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Boof

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Everything posted by Boof

  1. How to communicate and collaborate with thier clients. Beiing a team player when appropriate, taking total charge when necessary and knowing when to do each. All the training in the world will not solve someone being emotionally immature and unable to function on a team. Or someone so introverted they block thier cube entrance with a filing cabinet and never leave thier cube.
  2. Now we get information that Gabriel should have provided in the first post. Kicked down the road for 4 years and $10B involved? Plus I read about a BOA (what has that to do with the contract). Sounds like the legal departments need to hash this out. Or do as Don suggested and issue a final decision before the legal teams fight it out. $10B would make me do everything in my power to push Section H at the Governement.
  3. Remember that GSA has pioneered awarding IDIQ contracts with no pricing at all for which there will be competition at the task order level. The GAO overruled the protest against that method. So it is not so clear cut anymore.
  4. All, I am not very good at trying to research historical information on why actions are the way they are. The subject tax law allows us to renegotiate price for unexpected business taxes charged the contractor but does not allow us to increase the price for social security and other employement taxes levied on the workers. Why not? Could someone with good research skills see if the Federal Register or FAR council explained why this is. If they are working in one of our conflict zones and the host country suddenly pulls 15% of thier pay, they want to be made whole again or they threaten to head for the next plane out. They are there to make money, not for the scenery. So why can we make a contractor whole but not his employees?
  5. I think I learned a lot preparing for the test. The exam was more difficult than any I took in college so I was very proud to pass it. My management was impressed as many are NCMA members and that sure did not hurt my rise from intern to Division Director in minimal time. I kind of like seeing the CPCM in my signature block too.
  6. Our form (DS-1910 automated) has to go to the small business office even if it is a 100% set aside for small business. They get to help us decide which socio-economic category we should be using. Our published pecking order for this year (several years) is HUBZONE, SDVOSB, and WOSB. So the COs must prove with market research that each in turn cannot meet the need. If none can, then you can go regular small business or large business as justified. The form is very similar to the DoD form in content but not looks of course. It is passed electronically in our MyData system.
  7. Department of State uses the DS-1910 as our required form. It was recently automated as more of a database than a form so i have no idea how to attach it now.
  8. He needs 100 per year but can only store 10. Why not award a delivery order for 100 widgets and on the delivery order state they are to be delivered ten at a time upon receipt of an email from the program office POC/COR. The company invoices after each shipment. We have done that several times. Why would this be an issue?
  9. It depends on the Agency and how it is orgainized. In my agency, we have Branch Chiefs and Division Directors above the COs. Contractors can appeal to them and they do with some frequency. We also have an ombudsman assigned by clause to all IDIQ contracts to ensure fair opportunity. If the management thinks a contractor is being wronged, they will talk to the CO involved to try and improve the situation or if they believe the CO to be right they will explain to the contractor why we believe what we are doing is proper. All past performance reports through CPARS must go to the contractor for comment, and if they disagree with the report, they can refute the report and request a review. All our reviews are by a Division Director. We have reassigned contracts in some cases where it is obvious the CO is having personality conflicts with the contractor's representatives. I have seen the complaints about not being able to do anything about a particular CO but my immediate thought is "everyone has a supervisor somewhere". If all fails, file a breach of contract as stated earlier.
  10. I am told by my small business liasion that they should contact thier local SBA Commercial Marketing Representative for the latest guidance.
  11. A lot of COs like to think of a fixed unit price labor hour contract as being "fixed price" They like the fixed price clauses. Many of these contracts do not have any deliverables except for the hours worked. Therefore, every hour not worked is an hour not delivered and it can be deducted from the "fixed price". D&F not an issue for us, under 3 years only needs Branch Chief (level above CO) and over 3 years takes HCA but approval time for HCA is only a day or two.
  12. I will bet they are behind on competing the continuation contract. Like the many, many J&As I approve for my agency. They say lack of planning is not a reason for a sole source but regardless we must not let the mission fail so I sign, sign, sign continuatioms. What we really have is a lack of long range human resource planning that has resulted in too many contractors and not enough FEDS to do the inherently governmental tasks such as requirements definition and competitive solicitations. And yet once again we hear that we have too many FEDS and need a hiring freeze to thin them.
  13. Bare Walls, Cascades cause industry to make proposals that they may have no chance of ever being considered for. That convience and procurement time saved for the CO means risking proposal costs for the contractors and many would not bid in a cascade scheme for just that reason. A lot depends on the complexity of the proposal needed and thus the cost of submitting it.
  14. So who is busy telling us not to put a comma before an and. Red, White and Blue. I always put a comma after white but got told somewhere in my schooling to quit doing it. Is there some other theory out there on this?
  15. MyFrogleaps, What you are describing is an interagency agreement. It is not an assisted acquisition and it is not a direct acquisition. There is no acquisition involved. Todd Davis stated that it did not fall under the FAR. Therefore the Contract Disputes Act (FAR 33) would not apply either. Don't worry, nobody at my Agency can understand the differentation either.
  16. This delegating the award of contracts to any Government Employee** you want defies my 18 years of contract training. And lead to a helluva lot more chaos than we already have in my office. ** Awards are inherently Governmental so contract hires would definitely be out.
  17. The OIG apparently wants us to write universal procedures and local clauses to be used in determining and calculating deficiencies deductions. The inspection clause covers deficiencies just fine in my opinion and calculating what should be deducted would depend on each set of circumstances. Deciding how to enforce each particular deficiency should be a CO decision also depending on the circumstances. I think their recommendation should have been to investigate why no action had been taken since the deficiencies were in an inspection report and not recommend we make more policy and procedures.
  18. FAR FLUNG is worried about deobligating all the funds and then the contractor sends another invoice making the contract anti-deficient. That is why there is the need to get the contractor to certify they are done invoicing and have received all payments they are expecting. I don't know about other agencies, but at mine, this started being an issue a couple of years ago when from Congress, GAO, OIG and down started scrutinizing unliquidated obligations. Based on various reports our OIG seems to push that they would like us to fully deobligate and day the contract expires but of course that makes no contractual sense. GAO is doing a study of close outs right now and deobligating as quickly as possible seems to be thier emphesis too. Most funds cannot be reused at close out so I am not sure of the push to deobligate them. (No year x funds excluded). There are close out time frames in FAR Part 4 but due to lack of resources most of them are missed. Then there are the big cost reimbursement contracts that need funding left on them until DCAA does the indirect cost audits sometimes 5 years after the contract expires. And on those big complicated contracts you have the contractor submitting invoices right up to the 6 year statute of limitations (and after sometimes). So as CO you have to be careful not to leave a fortune on the contract but you must leave enough to cover unexpected invoices and increases in indirect cost.
  19. Yup. I had a friend who worked at FAA that kept insisting they get rid of the pilots everytime we heard about a plane crash in the media. This was way back in 2008 and 9. He insisted computers fly better than pilots. Tell that to those people who survived landing in the Hudson River and it is obviously not the computer on my desk. .
  20. Vern, you are right. I should have said it has an immediate impact on the bottom line. That could be lost later. Many times the desire for immediate results winds up hurting and not helping the company.
  21. A reduction in cost goes directly to the bottom line while an increase in sales usually does not because the sale price is set based on market conditions and is before taxatiion. .
  22. Our OIG just provided us a recommendation to require deducts on contracts with performance standards in the requirement. They found a contract that had a few performance issues written up by the COR and were not happy that the contract did not provide for deducts for these deficiencies. "develop and implement a) a methodology to calculate the cost associated with the contractor not meeting performance metrics and a process to reduce payment to the contractor when contractual requirements are not being met. This methodology and process should be included in all current contracts". I have seen deducts used but not in a majority of the contracts. Here they want us to agree to put some kind of deducts in all our contracts. I was just wondering what this esteemed body thought about that and what type of reply you would give them on thier recommendation.
  23. Hmmm. So you can't take credit for your experience on the tasks being recompeted? What is this world coming to? I wonder how they handled evaluating past performance.
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