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Boof

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  1. PepetheFrog hit the nail on the head for why we have restricted past performance to primes versus allowing reports on subs and key personnel. Joint ventures are particularly troublesome to deal witth because they tend to be creeated just for your requirement and are to not be treated favorably or unfavorably (the old "neutral"). If you restrict past performance to primes and then you discover one of the partners has poor performance, you won't be able to use that information to lower thier score. (At least not directly and above board).
  2. Vern, I mean by held responsible that it would act like the Christian Doctrine. If they certify they have read the provisions/clauses on the list then it applies even if it is accidently left out of the solicitaion. For instance, 52.222-56 requires the contractor to submit a specific certification before award. Can we expect them to provide this certification even if the CO forgot to put that provision in the solicitation. They did certify they knew the requirement for it. Or would a solicitation amendment be the only solution. Now I realize that making an amendment to correct ones own mistake is not that big a deal but I was curious what everyone thought about this idea of using SAM certifications as a crutch. I never really realized how many provisions/clauses the contractors were reading or agreeing to by submitting a SAM registration until today. Todd, you make a good point that unless 52.204-7 and -8 (or thier commercial item equivelents) are in the contract, the SAM certs don't apply.
  3. I would like an opinion from my esteemed collegues. I just realized that contractors have to certifiy they have read a whole list of provisions (some are clauses) when registering in SAM. Once registered, can we then hold them reponsible if accidently left out of a solicitation? One step further - if answering an outside audit that we did not have the provision in the solicitation - can we cite SAM to say it was required so not important that it was not in the solicitaiton/contract. SAM says: (only partial list of provisions). "I have read each of the FAR and DFARS provisions presented on this page. By submitting this certification, I, , am attesting to the accuracy of the representations and certifications contained herein, including the entire NAICS table. I understand that I may be subject to criminal prosecution under Section 1001, Title 18 of the United States Code or civil liability under the False Claims Act if I misrepresent in any of the above representations or certifications to the Government. READ ONLY PROVISIONS - The following FAR and DFARS provisions are provided for you to read. They do not require completion of any data. Select the provision number to expand and review the full text. When certifying to the information on this page, you are also certifying that you have read each one of these provisions. FAR 52.203-11: Certification and Disclosure Regarding Payments to Influence Certain Federal Transactions FAR 52.222-50 Combatting Trafficking in persons FAR 52.222-56 Certification Regarding Tafficking in Persons FAR 52.223-1: Biobased Product Certification FAR 52.225-20 Prohibition on Conducting Restricted Business Operations in Sudan-Certification" .
  4. Companies excluded from the competitive range can request a pre or post award briefing. Most want a post award debrief because the FAR limits what can be divulged prior to award and they only get one debrief. The protest time starts with the debriefing for facts they learned from the debriefing. I reduced a competitinve range of 3 to just one before. We had our clear winner but wanted to get some better terms.. So we held further discussions and got a final proposal revision.
  5. Due to the SBA opinion, the FAR has a proposed rule change to encourage use of FAR 19 overseas. It will make most of FAR 19 apply to overseas but allow use of local vendors when more practical or required by local country agreements. The downside is that it expects every award not being made to U.S. small business to have a justification in the folder with research as to why it is required or more economical to procure the item locally. This will increase work load at our 269 posts around the world. It could be a really big manhour waster if the oversight agencies end up wanting extensive market research and cost comparisons in each file. They never have any common sense from what I have observed.
  6. For over 18 years I have seen plenty of IDIQ contracts for commercial items/services awarded under the Uniform contract format (UCF) with no commercial item clauses in them. The main reason is the CO was more comfortable with all the normal clauses being in the contract and thier familiarity with the UCF solicitation. For three or four years as a junior CS I also used nothing but the UCF because that was standard in the office. In 1998 the FAR rewrite was pretty new. Most of the time no one complained and we bought millions and millions of dollars of commercial supplies/services using FAR 15 versus 12. A couple of times we had offerors demand that the contract be solicited using the more vendor friendly commercial item clauses. That why the commercial item procedures were created in the first place. We usually admitted our error and resolicited using commercial item procedures and clauses. That is how I really began realizing that I needed to use the right type of solicitation for what I was buying and that FAR 12 had some advantages for both the offeror and Government. Protests do make us think and learn. I still see plenty of contracts for commercial items/services awarded using the UCF. I guess my point is that I would just award the delivery orders using the contract as written. Why fret over needing the commercial item clauses if a contractor is not complaining. And they should not be since they signed the UCF contract.
  7. The terms and conditions of the two different GWAC contract groups are different so it would be awfully hard to evaluate the proposals fairly apples ot apples.
  8. The clause is FAR 52.203-17 about contractor whistleblower protections. (FAR 3.908 pilot program). GAO is doing a multi agency study on how much we are using it. They provided a list of sample actions off FPDS (mostly delivery orders) for us to inform if we have the clause in them or not. Many of the IDIQs were before April 2014 when the clause was added. . Thanks for the advice.
  9. Thanks Vern. Now we get to the definition of solicitation. I think a request for proposals amoung mutltiple IDIQ contractors would be considered a solicitation (correct me if I am wrong). So at that point we would have to include the clause according to 1.108(d)(1). However, the contractors never agreed to it when the IDIQ contract was awarded. I suppose the award of a task order would be consideration. So should an oversight agency say we are in non-complaince for the delivery order not having the clause in it?
  10. I think the Forum has had this discussion before but could not find it. IDIQ contract is awarded in 2013, new mandatory clause is added to FAR in 2014, is it mandatory to modify the contract to add the clause? If not added to the IDIQ, does each delivery order issued after the effective date of the clause need it added? An outside oversight agency is indicating that we are wrong if we did not add it to either the base contract or the delivery orders.
  11. Happy New Year everyone!!! Last order processed at 11:55. Another fine year in contracting.
  12. Lets get rid of the ratification process. It always punishes the contracting personnel and the vendors instead of the program offices it is supposed to wake up.
  13. Yes, the goals now contain overseas spend. So while we achieved 41% last year, our goal for this year was negotiated with SBA to be 22.5%. We may make it this year due to a huge contract award to a large business slipping from this year into next. But that same action will almost certainly have us failing next year. The FAR council was orginally going to delete 19.000(b) to make all of FAR 19 apply overseas but are now going reword (due to Department of State and DoD input). Using US small business will be the preference but overseas contracting activities will be able document the file with why not using US small business is preferable (e.g. faster and cheaper to buy down the street, cost of shipping excessive, in country policy requires use of local vendors, etc). Any purchase made with a US vendor would have to comply. I am not sure how the final wording may come out in final rule. Our concern now is how intensive does the justification for the file have to be to satisfy outside auditors or a protest venue. Market research not currently done and documentation will still increase Post workload and cost. This will not relieve us of counting those dollars in our goals however.
  14. I don't know Pepe but I've been celebrating every since I heard about it. This company deserves to set a precedent at GAO.
  15. Seems to me they used to show what each judge scored and which outliers were eliminated and then the total score. Now they just show the max, how many were deducted and the final score in hundreths. I am not sure how one performance can be 1/100th subjective point better than another but it can. And you don't know which judges gave the low scores. I really hate sports with judges scoring them. I like objective scoring like goals, shots, baskets, and time to the line.
  16. Will liberal arts majors be allowed back in the field? Certainly as long as you also get 24 hours of business credits. However, my opinion of Government contracting has been that a law degree is needed, not a business degree. The OIG and other outside oversight don't really want us to be business advisors, just follow the laws and regulations perfectly without error, ever!!! .
  17. PEPE, The "others" are 1105s and 1106s which we used to have but those with, or working on degrees, got converted to 1102 and the others eventually left. Problem was that HR would not rate a 1105 or 6 over GS9 and most were GS7. It is very rare to find anyone competent to work for long at that pay in Washington. So they were converted to 1102s, promoted up to GS13 and the Peter Principal is in effect for many of them.
  18. It properly organized, oral presentations work wonderful for most complex solicitations. Much better than a writing contest. Probably a lot less effective in selecting staff augmentation where a lot depends on the companies recruitment methods and how much the Government is willing to reimburse for the workers labor.
  19. Well, SBA jumped right onto it saying they were reviewing all thier policies and procedures. It was all over the internet the next day. My immediate thought was, WHY? The decision applied to the law on the VA and should have had nothing to do with FAR 19 and SBA. But they started a firestorm immediately. So I bet the incorrect interpretation spreads like a virus.
  20. It is required! We are so reliant on our contract hire staff that this is a big problem with program offices sending thier contract hires overseas without much thought. They just assume they can go TDY so can the contract hire. If the employee is from a professional services company (may I say body shop) the odds are the company is not paying attention either. No one really cares until something kills or injures the employee overseas and it all blows up in everyones face.
  21. Thanks Policy Guy. Pepe, I am in a Federal contracting Office and am briefing personnel from program offices on the preference of full and open competition, what exceptions are available and how to best write thier sole source/limited source justification letters.
  22. Holy, I would do a J&A based on 6.302-1 to increase the quantities on the existing contract enough to compete an new contract. Proably a years worth by the time you compete and then deal with that possible 6 month transition you mentioned.
  23. All, Would anyone have a presentation on the need and purpose of competition that morphs into the exceptions for sole source? I am the Competition Advocate and was asked to train a group on how to best write sole source letters. I told them that they should not be writing a lot of sole source letters in the first place but I would present on obtaining competition, why we have to do it, why we should do it, etc. Then go into a "but if you must sole source, here are the rules. I can put it together myself but would love to save a bunch of manhours if someone has one already that I can edit.
  24. We have a lot of IDIQ contracts with lots of orders. Most contractors are going to assume that they can escalate thier pricing on Delivery Order proposals based on the option year dates of the base contract unless the contract says otherwise. I have seen base contracts specifically state that the price on the date awarded must be used for the entire order period but they were competed that way and the contractors knew it when setting the base contract prices. To avoid confusion later, it should be spelled out in the ordering instructions in the base contract to ensure everyone is on the same page.
  25. All requirements under $150K SAT are mandatory for small business. So not sure why a SB specialist needed to approve the set aside. To me mandatory means that if you can't procure from GSA you should post open market. If no company wants to bid there, I think there may be something wrong with the requirement. I do realize there are a few things that can only come from large business but they are usually sole source and should be justified. e.g internet service at a specific location, or software without resellers.
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