and hearings that prompted me to ask my OP question: What is a level of effort?

Please, Carl. You have said that you think the three men exerted 27 hours of effort. Thank you for your response. I am waiting for formerfed's response because he gave a coherent definition of effort as exerted energy, and I want to pursue that thought by engaging with him. Agains, thanks for your response.

@C Culham I did not state the basis for pricing and payment; I'm not interested in the basis for pricing and payment at this time; and I did not ask about pricing and payment. I am only interested in and asking about the meaning of the term "effort". Thanks for your response, but I asked formerfed and I'll wait for his. He defined effort as exerted energy.

@formerfed Thanks! So effort is expended energy𑁋exertion. Government contracts typically, though not always, measure effort in units of hours. Let me pose a scenario and ask a question. Three men are hired to dig up the stump of a gigantic tree. They have one axe and one shovel. The location and position of the stump are such that only one man can get at the stump at a time to dig earth away and cut roots. So one man at a time digs and cuts while the other two watch and wait for their turn. They change places once an hour. After nine hours of that process a tractor is able to pull out the stump. Each man spent a total of three hours digging and cutting and six hours watching. Have the three men exerted nine hours of effort or 27 (3 x 9) hours?

@All: Never mind. I should not have come to Wifcon for discussion of this matter.

@C CulhamI wasn't offended. I just explained how I got my number. It's not an issue with me, and the difference in our counts is not important to me. I'm the Beginner here. I have never seriously thought about the meaning of "effort" in "level of effort." But something has come up that has made me ask myself the question: What does "effort" mean? What is a unit of "effort"? It seems to me that those are questions that you must be able to answer if you are going to state a "level of effort". And I have spent several days trying to come up with a suitable answer. Is an hour a legitimate unit of effort, even if the work of one hour is more difficult than the work of the next hour or the previous hour? In such a case, is the amount of effort in each hour the same? And, if not, then is an hour a true unit? Are we confusing a pricing technique with an appropriate term of specification? I'm looking for answers and I'm trying to prompt thought. And you are going to refuse to answer because you think I posted my question in the wrong category?

Carl, I downloaded FAR as of FAC 2024-03 in pdf form from acquisition.gov. I did an Adobe Acrobat full search for "level of effort" (unhyphenated) and got 21 mentions. I searched for "level-of-effort" (hyphenated) and got nine mentions. I did the search several times. I cannot explain the discrepancy in our counts, and I'm not interested. The key point is that FAR does not define "level of effort". Now, do you have or want to propose an answer to my question: What is a level of effort? All, Let's not get distracted. I'm looking for an answer to my question. If this thread becomes a typical Wifcon all-over-the-map free-for-all, then I'll leave the thread. It's not easy for me to type here, and I won't be bothered. Focus, dammit. What is a level of effort? What is an "effort" How is it measured? It's okay to propose your own answer, but if you don't have an answer, don't post.

My question was: What is a "level of effort", as in "level of effort contract"? The question was not what is a level of effort contract? The phrase "level of effort" appears 21 times in FAR, but FAR does not define the term. The answer to my question requires, first, a definition of "effort", then, a definition of "level", which is presumably some kind of measure. So, first, what is "effort", as in "level of effort contract"? FAR does not define "effort". There are four kinds of things we must learn in order to learn "contracting"; concepts, principles, rules, processes, procedures, and techniques. My question is about a concept. We either know what we're talking about when we talk about "level of effort" or we don't.

What is a "level of effort", as in "level of effort contract"?