3 Ways PIL’s Acquisitions Are Easy to Swallow

[Guardian]

Thought I would share this brief article, which appeared this morning in VAO.  I worked with the Procurement Innovation Lab (PIL) at DHS—a good group that despite all else, really care about federal acquisition, taking meaningful strides toward further streamlining and making practitioners' jobs easier. 

3 Ways PIL’s Acquisitions Are Easy to Swallow

https://www.gotovao.com/Documents/266d3514a0154cfd9baaf7c6067c4ec2?src=Email|Today'sAcquisitionNews|12-11-2020|{954013ED-5B6C-40E6-8890-32D24F0D7BE1}&token=4Y8vNBVI1WAYO81KfED5ATLlLKog1Q8NEK3WZZFEWB0078pRzwc8PrmbkQnkBeDskyK5XUu4OHzGYKDNH4EfBll28D1YHCjnWzMjDR3jkk3Xr6FXOutOqN65GF6A8VXh

 

Be well.

[formerfed]

All good things PIL is doing.  Unfortunately many of the seasoned acquisition people blow it off by saying down select, use of the one-on- offeror discovery process, oral presentations, and on-the-spot evaluations are old stuff and nothing new.  Well doing them is new.  The acquisition structure is so afraid of change and so conservative by avoiding trying new things, these tools just aren’t used.  

[formerfed]

To add, the discovery process (similar to the older due diligence) is often extremely valuable in getting the best proposed solutions.  The old adage that “the more offerors know the need, the better the responses” is true.  This gives offerors a day or two to ask direct questions of key government program officials on the detailed requirement.  

[joel hoffman]

On 12/11/2020 at 12:55 PM, formerfed said:

All good things PIL is doing.  Unfortunately many of the seasoned acquisition people blow it off by saying down select, use of the one-on- offeror discovery process, oral presentations, and on-the-spot evaluations are old stuff and nothing new.  Well doing them is new.  The acquisition structure is so afraid of change and so conservative by avoiding trying new things, these tools just aren’t used.  

The down select or “2 Phase” (industry lingo is “short listing”) process has specifically been in FAR Part 36 (36.3) for Design-Build single contract awards and for ID/IQ base contract awards since 1997.  It took more than a decade to catch on in the USACE but then only because it was HQ directed. The 2 phase process is a perfect fit for ID/IQ base design-build contract awards.

The primary complaints have been 1)  requires 2 evaluation meetings 2) takes extra time/longer schedule and 3) reduces competition.

All three are weak excuses. And the second and third reasons are simply not true. There is NO extra time involved if the acquisition team conducts phase one in parallel with the completion of the phase two technical RFP. We proved that by actual experiences and pointed it out in the policy documents and Model Design-Build RFP Instructions, as well as in our USACE Design-Build Course beginning in the mid 2000’s.

Since competition for multiple award ID/IQ’s has historically been very high, those organizations who failed to use the two phase process were overwhelmed with the numbers of full performance capability and conceptual design proposals to evaluate. And the industry raised hell about the cost to compete against an unknown number of other firms with a very low probability of selection. Consequently, many of the best Design-Build firms chose not to compete because they could focus their resources ($ and personnel) on other, more promising projects and customers.

And it was proved that short-listing no more than 3-4 firms in phase one, single award D-B contract competitions actually increased the level of technical and price competition among the short-listed firms in Phase Two . And the overall evaluation time and effort is shorter with a limited number of (more competitive) phase two technical and price proposals.

Unfortunately, formerfed is spot on that there is a great reluctance to use this method and especially to streamline the implementation by conducting Phase One (shortlisting) in parallel with the RFP finalization.

There is also a great reluctance to use the other streamlining processes that formerfed mentioned, with the exception of on-the spot evaluations. Others and I have successfully used and promoted and taught the use of the one-on-offeror discovery process, oral presentations, and on-the-spot evaluations. With regard to one-on-one processes, I’ve been involved with very successful, pre-solicitation and pre-proposal one-on-one processes (one or the the other were used on specific acquisitions). They require strong KO willingness, involvement and leadership to succeed and a willingness by Program and Project Managers to use this method. It is particularly useful and successful on very large, complex projects.

Same is true for orals and on-the-spot evaluations. I’ve been involved in use of both of these processes. The latter is not uncommon.

Unfortunately, orals were more often used with other than USACE KO’s conducting the selection processes with a very progressive, non-USACE PMO/customer. 

On 12/13/2020 at 10:20 PM, formerfed said:

To add, the discovery process (similar to the older due diligence) is often extremely valuable in getting the best proposed solutions.  The old adage that “the more offerors know the need, the better the responses” is true.  This gives offerors a day or two to ask direct questions of key government program officials on the detailed requirement.  

Again, very successful experiences when progressive USACE or non-USACE KO’s and PMO’s were involved. Resistance to use by the conservative KO’s and teams. 

[joel hoffman]

In reviewing this thread this morning, I couldn’t remember what the term “on-the-spot evaluations” means. The link in the original post (OP) is to real time not the December 11, 2020 VAO page cited in the OP. I unsuccessfully tried Googling for the article.

Don’t know if this is what they were referring to but I found this on a Federal Acquisition Institute webpage:

“On-the-spot Consensus 

 

Submitted by sweety.jhawar.ctr on Fri, 2020-12-04 20:03

The evaluation team reads the proposal (or attends the oral presentation) and then, as a group, evaluates the proposal and immediately documents the evaluation decision in real time before starting the evaluation of the next proposal.

Problems Solved: 

• Individual evaluation reports, prior to consensus, can unnecessarily delay the evaluation timeline and increase the risk of including individual findings, not intended to be supported by the consensus team, in the consensus evaluation report

Benefits of Use: 

• Keeps documentation clear to support the decision and not deliberations”