Geoff Orazem

Hi Fara, The break down we heard was: -4 hours: for the contracting officer to analyze the cost elements in the bidder’s budget, assess them against the weighted factors guidance, and create the government’s perspective on what the reasonable profit/fee should be. -The week of delay: The weighted factors analysis typically produces a 6-8% fee. Proposed profit from bidders tends to be in the 12-15% range. The contracting officer and the bidder start negotiating over the fee (emailing back and forth) When we asked what the average delay directly attributable to the fee negotiation was we typically heard one week. We socialized this number with senior stakeholders and they generally told us that a week felt low but close enough. The other four hours is the time participating in the negotiations over the course of that week. I hope that clarifies our thought process

From our interviews we heard that fee analysis and negotiation: -Take an average 8 hours -Delays contract award by one week DARPA makes about 200 awards a year so that (200 X 1 week of delay) is about 4 years of delay

Don, That is the crux of our recommendation and completely agree, the next step is to run a pilot

We recently completed an STTR Phase I for DARPA on how the DoD can update their profit analysis (alternatives to the Weighted Guidelines) processes to better engage industry and we are sharing our findings. FINDINGS REPORT: HERE V/R Geoff geoff@federal-foundry.com PS-We will begin the Phase II of this research shortly and would love thoughts from the community.