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Use of Existing Contractor Personnel in an Advisory Capacity in a Source Selection


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Scenario: The agency employs an existing Contractor responsible primarily for providing Naval Architecture, Marine Engineering (not Brooks Act A-E support) support for ship construction activities. Incidental to their Statement of Work would be the occasional non-voting SSEB technical advisory review of Part 8 quotes / Part 15 proposals in which the advisory Contractor personnel would recommend a consolidated list of strengths / weaknesses / deficiencies / or other discussion areas and clarifications to the SSEB.

In this case, do the requirements of FAR 37.2 apply? "This subpart prescribes policies and procedures for acquiring advisory and assistance services by contract." If you are not acquiring the services specifically to perform the advisory services, and since they are already incidental to the duties of an already performing agency Contract, does the prohibition for advisory services under FAR 37.2 extend to the above described advisory activity? Does the Government need to meet the burden of the determination prescribed at FAR 37.204 in this instance?

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Yes, FAR Subpart 37.2 applies. See 37.203( d ), which specifically limits the payment for services to "conduct evaluations or analyses of any aspect of a proposal submitted for an initial contract award..."

This is a restriction on paying for evaluation services. You might have your contractor already under contract, and their evaluation might be "incidental" to their regular contract work, but you cannot pay them unless you prepare the written determination required by 37.204.

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Thanks for the replies ji20874, I do not disagree with what you've stated.

Now shifting from the issue of contractors serving as technical advisors to an evaluation, to a deeper issue which is the use of contractor employee contract specialists: Does this subpart apply to those contractor employee contract specialists who will serve in the following capacities:

- Facilitating a source selection;

- Preparing the price evaluation report;

- Recommending a negotiating position to the Contracting Officer.

And obviously, when using formal source selection procedures, the source selection plan would necessarily need to reflect inclusion of this contractor performing this type of support.

Thoughts?

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