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GSA BPAs


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I read how Agriculture set up a multiple award pool of BPAS for IT services.  A year ago they realized over 150 contracts for various IT services would expire over the following year or so.  The contracts were duplicative, with inefficient ordering, and didn’t reflect benefits from consolidated purchasing.  So they developed a strategy to award BPAs under GSA Schedule as replacements.

The entire process took eight weeks from start to finish and that included placing $60 million in task orders following initial awards.  They started sending inquiry emails of interest to well over a hundred sources.  Those that responded received a draft SOW seeking advice and input including ideas for evaluation.  Agriculture next asked for brief technical information and experience using the stated evaluation criteria and down selected to a lessor number.  They then held orals virtually, reevaluated which further reduced the number, and made selections.  That included seven small businesses.  They spent a little over a week competing initial task orders with the small business pool.

Given this short time and ease in awarding BPAs, I’m amazed at how many agencies still do their own IDIQ contracts when the same work is available from GSA.  There really is so few reasons for separate IDIQs - agency specific terms and conditions can be added as long as they don’t conflict, prices are all negotiable, contractors can easily subject for very specialized work they don’t presently have, and the administrative time and expense for awarding IDIQ contracts is many times more than the 0.75% fee GSA charges.  

I once heard a supervisor at an agency say they don’t use GSA Schedules solely because she doesn’t get the same workload credit - a contract counts much more than a task order and see needs the data to justify positions!
 


 

 

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2 hours ago, formerfed said:

Given this short time and ease in awarding BPAs, I’m amazed at how many agencies still do their own IDIQ contracts when the same work is available from GSA.  There really is so few reasons for separate IDIQs - agency specific terms and conditions can be added as long as they don’t conflict, prices are all negotiable, contractors can easily subject for very specialized work they don’t presently have, and the administrative time and expense for awarding IDIQ contracts is many times more than the 0.75% fee GSA charges.

This is a topic that's ripe for study. I worked for an agency 20+ years ago that closely monitored the amount of funds being sent to GSA by its program offices. There was a concern about becoming an "ordering office for GSA". The concern was political--not a result of cost/benefit analysis based on data.

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On 7/1/2021 at 2:06 PM, Don Mansfield said:

This is a topic that's ripe for study. I worked for an agency 20+ years ago that closely monitored the amount of funds being sent to GSA by its program offices. There was a concern about becoming an "ordering office for GSA". The concern was political--not a result of cost/benefit analysis based on data.

In that time frame, lots of misuse occurred.  Since then detailed ordering procedures were added to the FAR and the process is now much clearer and precise, especially for services requiring a statement of work.  Probably the most significant issues arose from agencies just transferring money to GSA at the end of a fiscal year just to “bank” or avoid losing the money.

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