Contract Noob

All, There is a discussion in my office on the correct path to increase the estimated cost (and funding) on a CPFF contract that is going to eventually exceed the estimated cost in order to complete. In this case, there has been no Government-directed change in the requirements. It is an R&D completion contract that, due to some performance complications, cost more than was competitively proposed and the Government wants to continue to fund to have an executable program. The LoF clause says that the estimated cost must be increased as well. So, the office discussion has revolved around what is needed to continue to incrementally fund the contract. One thought is the contractor submit a ROM to the PCO to and all parties sit down and determine if the new estimated costs to complete is within the programs budget/schedule to continue. If so then we increase the estimated costs and continue to incrementally fund and if not then we terminate the contract. A second thought was the contractor submits a proposal and all costs are evaluated and once agreed the estimated costs to complete are increased and we incrementally fund. Some pushback with this is schedule. The program cannot afford the additional time to have a completed program as it puts other missions at risk. Second, is the understanding of FAR 15.403-2(b) which states "Certified cost or pricing data are not required for proposals used solely for overrun funding or interim billing price adjustments." If they aren't required to certify does a proposal add more value then a ROMN if the Government can still feasibly determine its in the best interest to move forward. So, I thought I'd come to this board to discuss/receive feedback and see if I can get some other opinions. Thanks.

This is the thread i was referring to that i seen which is how my contract is setup:

Ouch Right or wrong, I am trying my best. To maybe clear it up I did not create a contract line item for estimated costs. What you see above is just text added in section B to mention the estimated costs because the contract writing system does not have a function to do that. THAT IS NOT A CLIN. The SLIN added for costs over target was done because we are incrementally funding the contract and that was the funds we received at that time. It is an information SLIN. Are you saying it was incorrect the way it was done, how should I have done this? Clearly i am not getting good direction

It is really not to difficult to understand. In my opinion any contract professional with experience will be able to grasp what we did if I can explain it well. We are incrementally funding the CLIN under the contract and when we reached the target costs we then created a new SLIN under CLIN 0001 to show the costs over target cost, which looks like this: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUBCLIN 000110 is added as follows: ITEM NO SUPPLIES/SERVICES MAX QUANTITY UNIT UNIT PRICE MAX AMOUNT 000110 UNDEFINED UNDEFINED $0.00 CLIN 0001 Overrun CPIF PURCHASE REQUEST NUMBER:REMOVED TARGET COST UNDEFINED TARGET FEE UNDEFINED TOTAL TGT COST + FEE $0.00 MINIMUM FEE $0.00 MAXIMUM FEE $0.00 SHARE RATIO ABOVE TARGET SHARE RATIO BELOW TARGET ACRN XX $123,111.12 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ We also added the following text in Section B: CLIN 0001 ESTIMATED COSTS CLIN 0001 has exceeded target costs, the estimated cost as of this modification for CLIN 0001 is $12,345,678.90. The Government heretofore will be funding to the estimated costs subject to the availability of funds. The target cost has not changed. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Also doing some research just now i found a thread here on wifcon with a comment from Vern about how to setup a contract and i believe I did it the same way.

Of course they do but when I reached out, according to them, there is nothing wrong with the FPDS system it is working correctly.. My question is, did we correctly configure the contract to account for the CPIF costs? If that is the case then the FPDS system just doesn't have the capability to match the contract correctly. I am getting some pushback that we can treat it like a CPFF and create new CLINs that would in effect increase the ceiling and "talk" to the FPDS system with no errors.

I have a situation i have come across and have not been able to find much help so I am turning to the community here for assistance. I awarded a Cost Plus Incentive Fee (CPIF) contract for research and development and today the awardee has been funded up to their target cost on the contract and we now are trying to begin to fund past the target costs. The issue I am having is that when we go to award we are getting an error when trying to validate the CAR (FPDS-NG). I am receiving the following error: Error Code: 3C04 - The sum of "Action Obligation" for all transactions with the same PIID must be less than or equal to sum of the "Change in Base and Exercised Options Value." I do not believe contractually anything is wrong as we are still in the Range of Incentive Effectiveness (RIE) for the CPIF contract but we cannot fix the error on the CAR. The thought process was to continue to fund the CPIF under the appropriate CLIN(s) and increase the estimated costs in a narrative we incorporated in section B. My question is does the CAR just not support a CPIF funded past target costs, are we funding this incorrectly, or is there a better way for me to structure the contract? By passing the error on the CAR requires very high approval and since we are incrementally funding this I cannot imagine having to get this approval every modification. Help!