A&AS Performance Standards

[MICHIGANKO]

Recently amended Army Regulation 5-14, Management of Contracted Advisory and Assistance Services, 13 March 2014, contains the following statement:

4-5. Development of performance work statements

"a. Performance Standards and/or metrics reflect level of service required by the Government to meet performance objectives.........Standards may be objective (for example, response time) or subjective (for example, customer satisfaction)........"

I was surprised to see the inclusion of subjective standards within the regulation, however I do not dispute the need for such flexibility. I was immediately reminded of a passage from an article on the subject of PBSA (Edwards and Nash, A Proposal for a New Approach to Performance-Based Services Acquisition, Defense Acquisition Review Journal, p.352-367). Specifically, the paragraph stating:

"Relationships are crucial, and it is well established in service marketing literature that subjective customer satisfaction is as important, and sometimes more important, than technical success. The importance of subjective factors in government service contracting is confirmed by the fact that subjective incentives - award fee and award term - are the most popular of all incentives used in performance-based contracts." Id. at 356.

I have not researched the revision history of AR 5-14 (although I will begin that now) to determine when the "subjective" language was added. Regardless, dealing with the requirement for PBSA in the procurement of A&AS is a daily challenge for the activity I represent. I am always looking for better solutions. If the Army is going to allow customer satisfaction to qualify as a "measurable standard" then I have one more approach at my disposal.

I am curious whether such subjective performance standards are actually being applied in Army Performance Work Statements, or in any Performance Work Statements for that matter.