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here_2_help

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Posts posted by here_2_help

  1. Vern,

    I'm not sure there's a tremendous distinction between consultants and software developers in an SAP implementation. SAP is a fully coded system, of course. It comes ready to use right out of the box. But almost nobody uses the vanilla, ready-to-use, version and it typically requires significant customization to meet the users' specific circumstances and business process needs. That customization journey is often guided by "consultants" who are large teams of diverse SMEs (or what they will tell you are SMEs). Consulting teams include IT folks, change management folks, business process mapping folks, project management folks, etc. In my experience, the consultants run the project and the users are there to provide input and testing.

    SAP consulting is a bustling industry and good SAP consultants are worth their weight in platinum.

    H2H

  2. apsofacto,

    Again, I'm not a government employee -- just a person who's been around for a few decades on the other side of the table. That said, obviously there are a number of "customers" -- including the customer who approves the invoices -- but the real customers are the system users. If the users aren't satisfied then it's a failed implemention, regardless of what the testing reports showed.

    I get it that some users are never going to be satisfied, because *change is BAD* but I assume you are spending the money for a valid reason. I assume the current system is less than satisfactory. Thus, I assume the new system creates value to the users, the agency, and the taxpayers. Forgive me if I'm just being naive.

    But if I'm right, then a wide customer satisfaction survey 6 months after "successful implementation" would be a good thing. It's not like people don't use SLAs and other satisfaction metrics in IT acquisitions. So it's very customary. And it would show whether value was created for the users, or not.

    If you like you can issue multiple surveys to multiple "customer" communities, and you can weight them the way you want. Just document the communities and the associated weightings in the award fee plan, and then follow the plan.

    Those are my thoughts, for what they're worth.

    Hope they help.

  3. I'm not a government employee, but I'm confident that the implementation will be won or lost based on the requirements definition and business process mapping. Speaking as a employee at a company which did a fairly recent SAP implementation, I would have recommended going with one vendor for all modules (to keep finger-pointing at a minimum) and I would have recommended issuing an award fee contract, with a whopping big award fee pool that would be doled out based primarily on customer satisfaction. And I would reserve a significant piece of that pool for a customer feedback survey about six months after "go-live" because, in my experience, it takes that long for the problems to surface.

    Edited to add: fixed price seems weird to me. You want the contractor to take as long as necessary to get the blueprinting and initial testing done right. You don't want corner-cutting and use of less senior personnel in order to keep margins where they were supposed to me. That might just be me, though.

    Hope this helps.

  4. Vern,

    In all sincerity, if the CO asked one (or more) offerors those questions, would the offeror be required to answer? I ask because the "how" would not seem to be in the Section M evaluation criteria. My position would be I'm offering FFP labor category rates and I'm willing to live with them after award; why would the government care how those rates were developed in a competition?

    Maybe I just pulled them out of thin air. In all seriousness, so what? How is my methodology germane to a determination of price reasonableness, which is (presumably) based on price comparison amongst competing bids?

    If the CO thinks the offeror's proposed FFP rates are too low, s/he can verify that the offeror fully understands the requirements. I get that from The Contract Pricing Reference Guide (Chapter 8)--though I read it to say that if cost realism analysis is going to be performed, Section M should clearly state that will be the case. I also read it to say that proposed FFP prices should not be adjusted as the result of any price realism analysis performed.

    What am I missing?

    H2H

    H2H

  5. To be very clear: the contractor should NOT claim the adjustment is a cost. It is not a cost and cannot be traced to the contractor's cost records. It's not a cost reduction or a cost adder; it's simply what it is -- an adjustment to reach the desired FFP labor rate. It's the kind of adjustment contemplated by FAR 3.501, I think. It's not "buying-in" but it is offering a price that is lower (or higher) than cost plus profit in order to win a price competition.

    H2H

  6. C. Culham,

    I think Vern's point -- that a T4C can create a new right for the contractor, and possibly "reset" the Statute of Limitations -- is worth considering. If Vern is right, then a T4C would be the wrong tactic.

    I've been watching this thread with interest because I cannot conceive of any entity that would go through the headache of winning a government contract, only to fail to submit invoices. On the other hand, I know of an SDB firm that won a commercial item contract from an FFRDC, and performed very well. The firm was so busy performing that it failed to keep records of who did what for whom, and it failed invoice because the firm (quite literally) didn't know how much to invoice for. It's hard to believe, but more than an year went by before anybody noticed the situation.

    Hope this helps.

  7. Joel,

    Yes, I get that. For those rates you have an additional upward adjustment amount for "market adjustment" or whatever Michael11 wants to call it. It's not a cost.

    My point is -- and I think Michael11 basically agrees with it -- is that he has to fill in the template and provide the requested information in order to be responsive to the Section L requirements. The information being requested is not certified cost and pricing data and it is unclear how it will be used in a competitive procurement. But it has to be provided.

    Nobody said it had to make sense to the CO.

    If the information is used (or misused) in a way not specified in Section M then Michael11 may have valid grounds for a protest.

    H2H

  8. Complicate that with a Systems Contractor (one of the top five or six DoD defense contractors) that once unsuccessfully tried to delve into major, firm fixed construction culture by acquiring several premier engineering design firms and reputable construction companies, a workforce from the nearby Hanford Nuclear Reservation with the highest quality construction quality but highly unionized and a cost plus background). The parent Corporation divested itself from its engineering and construction Division, after losing billions of dollars on several firm fixed price projects, including two of our sites.

    And who was the SME who ran that E&C Division, I wonder? I wonder what he's doing today?

    :-)

  9. Before asking why our contracts were firm fixed price, I will say that the first two plants at Johnston Island and Tooele were cost reimbursement with tremendous cost and schedule growth. After completing those plants, the Army decided to replicate the Tooele as-built design for the remaining eight COUS plants under firm fixed price construction phases of the overall cost reimbursement type Systems life cycle contracts. It was a debatable decision with mixed results and which involved extremingly challenging government multi-agency Program Management efforts.

    Yes. FFP with duplicate design was clearly the way to go. Because the site conditions were exactly the same and the state regulations were exactly the same and the regulators were just as easy to work with.

    Note: Sarcasm.

    H2H

  10. I retired from teaching last month.

    I'm sorry to hear that, Vern. I realize that teaching was often a very frustrating experience for you ... but I very much enjoyed the one class I was able to attend. I tried hard to "think critically" but I'm afraid I didn't hit the mark you set. To be clear, I was okay with that. I learned more from your course than any three "seminars by PowerPoint."

    I'm sad to think that my colleagues and direct reports won't have the same opportunity to be challenged and to stretch.

    H2H

  11. duke38,

    The short answer to your question is that the government can terminate a contract at any time, in whole or in part. There is no such thing as "termination for cause" but there is a "termination for default". A Contracting Officer can terminate a contract and can choose whether to do so on the basis of convenience or default. You may not agree with the CO's choice, which is up to you. You have the right to appeal a decision you don't agree with.

    In the circumstances you (quite briefly) outlined, I don't think the contractor has the moral high ground here.

    Hope this helps.

  12. BC used to say that when a business seeks to do business with the government, the business needs to realize that the government doesn't do business. The government does government. The way to successfully do business with the government is to do government.

    Kind of makes me wonder why 1102s need a business degree. Perhaps they should be required to have a degree in government.

    H2H

  13. SubK,

    In my view the guiding principle should be equivalence. Do the qualifications of the labor categories match up, regardless of the nomenclature used? If so, then I would be fine with mapping them. In fact, I would definitely map them based on qualification equivalence regardless of what the titles say.

    If your billing person is having problems, it's likely because nobody prepared a mapping and reviewed it in terms of qualifications and signed-off. If that happened and your billing person is still hesitating, I would strongly suspect you are not paying enough to attract the right type of billing person to support government contract invoices.

    Hope this helps.

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