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First, I want to say that I am a big fan of these forums. There is a ton of useful information here that has been very helpful to us. I want to pick the forums’ collective brain to see if anyone has advice on my particular and peculiar situation. We are running into the same issues over and over with an agency, and these issues seem to be in direct conflict with components of the FAR. It is totally possible that I am the one who doesn't understand the FAR (am I the jerk?). Please read on and share your thoughts! My business is a subcontractor to a prime under an IDIQ. We provide specialized services that meet a core need for this particular agency, and have an informal joint venture for this type of work with my prime. This IDIQ is being used for all non-IT related contracting for this agency, though the original solicitation didn’t make this at all clear, apparently, they announced that at an industry day that I wasn’t able to attend (the work I do, which is part of the core agency mission was not even described in the solicitation for the IDIQ). So for the next several years, my only mechanism to provide my services to this agency is through my working with my prime. This agency has a LONG history of using labor-hour contracts to hire contract employees in lieu of hiring federal employees. These contractors perform the exact same duties as federal employees, which are core components of the agency’s mission, and they are required to do it at federal offices in the same office as federal employees doing the same work. I know this because I worked at the agency for six years, and for those six years I share an office with contractors doing the exact same job as me (though they typically get paid much less). The contracts to support these positions are typically the 5-year, base + 4 option year approaches. All of this makes it look very much like personal service contracts, despite this being explicitly prohibited under the agency’s contracting mechanism. They don’t actually put any effort into disguising this fact when they write the contracts beyond the required statement saying “this is a non-personal services contract”. The appearance of using this as personal service even extends into the agency having contractors represent the agency in public and stakeholder/decision-making groups. When you ask one of the contractors who their supervisor is, most will provide the name of their NMFS project manager unless they were specifically coached to answer otherwise, and the contracting companies exercise no supervision of these employees. We have been pushing for 4 years to try to get the agency to move to a non-personal service approach at least in our area of expertise. We have brought up the personal services issue from the COR level to the IDIQ manager and the agency ombudsmen over this time frame. We have been offering a firm-fixed price approach to meeting the agency needs, which is less expensive than their labor hour approach, offers guaranteed work productivity, and compliant with the law and regulations. We have had one region use the method and that contract worked great, and that region is seeking another round of the fixed price approach. However, the entire rest of the agency has completely disregarded the approach, to the point of continuing to award labor hour contracts for personal services even when we offered a less expensive fixed-price approach. And to be clear, my prime partner and I have a solid past performance history. But our approach, which to the best of my understanding is the ONLY approach they have been offered that is actually compliant with FAR has for the most part passed over in favor of awarding to the incumbent contractor and their incumbent contract employees (which also goes even more to the point that the agency is treating the contract employees as though they are their employees). My understanding of the problems here are really: · These seem to be blatantly personal service contracts as they meet ALL of the criteria for evaluating whether a contract is personal services or not under 48 CFR § 37.104. · They are using labor hour contracts to hire for these positions despite having clearly stated criteria for number of hours requested (they are hiring in single full-time employee increments per line item), without performing a Determination & Finding to support the use of labor hours over firm fixed price or fixed price with economic adjustment (despite FAR 12.207 and FAR 16.601. · And just for fun, this agency has awarded more than $40 million in contracts in one year to one company under small business set-asides where the standard is $16.5 million, and has actually refused to do anything to remedy this to comply with the spirit (and letter) of the Small Business Act. I know that FAR hasn’t been updated, and technically what they are doing is within regulation, but they refuse to take any actions within their discretion to even limit their awards to one business under small business-set asides to $16.5 million per year, request a new small business certification, or even exercise individual CO judgment to implement the intent of the SBA. My prime offers a broader array of services and has other contracts, and is not willing to risk retaliation by appeal award decisions, and as a subcontractor, I don’t have standing to appeal or take the issue to the GAO. And the CO’s, IDIQ manager, small business advocate, and agency ombudsmen have all made it pretty clear that we would likely experience retaliation if we started appealing awards based on the use of personal services, mismatched contract types, or even our technical review ratings. I would say they have made it clear that we could expect retaliation without threatening retaliation, it would always come from somewhere else in the agency. I could appeal the expansion of scope for the IDIQ, but that ultimately leaves me with the same issues. I also want to be cautious on doing anything as it could potentially have pretty negative consequences for my prime partner if their name got associated with mine. So the advice I am seeking is how can we get the agency to move forward into a more FAR compliant approach. I understand there is a long history in doing the things the way they have for decades, and we are not trying to force them to change all at once. But we do want to see them make changes when they have the opportunity to do so (e.g. awarding contracts to proposals that are non-personal services approach and fixed-price over labor hours when the proposal is better than satisfactory and price competitive or cheaper!). I know that is a fair amount of information, so I hope I still made our issues clear. I also want to acknowledge that I could be wrong about all of this and totally be misunderstanding the FAR as I have not had comprehensive training on it, and am looking at specific components often in isolation. Any advice here is appreciated!