ContractJockey

Noted, thanks for the info.

Team, Not sure if this is the whole thing or not but for those who would like access to the article for free:

Vern, I only met you once when you came out to DoDEA in Alexandria, VA for a FAR Bootcamp course. Between those interactions over the span of a week or so and the insight that you have provided here on Wifcon, you have had more positive impact on my contracting career than any other person. Wishing you all the best and a speedy recovery!

ji20874, Yes, I think that could work. I'm sure that I'd put my own spin on it if I were to end up doing this but it's a good starting point. One of the reasons that I have asked this question is because I have seen so any sole-source and brand name justifications over the years that are based on something like: "the government currently owns perpetual licenses for Software X which is published by Software Company A, the government has a need to keep these licenses updated with the most recent functional updates and security patches, only Software Company A publishes security patches for Software X, therefore the government must purchase the required functional updates and security patches for Software X from Software Company A or one of its authorized resellers". Increasing competition while not having to polish the turd of a justification that I'd be given seems like a win to me. Thanks for the info!

Has anybody out there put out a solicitation which states the government's intention to evaluate an incumbent contractor's proposed solution in one manner and any other contractor's proposed solution in another way? Let's say, for example, that you currently own perpetual software licenses from Vendor 1 that perform a particular function and you also want the maintenance and support for those licenses for a base plus four option year period. You would like to maximize competition and allow Vendor 2 who has a competing software to be part of the competition as well and they have a similar pricing model; purchase of perpetual licenses which come with one year of maintenance and support followed by four optional years of maintenance and support. In this case, since you already own Vendor 1's perpetual licenses, you'd do the price evaluation for their proposed solution based on the price of their base year of maintenance and support plus each of the four optional years of maintenance and support but not the perpetual licenses because you already own them and in the case of Vendor 2, you'd do the price evaluation based on the purchase of perpetual licenses plus each of the four optional years. Seems viable and fair to me and I'm sure that I have done this subconsciously in my own purchasing life but I haven't done it in the professional environment. If any of you have any experience with this or something similar, have any examples of solicitations that have appropriate wording, or have any case law examples that has settled any protests that arose from solicitations with similar circumstances, please share.

Vern, I'll refrain from any hubris on the level of my savviness unless and until I have a need to employ the strategy and find success with it. I appreciate the background information that you provided. It is interesting that "SOOs are normally in the 2-4 page range" but that you have seen 100+ pagers. Something seems more than a bit off there. Perhaps a CO or program office with control issues? Interesting to me as well is that the documentation that you provided above references SOWs rather than PWSs. As I think about it a bit more, it seems like using the SOO et al to have a contractor develop an SOW would make more sense than a performance based PWS. Was that on purpose or just a function of the documentation/history that you provided? I can't remember where, whether in person or on this forum, but I recall you mentioning your thoughts on performance based PWS and the resultant contracts being, paraphrasing here, "a bunch of hooey".

formerfed, can you expound on what you mean about "one-on-one due diligence or discovery sessions"?

Well, I haven't done it before so...no, not really. I do think that I could figure it out along the way and it seems like it could be a useful technique. Have you ever seen it used before?

There was a lively and productive conversation on the revelation of the government's budget (to industry and/or to technical evaluators) on wifcon about a year ago available for your review here: That discussion and its tangents did not contemplate a scenario where the government has a fixed budget and wants to procure the best service that it can get within its budget. Since that discussion is closed, I have started this new thread to ask what the group's thoughts are regarding the issuance of a Statement of Objectives (SOO) which allows each offeror to write their own PWS describing the work that they will perform for the government, within the government's fixed budget, in which the winning offeror's written PWS will become a part of the contract that gets issued as a result of the responses received from that SOO and the resultant discussions between the offerors and the government? The above only contemplates the government's purchase of services; what might you do if you had a fixed budget and needed supplies? This might become useful if one either thinks or knows that one's available funding is not sufficient to cover the government's full need.