Boof

Works for me too. Thanks.

The prime needs the labor of 3 personnel to fly to Dubai and work for as long as it takes to close out the sub-contracts for our task order. The sub-contracts must run to the expiration date of the task order. DCAA at the company says it is company practice to direct charge these costs versus placing them in overhead. It may be anal but I am going to extend the task order for the time period necessary with the approved labor cost and travel idenitified.

My computer says Internet Explorer 7.0.5730.

Yes I am not referring to a cost incurred during performance but one they plan to incur after expiration.

It is a CPFF task order. The task order expires on a date. The contractor says he will have sub-contract close out costs after that date and they plan to direct charge us. DCAA says while they did not find a company policy, the company has direct charged these type of costs in the past. I have always thought that you could not invoice for actions taken after task order expiration. Have I always thought wrong? If I agree with the need to wait until expiration to close the subcontracts, would it be better for me to extend the task order limiting it to just close out cost or is that just unnecesary work? Everytime I think I might know something, I find don't know much.

I was just testing my links this morning and it doesn't work for me at the Dept of State either. I thought maybe it was the .mil address but I guess everyone else is having issues too.

The clause FAR 52.216-19 is for the protection of the contractor in case the Government issues a delivery order too large or small for the contractor to handle. The clause in question is not a FAR clause but many agencies use an unofficial one they put in section B in order to comply with FAR 16.504(a)(4)(ii). It contains a minimum to bind the contract and a maximum to protect competition. It requires you to recompete the IDIQ once you hit the maximum and the number should be set rationally. I always set this maximum at the limit of feasibility because rational experience has taught me that once awarded the demand soars for its use. I want to be about 95% certain we won't hit the max. However despite my best efforts we have hit the limit a couple of times in the support of war. We had to do a J&A to increase the maximum for the emergency and then recompete the contract for the future. You can amend the solicitation to reopen the competition for a few days to see if anyone else wants to compete due to the higher possible limit or if any of the current offerors would like to reduce prices (both doubtful). Or you can award at the current level and hope they do not use the estimated amounts. IF they hit the ceiling, recompete early. I had to compete a 5 year option contract in just 2.5 years before.

Congressional Boondoggle!! I just read the section and it says the CO "may" place this in a contract. I never have and never will. I believe in this deficit government there are no funds available for it or the extra administrative cost of administering the payment. Guess I am just not PC tonight.

FEDBID.com usually pushes the price of most items down about 8 to 10% off of government estimates. However, I saw one instance where the customer got a rock bottom quote for a item. The offeror had given their very best price considering the manufacturer had pricing agreements with all the resellers. It is that IPAD/IPhone issue where everyone charges the same price as "suggested" by Apple. So when it was post to FEDBID the company had to mark up by the FEDBID fee in order to keep their price margin. This is a somewhat unusual situation but if you have it just cancel FEDBID (they will let you, no problem) and award to the quote. Overall FEDBID works great. You get lots of competition without much effort, prices are typically lower, FEDBID does the advertising for you, FEDBID tracks your small business and savings statistics to make Congressional reporting easy. Many more good reasons to use them than not.

Do you mean FEDBID.com the reverse auction site or FEDBIZOPPs the site that all the Federal Government is supposed to post thier requirements on if they meet thresholds. All requirements over $25K without some other exemption should flow to FEDBIZOPPs no matter if it is on the Army web site or the FEDBID.com website. FEDBID.com authomatically advertises in FEDBIZOPPS unless they are specifically told not to by the Agency or CO. Please note that simplified acquisitions, including those in the FAR 13.5 test program for certain commercial items, and most GSA FSS competitions do not have to be posted. At least not for most of us. I don't know about the Army regs.

Please define "annual renewals".

I thank everyone for their input and Vern for pointing out the source of the Cadillac vs Chevy saying. I guess I just have to negotiate with my clients over what should be their needs versus what I think is a want. I usually try to use the Washington Post test with them. How would they like to see thier justification on the front page behind their name. It works most of the time. It seems like the issue always surfaces in orders for vehicles and household/office equipment. I have actually been told that they "needed" a BMW because they "had" to travel at 200KM an hour on the autobahn and thier safety would be in question in a lesser car. No, they were not law enforcement. Meanwhile I drive a Chevy Cavilier on the Autobahn just fine every day.

I thought I could find some kind of definition of what the "minimum requirements of the Government" was in either the FAR or the Redbook but after an hour of computer searching I have not found anything. Google has not given me anything of value either. Now I come to you wise experts for advice. I am refering to the old addage I heard 35 years ago that you should not buy a Cadillac when a Chevy will do the job. I am looking for something that I can hang my hat on when denying clients who want a $1400 refrigerator with bells and whistles when we have $700 plain Jane unit in stock, or fancy drapes that cost $700 per panel versus a normal $200 per panel. I have flat out refused to buy a few things in the past but had no real regulation or rule to back me up. My usual response to the person yelling at me on the other end of the phone is to tell them they need to call my supervisor who always supports me. However, it would sure be nice if there was a few words somewhere that I could point to as the reason for my denying the request. Any known passages you could point me at???

What is FPIS? Never heard of that type I don't think.

Assuming the Government was not to blame for the units not working (e.g. bad specs) this seems to be a termination for default of the entire contract. You cannot convert Requirements to IDIQ unless you can negotiate the contractor into a bilateral agreement by letting him off the hook for bad performance. But then you aren't helping your fellow COs get a bad apple out of the barrel.

The contract type should be based on business risk to the contractor/Government and not on which way the political winds are blowing the sand. This should not be confused with the danger risk of their employees as some firms in the war zones try to get you to believe.

She could have done what most of my customers do. Rush the order to the acquisitions office and put us on the bubble for meeting the deadline. We do meet it 95% of the time and within regulations. However, I know some contracting offices have the reputation of not even trying and never getting it done in time. However, that should be addressed to senior management. Splitting requirements is against the rules, is therefore unethical. It breaks the laziness rule if nothing else. Take the effort and find your contracting officer.

Yes, my mistake. I should not have added the last comment about being able to walk away from a BPA when it is under FAR Part 8. It is awarded under the terms of a real contract that has specific BPA procedures so walking away or failing to deliver would probably be upheld as a breech.

We make GSA FSS BPAs by this method all the time. You can specify extra terms if you need to but the FAR Clauses for min and max are not necessary. We give the companies our estimated volume at time of competeing the BPA. The BPA is awarded for five years and all delivery orders are awarded to the winning vendor. An annual review is required but no options are. But remember you just have a BPA and not a contract so either party can walk away at any time or demand price changes at any time.

These complex contracts are too difficult for the average contracting officer and the ones that are capable already have too many contracts to be trying an time consuming experiment. Most requirements are too vague for a contractor to take the risk and few agencies will be able to properly calculate the savings. Then there is always a program official who just plain wants to short change the contractor just like there are contractors who want to rip off the Government. There would have to be time consuming objective formulas figured out and written into the contract and I don't see that happening very often. I am so busy already that this boggles my mind.

This was a guard contract with a regular hours CLIN and an Emergency hours CLIN for the same paygrade of guard. We wrote hundreds of contracts configured like this for posts worldwide and this was the first time the subject came up. We assumed we could add the regular hours and emergency hours together when comparing to the 25% variation. What Brinks charged was that the CLINs had to be treated separately and they were entitled to an adjustment of the Emergency hours CLIN. We thought we had it covered with our custom clause but the court has disagreed. We have since rewrote the clause and hope it holds up next time.

Sorry, I did my last reply wrong I guess. Anyway, I would just like to say that FEDBID only runs a reverse auction site. They are not "buyers". That would be the contract specialist/officer posting their requirement or giving it to the FEDBID employee to post. I would not recommend it for complicated services without putting out the solicitation and technically selecting the firms that should bid in the reverse auction. FEDBID can arrange a separate auction of just your requirement.

My agency uses FEDBID extensively with great results. They estimate an 8 to 10% savings which could be debateable and a 69% small business award rate which is verifiable. At my agency FEDBID was originally given a $1 contract using 8a procedures because they were a small 8a at the time. I think it was recently recompeted using best value procedures and I don't think any other auction site can beat the FEDBID services. They have personnel in your office to post the requirements for you, they automatically post all orders over $25K on FEDBIZOPPS for you, and they post the award on FEDBIZOPPS for you after you have selected the winner. They hired personnel that knew government contracting to assist them placing the correct clauses on thier acquisitions and FEDBIZopps transfers. They worked very hard to become the "go to" service provider in the Federal Government and that is why so many agencies use them now. Hard work and dedication to the Federal Government got them to where they are now. And no I don't work for them but they are my kind of company.

I think it goes back to the fact that the order is for professional services that used to be known as personal services. The employee is treated the same as if he were a government employee, works next to governement employees and travels at a moments notice just like Government employees. There is no way to know what travel is needed or to where. We always make the the travel reimbursable and specifically state they are to use the FTR/JTR for maximum charges. Without that statement they can follow corporate policy that may include business class for every flight.