formerfed

Carl, I’m just responding to your comment in general and not specifically to the OP, his agency, of this subject action. A huge problem across the government is a lack of communication, collaboration, and partnering between RAs and contracting offices. Some agencies/offices do an outstanding job but the majority seem to build a high wall between the two organizations. But for the contracting process to be effective, it’s a two way street. It’s incumbent on RAs to have at least a basic working knowledge of the contracting process. Ideally a RA shouldn’t be submitting a requisition, except for other than relatively straight forward actions, without contracting’s prior knowledge, preliminary planning, and involvement. But I know in reality this usually isn’t the situation. An RA deserves some basic service from a contracting office - general guidance and assistance specially at the onset of an identified need, acknowledgement of receipt and assignment of a requisition after preparation and submission, estimated timeframes provided for completion of the contracting action, and communication of status and necessary RA actions. In turn, the RA needs to reach out and proactively ask questions and provide needed information and clarification to ensure the contract specialist fully understands the need/requirement. In any event, a contract specialist/contracting officer should be certain their actions are consistent with the RAs needs. With everything being electronic now, it’s so easy to send draft documents to RAs for a quick review and concurrence prior to issuance or proceeding to award.

I vaguely remember something on this subject. I think it was in the Federal Property Management Regulations in the past. I briefly searched and couldn’t find anything though so maybe it’s an obsolete issue.

I agree with Carl and others. Painting a hull is a commercial service. Applying new paint to cover spots in older paint is done all the time at marina yards.

I assume “GSA buy” means you placed an order under a GSA FSS contract. If so all you need to do is just do a modification to the existing order or place a new order including a note in your file the accessory items were inadvertently omitted. The only glitch might be if the accessory items aren’t on the GSA contract or other schedule holders are able to supply the same or similar items.

Ha. I mistyped widely and spell check changed it to this.

Lots of speculation here with no further OP background. Until we know details of the BAA approach used, our responses aren’t that meaningful. The way BAAs get implemented vary wifely - some have clauses defined upfront and others don’t, some have model contracts which may be not be given to offerors until after selection for award, some allow offerors to propose contract types and others contain the contract type in the BAA instructions, some allow for “competition of solutions” with wide variation of responses to a high level agency need while others have a specific and narrow focus of need, etc.

Fishpaw, this seems like a very practical approach unless the action has a significant dollar value. If you are comfortable with the other costs like labor and materials you mentioned, it’s hard to go wrong with a 10% indirect rate. I’ve found some websites that show typical overhead and fringe rates by industry. That should provide you support as well. One thing I would do is talk with the owner/operator and go over all the items included in the indirect rate. 10% seems very low so I would be comfortable with all the details. Some agencies that have difficulty getting timely audit assistance from DCAA and use commercial CPA firms for proposal audits. However if you feel 10% isn’t out of line, I wouldn’t bother. You’re talking about a fixed price arrangement so it should be easy to justify the dollar value.

I couldn’t get in either. But I can see the 2022 version from the Library of Congress site https://www.loc.gov/item/2022676552/

The standard terminology/abbreviation throughout the government is JOFOC or JOFOCs for plural.

Another possible situation where it might not be bad is with an IDIQ contract. If the contract is set up with a base with option years and performance occurs through issuance of task/delivery orders, then exercise of all options at once is a possibility.

For starters, look at the GWAC contract ordering provisions. Most have procedures on placing orders.

Carl Culham’s suggestion is excellent. A variation of that is first stating your goals with use of key personnel - effective management of overall operations, seamless communications with the government, expert and intimate knowledge of government systems, avoidance of essential personnel turnover, etc. Then instruct offerors to describe how they will achieve those through such means as designating personnel as key. You could also include another goal is minimizing the government's administrative cost. As Joel and Retreadfed states, you may not also need key designations at all by carefully describing your objectives and concerns and allow offerors to describe how they will achieve those If your Tech Code is concerned with staff turnover, you can also include that also as an objective. Ask offerors how they can comply and factor that in with past performance.

Not trying to downplay significance, but relying upon cost or pricing data is used as a crutch way too often. There are many other ways to evaluate cost/price reasonableness before resorting to requesting cost or pricing data. Contracting Officers are required to determine fair and reasonable prices before award of any contract. Just requesting pricing data from offerors and use of audit reports without doing anything more can give a good feeling but does that really ensure a fair and reasonable price? DoD has some excellent personnel (finance and technical) that can assist contracting staff as well in deterring what’s a fair price. But they are rarely used. Certainly the Senators have valid concerns expressed in their letter. But the government may not be doing their best job either. If a company can’t or won’t provide data, it seems like other tools at the contracting staffs disposal aren’t always used. One point in the letter that’s kind of humorous is the statement that Transdigm refused to provide information on the number of transactions that fell above and below TINA thresholds. Shouldn’t the government already know that?

Unfortunately similar situations occur throughout government. It’s generally caused by a lack of understand intellectual property in general and licensing specifically. It seems to occur with both program and contracting personnel. In this court case, I suspect destroying documents was just to keep the employees from looking bad. Training in intellectual property should be mandatory for COs, CORs, and PM.

I’m going to take a different view of the debriefing subject. If the solicitation, with its evaluation criteria and instructions, requires preparation of an extensive response and requires offerors to invest considerable time and money, then a debriefing should be offered if nothing more than a courtesy.

If that’s the case, good point

It might but I doubt it would be as successful. Both agencies and contractors respect GAO for many reasons - chief being knowledge, impartiality, and position of authority. Whether the assessment is fair or not, industry doesn’t see that as much with agencies. So I think that’s why industry is not utilizing the agency process so much

This brings up the need to discuss why the current agency level protests procedures aren’t working.

I think Carl Culhane already answered this last Friday in the 3rd post in this thread. Unless I’m not fully understanding the issue, a no cost extension by mutual agreement is all that’s needed. That’s assuming existing funds are sufficient to carry work until the new contract is in place. If additional funding is needed, that portion of the extension needs documented and justified as a sole source action as Retreadfed says in the post above.

@Retreadfed good thought/suggestion.

Vern, I really like it. My only suggestion is adding some timeframe for the HCA to respond to solicitation terms complaints. It certainly would be awkward to acknowledge merits of a complaint after the solicitation closes as well.

Wow. This discussion evolved into multiple mentions of lawsuits. That should be the very last resort. The prudent thing to do is start with a conversation with the COR and perhaps PM. Listen to their reactions and positions. You may resolve things at that level. If not you can request a meeting with their boss. In any case, involve the contracting officer. One other step is requesting a meeting with senior agency management. In all circumstances, I would start with the introduction that my company wants to do the best possible job for the agency but we are facing some difficulty with inspection. Finally if I wasn’t satisfied, a letter setting forth my company’s position and requesting a formal response comes last. Of course, a lawsuit is an option but not something I would recommend based on what’s been said. First I think the grounds is a stretch. Second, I think most government personnel would want to resolve it before that happens. Finally it can harm receiving future business. I won’t get into arguments here whether that’s possible or fair, but it’s reality.

I’ve seen two different ways of handling this. One is used a blended rate which essentially is an average of all positions. It’s often used when internally you have multiple job titles for the work. The other is creating sub LCATs like Admin1, Admin2, etc. A recent example is conference support where the same labor category (admin support) performed multiple duties of varying complexity. The positions did things like participant registration, distributing materials, capturing speaker comments, preparing presentations and slide decks, operating equipment, etc. and different rates were associated with each. The contractor had separate billings for each and the government liked it.

Patrick, switching browsers worked. The new revision is really impressive. It shows lots of comprehensive reviews and analysis and great work with summations and conclusions. Congratulations to you and your team. A lot of 1102s and PMs don’t really fully understand FAR 8.4. That includes many contract attorneys who focus chiefly on FAR 15 acquisitions. This will go a long way to better advise and educate. You likely will receive some negative feedback. That should be expected. Even here you’ll see differing opinions on what GAO decisions really mean and whether commenters agree or not that GAO or the COFC got it right. My advice is read and listen and make adjustments you feel are necessary. But the important thing is you took a huge step in providing instructions and guidance which didn’t really exist before. Super job!

@Patrick S I don’t see the updated content on the link