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Unauthorized Commitment or Creative Contracting


Slumdog

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Every year orders are place under a defense entity IDIQ contract. Unfortunately, the requirements folks all too often forget to include some of the CLINs that were on order the year before and are still required in the following fiscal year. This has not been a problem because the contractor continues to provide the items even though they were not re-ordered in the current task orders and are consequently not under contract. These items may have been left off the task orders because of sloppy requirements or because they are legitimately no longer required. The current business practice is to issue a modification to the task order with a delivery date in the past when performance began for the omitted services when it is discovered that items are being provided by the contractor, not on order, but are in fact required. Discovery of omitted CLINs could be several weeks or several months after the original task order was issued. This seems a bit like an authorized commitment but this process has become the status quo.

I'm curious to find out if anyone has been down a similar road and had to address similar situations with or without following FAR part 1 requirements for ratifying UA's.

Thanks

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I'm curious to find out if anyone has been down a similar road and had to address similar situations with or without following FAR part 1 requirements for ratifying UA's.

What I've witnessed is unauthorized commitments being somewhat common, always ratified, and when ratified the Part 1 requirements aren't always addressed as properly as they probably should be. I've also spoken with friends in other offices where ratifications are treated very seriously and it sounds like are rarely ratified. Occasions where Part 1 requirements aren't followed have been rare or non-existent from what I've seen.

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What I've witnessed is unauthorized commitments being somewhat common, always ratified, and when ratified the Part 1 requirements aren't always addressed as properly as they probably should be. I've also spoken with friends in other offices where ratifications are treated very seriously and it sounds like are rarely ratified. Occasions where Part 1 requirements aren't followed have been rare or non-existent from what I've seen.

Copper - You are getting to my point. These actions are not ratified as UA Commitments per FAR Part 1, rather the task orders are just modified adding the items with a performance start date in the past. Maybe you've hit the nail on the head, UA's aren't being taken seriously and if the items provided while not under contract can be added via mod and invoiced for via this path of least resistance, all to the good. Why rock the boat and have to be disciplined about the ordering process and contracting requirements. The reason I look for viable alternatives is because this seems to violate the basic concept of a contract.

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If you stop paying for supplies/services not ordered, I believe that they will stop providing those items that are not ordered.

I agree, saying Thank You to the contractor and not ratifying the UA Commitment would be sweet. Unfortunately this is not an acceptable alternative.

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