GSA FSS IT 70 Schedule Contract Award Dollar Amount Relevance

[JAG51]

What's the purpose of indicating a "Contract Award Dollar Amount" in the FBO award notice for a GSA IT 70 Schedule award when the awardee's contract itself does not include same? This contract award dollar amount appears once (as far as I can tell) only in the FBO award notice.

FAR 52.216-19 Ordering Limitations (Dev II), which is part of a GSA IT 70 awarded contract, merely indicates the various individual SIN's and the corresponding Monetary Order Thresholds (MOT) for each, none of which equates to a contract award dollar amount. The below is just one example taken at random of what I'm referring to (see underlined portion.)

Solicitation Number:

FCIS-JB-980001-B

Notice Type:

Award Notice

Contract Award Date:

December 17, 2014

Contract Award Number:

GS35F109CA

Contract Award Dollar Amount:

$125,000

Contract Line Item Number:

132 8

Contractor Awarded DUNS:

030730030

Contractor Awardee:

EASTERN COMMUNICATIONS, LTD. 4814 36TH ST LONG ISLAND CITY NY USA 11101-1918

Synopsis:

Added: Apr 30, 2014 1:46 pm Modified: Dec 17, 2014 7:30 amTrack Changes

No Description Provided

Point of Contact(s):

Michelle B. Croan 202-694-8151

Any clarification would be greatly appreciated. Thanks:

[Desparado]

First, a slight disclaimer. When I was at GSA, I was not in the IT arena, but was in FAS, overseeing a couple of MAS Schedules. Therefore, the rules may be slightly different (although I do not believe so in this case).

The contract award amount is simply an internal tracking tool. Yes, it is used for FPDS-NG reporting, but a contractor has not yet successfully performed and in fact many never do. Therefore, some contracting officers assign the lowest possible amount ($125k) for a small business award. This is based on the minimum sales criteria required to maintain an MAS contract ($25k per year for 5 years). Now, in fact that is not truly the minimum, since a contractor has 2 years to get to that first $25k amount, but GSA has long used the $125k amount as a bare minimum. For a large business, they set the minimum at $650k for subcontracting plan purposes.

After that initial 5yr award period, as part of the process to exercise the 5yr option, the contract value will be re-estimated based on past sales performance. I could be wrong, but if memory serves the only place the new dollar value is reported is in FPDS-NG with the modification to exercise the option.

The MOL/MOT is established at the SIN/Schedule level, and not at the individual contract level. Also, if you haven't encountered this already, you will... Government agencies often are confused by the terms, "Maximum Ordering Limitation" and "Monetary Order Thresholds". They will think that this is the maximum amount that can be ordered against the MAS contract (go figure!). This is not the case. The MOL is one of the most badly-worded acronyms in GSA. I tried to bring this issue up on several occasions but apparently the rule-making process is too extensive to change it. This term only applies to the threshold which a contractor is required to accept an order (within scope of course) and not a ceiling amount that can be placed against the contract with contractor acceptance.

Hope this helps.

[JAG51]

Excellent. That's what I figured. I read 519.705-6 Postaward Responsibilities of the Contracting Officer where it references the notice of award requirements, but such only relates to small business plans and the SBA, so I discounted it. I figured that value had to be used for a purpose other use as a maximum dollar amount but I could not find the evidence to support my presumption. You've reinforced it.

Thank you!