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Is there a requirement or something in the regs for price proposals submitted under a new IDIQ contract?


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Is there a requirement/precedent for providing quantities and/or formulas within proposal spreadsheets for contractors to provide their proposals? Or can it be left open for the offerors to provide both? We have a requirement that the technical team provided a proposal spreadsheet with no quantities or formulas provided in the hopes that the offerors would think about what they are providing, what years, and how many, as quantities affect total pricing.  Any info is appreciated.  

Thank you.  
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2 hours ago, creyes814 said:
Is there a requirement/precedent for providing quantities and/or formulas within proposal spreadsheets for contractors to provide their proposals? Or can it be left open for the offerors to provide both? We have a requirement that the technical team provided a proposal spreadsheet with no quantities or formulas provided in the hopes that the offerors would think about what they are providing, what years, and how many, as quantities affect total pricing.  Any info is appreciated.  

Thank you.  

What is the ID/IQ for? Please explain your intended approach. Are the proposers supposed to define and decide what services they want to propose on and for one or more periods ? Do they decide what the periods are? Thanks for the clarification. 

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@joel hoffman- Thanks for your questions.  The FFP/IDIQ is  for Environmental services (Habitat Enhancement) under a MASC type contract.  The offerors were asked to propose unit prices and total extended prices for each Exhibit Line Item provided for a two-year base and two-three year option periods.  The spreadsheet provided to the offerors to submit their price proposal didn't contain any "quantities" or "formulas" for the contractor to enter their prices.     

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There is no FAR requirement for a spreadsheet of any sort, and there is no requirement for quantities or formulas in the non-required spreadsheet.  There is precedent for all of these, if you mean has anyone ever done it before.

If the requirement is to solve a problem, it can be left open for offerors to propose solutions, including quantities of materials and/or hours needed to accomplish the proposed solution.  It can also be left open for offerors to propose pricing formulas.

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2 hours ago, creyes814 said:

@joel hoffman- Thanks for your questions.  The FFP/IDIQ is  for Environmental services (Habitat Enhancement) under a MASC type contract.  The offerors were asked to propose unit prices and total extended prices for each Exhibit Line Item provided for a two-year base and two-three year option periods.  The spreadsheet provided to the offerors to submit their price proposal didn't contain any "quantities" or "formulas" for the contractor to enter their prices.     

Thanks, creyes. I pretty much agree with ji. I’m assuming that you are either specifying methods or are allowing  each proposer to propose a solution to achieve some specified end condition for each “Exhibit Line item”. Is that correct?

You said there are multiple, FFP,  “Exhibit line items”. You said that the offerors are “asked to propose unit prices and total extended prices”.

Don’t understand why quantities or estimated quantities wouldn’t be either provided or required with “unit priced” services or work?? 

Edit: I just saw where you initially said that you are “in hope” that  offerors will “think about” the quantities they are providing . How does that translate to the proposals? 

Edited by joel hoffman
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51 minutes ago, joel hoffman said:

Thanks, creyes. I pretty much agree with ji. I’m assuming that you are either specifying methods or are allowing  each proposer to propose a solution to achieve some specified end condition for each “Exhibit Line item”. Is that correct?

You said there are multiple, FFP,  “Exhibit line items”. You said that the offerors are “asked to propose unit prices and total extended prices”.

Don’t understand why quantities or estimated quantities wouldn’t be either provided or required with “unit priced” services or work??

Edit: I just saw where you initially said that you are “in hope” that  offerors will “think about” the quantities they are providing . How does that translate to the proposals? 

If each offeror proposes an estimated amount of each unit priced item, it may open up the possibility of low ball estimating or other problems with estimating unit priced quantities. Also can encourage unbalanced unit pricing.  

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2 hours ago, creyes814 said:

@joel hoffman- Thanks for your questions.  The FFP/IDIQ is  for Environmental services (Habitat Enhancement) under a MASC type contract.  The offerors were asked to propose unit prices and total extended prices for each Exhibit Line Item provided for a two-year base and two-three year option periods.  The spreadsheet provided to the offerors to submit their price proposal didn't contain any "quantities" or "formulas" for the contractor to enter their prices.     

The risk you run with that approach is that the information provided to offerors as the bases for firm-fixed line item pricing—statements of work or some other descriptions—do not accurately or completely reflect what will really be demanded of the contractor during performance. That would be a recipe for dissatisfaction and litigation. 

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To follow up on Vern's comment, the total evaluated price must reflect the expected cost to the government.  Simply comparing unit pricing, or allowing offerors to submit unrealistic estimated quantities, will run the risk of producing a misleading result.  See for example the protest of R&G Food Service, Inc., d/b/a Port-A-Pit Catering, B-296435.4; B-296435.9, which states: 

Quote

Agencies must consider cost to the government in evaluating proposals, and while it is up to the agency to decide upon some appropriate and reasonable method for the evaluation of offerors’ prices, an agency may not use an evaluation method that produces a misleading result. The method chosen must also include some reasonable basis for evaluating or comparing the relative costs of proposals, so as to establish whether one offeror’s proposal would be more or less costly than anothers. For example, in Health Servs. Int’l, Inc., the solicitation contemplated the award of a fixed-price, indefinite-quantity contract and offerors' proposals were required to include hourly rates for six categories of labor. We sustained a protest challenging the agency's price evaluation because it was based solely upon offerors' average hourly labor rates, without consideration of the estimated quantities of each labor category the agency expected to order, and thereby failed to establish whether one offeror's proposal was in fact more or less costly than another's.

 

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4 hours ago, Lionel Hutz said:

To follow up on Vern's comment, the total evaluated price must reflect the expected cost to the government.  Simply comparing unit pricing, or allowing offerors to submit unrealistic estimated quantities, will run the risk of producing a misleading result.  See for example the protest of R&G Food Service, Inc., d/b/a Port-A-Pit Catering, B-296435.4; B-296435.9, which states: 

 

I don’t think Christine made it clear if the firm fixed price for the task order is going to be based upon unit prices and estimated quantities, which can be variable.  Or are the proposers just requested to identify how each total extended “Exhibit line item” fixed price is determined?

If there is no common basis for the scope of work to compare variable quantities and unit prices, as Vern and Lionel mentioned, it would be a recipe for problems. 

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