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POP or Delivery Date?


Freyr

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Hi all, my organization seems to put periods of performance on everything. Supplies, services, construction, everything from Hotel rooms to hardware maintenance. We use PRISM and I guess there's some issues between our financial system and PRISM that makes it so our purchase requests cannot be set up with X days after award and the award must match the purchase request exactly in terms of CLINs, dollar amounts, quantities, delivery dates, etc. It also seems to prevent vendors from invoicing for things before the ultimate delivery date or the end of the period of performance.

For some of these I think it makes more sense to have a solid single delivery date, like hardware maintenance, but others it's a little more foggy. Leases of equipment or real property for example, I feel it's a supply purchase but is it one that should have a single delivery date or a period of performance? Does it ultimately matter if we explain in the contract what we're expecting? For example, if we're renting a portable office trailer for 3 months from January until April we could have a delivery date of January in PRISM with language that says we're renting from January 1st through March 31st in the CLIN. I've dealt with PRISM before but clearly my new organization didn't want to shell out for a decent version of it... 

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There may be several issues at play simultaneously, including (but not limited to)--

(1) Some people cannot tell the difference between a service and a supply.

(2) Some people cannot tell the difference between a period of performance (usually for services) and a delivery date (usually for supplies).

(3) Some automated systems were designed by people who suffer from (1) or (2)  above.

(4) Sometimes, we mix supplies and services and cannot tell the difference in the resulting CLIN.

(5) Some people think that the delivery date (or period of performance) must be extended in order to accept and make payment for a late deliverable.

For these reasons, I try to think about correct principles, and helping others to understand correct principles.

YES, regardless of your automated system shortfalls or the incorrect understanding of your co-workers, please explain everything clearly in the contract.

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I agree.  I’ll add that many systems like PRISM are constrained by the finance system.  PRISM and most contracting systems had lots of procurement expertise in their design.  But contracting knowledge wasn’t part of the requisitioning/budget/finance system design.  So PRISM has to accommodate.  

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