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PALT


cogp2

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Is there any current measurement of Procurement Administrative Lead Time (PALT)? This is the time, in days, between receipt by the contracting office of a valid Purchase Request and award of contract/order.

If so, is it reported anywhere? Publicly available?

R,

Bob Thompson

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There is no 1 size fits all PALT in my experience. The reason is that the PALT is dependent upon how long it takes an organization to process the request, solicit a contractor and execute the contract action. Some offices can do that in a week, others may take a year or longer because the first office regularly buys the same materials or services all the time and the later deals with major programs that require months of reviews, separate RFP and solicitation processes and many, many signatures from very busy people.

Also, since the PALT tends to deal with internal processes, it may be difficult to find PALT information. In my experience, the PALT in an organization level contracting office is approximately 45 days for basic delivery/task orders, modifications and small purchases, 90 days for large program delivery/task orders, major contracts (described in 1 office as $500,00 or more in value) and 120 days for large requirements that required agency level approval.

Those lead times are too short for offices that deal with primarily large contracts such as the NAVSEASYSCOM headquarters office where I worked a few years ago. In that office, in my division, nothing took less than 6 months from the initial requirement to a contract award, the average was closer to 1 year to 1.5 years. Other offices may never take more than 5-12 days for any purchases they deal with, so a PALT for them may be measured in hours.

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Guest carl r culham

Your question is a little confusing?.

If asking if agencies have established PALT?s or goals relating to PALTs that are put into policy, the answer is yes. Many do and to find some try a Google on ?Procurement Administrative Lead Times?. Here are a couple that hit the top of the list ?

http://www.afm.ars.usda.gov/acquisitions/cutoff.htm

http://www.dsca.mil/programs/biz-ops/dbc/PALT.pdf

If you are asking about a post acquisition accounting or report of actual time it took to process a series of procurements doing a Google on ?Procurement Administrative Lead Times Report on actual experience? turns up some reports that are dated. There may be some that others that post here can reference. Most Federal agencies, as you may know, have automated acquisition processes and these systems that are specific to each agency can be gleaned for post acquisition data that do show actual PALT accomplishments of the procurements placed in the particular system.

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I always thought Department of Commerce gave the subject the most thought and provided details.

Here's a link to their planning policy. PALT is shown in Exhibit 3.

In addition to what has already been said, a basic problem is not even having a common understanding of when PALT starts. Some say it begins when the procurement office receives a "ready" requisition. In other words a complete package including a SOW all all approvals and justifications are provided. Other say when they get a "funded" requitstion. This usually starts the PALT clock ticking when the procurement system in interfaced with the financial one. Still a few others say it begines when the program office says "I have a need and what is the first steps?"

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