woops85

Anyone know how the Pentagon does it for the portraits of the Sec Defs?

Here's what NITAAC at NIH did when they awarded CIO-SP2. Award was made in Dec to the 40+ vendors. They entered Records of Call (ROCs - their funding documents) into the system, one for each vendor, in the amount of the minimum guarantee. Min guarantee language stated that it would be paid out within the FY of the contract award. They did not complete the approval process on the ROCs. When a prime received an award from Jan - Sep of that year, they deleted the ROC in the system. On 30 Sept, around 5PM, they approved the remaining minimum guarantee ROCs for those primes that had not yet received a Task Order award. Would that work in your agency?

Stan said it better than I did. I assume the minimum guarantee language has something in it about when that would be paid out if an order not received. Since POP doesn't start until FY11, assuming earliest payout would be in FY11 and therefore using a FY11 Line of accounting that is subject to availability allows you to make your award

Any particular schedule(s)? Your usual limitation would come from the need for security clearances or base access.

Why not apply SAF funds?

@Desparado - Check the GSA Insite for the Acquisition Letters and PINs. GSA's internal requirement to use E-Buy to post everything came out in one fo those. Can't remember the number - sorry. @napolik - You can certainly state multiple Schedules and/or SINs. Awardee (wither Prime or the CTA) must possess all required SINs or you have opened door to protestor. After all, there was a reason you chose to list the multiple SINs in the first place and someone will call you on it.

Intent is probably that labor services must be on the referenced GSA contract (assume a schedule) but that the proposed equipment does not have to be. What did the issuing KO say when asked?

Problem is that Government doesn't pay you until the material has been received. So release of the material to the floor for performance, assuming that happens at the Government facility, always happens at the Destination specified in the order.

Obviously your CO thinks it does and at this point does anyone else's opinion matter? By this time, you could probably have completed the form and had it signed by whoever has the delegated authority since less than $100K

All - The Army's "Service Contract Approval Request" (also known as a SCAR - and it lives up to its initials) has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with the Service Contract Act. It stems from the Army Policy for Civilian Hiring and Initiation/Continuation of Contracts for Service Personnel signed by the Secretary of the Army on 23 Feb 2006. All relates to insourcing and the SCAR basically requires the requesting organization to explain why they cannot perform the services requested with the people they are authorized on their manning document. And this is an annual requirement so has to be done before each option to justify why you still need the help.

DCAA is auditing and recommending the indirect rates while the CO is approving the rates to be charged on the contract.

The clearance belongs to the individual - you can't investigate the background of a position. The requirement for the clearance and/or the need for access belongs to the position. If individual not in position that requires clearance, clearance gets made inactive and can stay that way for 2 years. Any time during that 2 years, can be reactivated without going through another investigation UNLESS the investigation periodic review period has passed (5 yrs for TS, 10 for S). Plus any solicitation that involves access to classified material should have a DD-254 included. Company can use the DD-254 and their intention to bid solicitation as reason to initiate clearances. If they decide not to bid or lose, they must cancel investigation request.

Some, not all, of the GSA GWACs have ceiling rates established for Cost Plus labor. Millennia (since expired), Millennia Lite (expiring in all Functional areas soon) and ANSWER all had Cost Plus ceiling rates. Alliant and AlliantSB do not. 8(a) STARS doesn't allow CP orders. Schedules only allow FFP and T&M (including LH) orders.

I agree with your controller although not because of ceiling restrictions. Certain training/certifications (CISSP, PMP, etc) provide a benefit to the company and employee that extends beyond the contract they are working against. Additionally if these certifications/knowledge is part of the required skill set of the position (esp if key personnel) then it is incumbent upon the contractor to bear the cost. If the training is so specific that it doesn't apply anywhere else, then it should be charged as an ODC on the contract. Examples of this might include training on proprietary software that is provided as GFP in the contract. If you truly believe that you have this type of training cost and it was unanticipated at time of proposal, then you should request a ceiling increase from the CO. You'll need to explain why you did not anticipate the costs when you proposed - and training replacement personnel because of turnover generally isn't a good enough reason. Neither is "we didn't think of it"

I don't know how long it takes but we recently had an agency protest because bidder said we didn't do it. Ruling was that because award was a task order against a pre-competed ID/IQ, we were not required to because the PCO of the ID/IQ had done that at time of ID/IQ award.

Am I reading the decision wrong (or too fast and missing something)? As I read the decision, the Court found that the Government was wrong to request the suit be dismissed because Navarro had no standing. I didn't see anywhere that the Court addressed the matter of whether DOE would be required to give a debriefing - just that the Government's argument for dismissal was faulty as was Navarro's argument that the procurement should have been covered by FAR 15 or 16 procedures. Totally agree with Vern though. Even if you just provide them a written debriefing so they know why they lost, you might avoid a lot of hassle.

At our old building, there was a deli on the first floor and folks would drop off their proposals and then go get coffee and sit at table where they could see door to building and watch for folks bringing boxes. Since we do a lot of Oral presentations and tend to start them one or two days following proposal due date, you'd occasionally see someone not from building hanging out in cafeteria on the four or five days following proposal due dates. They were watching to figure out who and how many had proposed. But when I was with Industry, plan was always to drop off at least an hour before time due. Boss never wanted to be first - he wanted to see if other boxes were already there.

The information we required on clearances in our sealed envelope was the elements of PII needed by the Security Officer to check in JPAS. Name, DOB, SSN

We just did exactly what Vern stated. All contractor personnel are required to have a TS/SCI before they can start work. We asked for a sealed envelope from each offeror with clearance information in it so clearances could be verified. The presence of the envelope with the appropriate information inside is being evaluated as pass/fail. The CO is having the Security Officer verify the clearance info provided and the technical eval team never evens sees the contents of the envelope.

But your example leaves out the Schedule part of the equation. Was your ACWP lower than expected because all the work wasn't done?? Need to look at your ACWS and EAC as well for the originally scheduled work.

I've seen it done where the subcontractor costs are bid as an ODC as well as where the subcontractor labor is billed under the Prime's T&M rates. Former method allows Govt to see prime mark-up on subs where latter method does not. For our FSS Schedule orders, we routinely put in the Instructions to Offerors that if subcontracting is proposed, all labor and materials proposed must be contained within the prime contractor's FSS Schedule Contract. I think the key to deciding which way to go is in the definition of Materials as you quoted in your post “Materials” means— (1) Direct materials, including supplies transferred between divisions, subsidiaries, or affiliates of the contractor under a common control; (2) Subcontracts for supplies and incidental services for which there is not a labor category specified in the contract; If it's an incidental service for which no labor category is established in the contract, then it gets billed as an ODC. Would be interested in hearing from the more senior 1102s on if and when they would want subcontractor costs to be billed as ODC even if the labor category existed (maybe if review of sub's sealed envelope showed prime's mark-up if using prime contractor rate is unreasonable?)

Any time we write a D&F to support a new T&M contract that contains options, we are required to provide our plan for reviewing the requirement each year to see if we have enough historical data, requirements have stabilized enough, etc to allow the KO to negotiate to convert all or part of the order to FFP. Part of that plan is structuring the CLINs to allow conversion on a task area by task area basis instead of having one big labor CLIN. Post-award reality is that it often happens at the CLIN level and there's usually something in one of the tasks that remains variable enough to make continuing T&M for that task area a better option for us.

We just went through this. Only way we got our requirement out of 8(a) program was to put another one in. Existing requirement had grown so the estimated annual value was larger than size standard for applicable NAICS and SBA still didn't want to let it go.

Wanda - Give it the old college try. Submit a letter to your CO requesting a modification. Explain the benefit to the Government (not to you) of having the new labor categories on the contract. As far as rates and billing goes - does your contract state that the rates included were ceiling rates? If so, that's where the objection you are getting now probably comes from.

Try contacting the Public Building Services at GSA. Start with the Customer Accounts people in your region - they should be able to hook you up with a CO or building manager in your area who has the experience with the metrics.