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jlbdca

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  1. Multiple Award Schedule is a unique IDIQ that does not allow teaming to win the contract itself. Schedule holders necessarily have to add subs postaward, particularly those with subcontracting plans. GSA only cares about your supply when it's a product, where dealers and resellers need to evidence their relationships and sometimes must rely on pricing information from manufacturers in their own Schedule negotiations. To FormerFed's comment, a Schedule offeror need only disclose federal sales when there are no commercial sales. On a services offer, this goes labor category by labor category. Essentially, you do not want "federal" as your basis of award, because your first commercial sales of the lcat will trigger a renegotiation of your commercial sales practices form, and GSA doesn't want it either, because the price reduction clause does not apply.
  2. Also, being an SDVOSB is going to be a big help at the VA.
  3. You may map the sub's rates into your Schedule rates, establish a Schedule contractor teaming arrangement (CTA) whereby the other firm also has privity of contract with the government and uses its own Schedule rates (assuming they have a GSA Schedule), or add their labor as an ODC. On a FFP, I'm having a hard time seeing why sub lcats can't be mapped into the prime's.
  4. Contractors call a preaward agreement laying out how they intend to bid an opportunity a "teaming agreement." This agreement becomes input to a subcontract, usually at contract award. What a sub isn't going to see in FPDS is the prime's load on their portion of the deal. Every company I've worked for has attempted to hide markups from subs on FFP deals.
  5. Schedule orders of any size may be protested at GAO. Schedules 70, 84, others, allow for the purchase of solutions including both product and services; GWACs tend to be for one or the other. Schedule CTAs provide additional flexibility. The universe of MAS contract holders is much larger than any other contract.
  6. I have, on multiple occasions, negotiated GSA Schedule contracts using indirects and blended salary data, presenting a cost buildup to justify pricing. The company may have rung a bell now difficult to unring when it presented fully loaded most-favored-customer rates from a CPFF contract. Woulda, coulda, shoulda, but it would have been better to state on the CSP that there were no customers, including federal, from which fully loaded commercial rates could be devised, ie, T&M or FP-LOE. Instead, provide the cost buildup, and in the pricing narrative propose "all commercial customers" as the basis of award, promising to renegotiate this when the company first makes a commercial sale on a labor-hour basis. Now, I would first try to escalate the issue in whatever office was handling the negotiation, and keep working the chain of command. Another simpler option would be for the company to make an in-scope commercial sale to justify its rates.
  7. First, the Price Reduction Clause is a clause in your underlying schedule contract, not part of the False Claims Act. Two, it's not clear to me whether your question is around the disclosures on the CSP as part of a schedule proposal/modification or around compliance with an existing contract. The "similar situation" you describe deals with the former; I believe your question revolves around the latter. If the latter, you should receive your schedule contract, including FPR, to determine your basis of award (BOA customer). Sales to customers outside your basis of award will not trigger a price reduction. Ideally, you've named a BOA such as "customers of X, excluding those of division Y." It seems you have standard labor categories within, but not across, the divisions, is that right? Do the divisions compete with each other for the same type of work? Finally, the BOA isn't triggered by pricing below the GSA rate. It's triggered when a contractor (i) Revises the commercial catalog, pricelist, schedule or other document upon which contract award was predicated to reduce prices; (ii) Grants more favorable discounts or terms and conditions than those contained in the commercial catalog, pricelist, schedule or other documents upon which contract award was predicated; or (iii) Grants special discounts to the customer (or category of customers) that formed the basis of award, and the change disturbs the price/discount relationship of the Government to the customer (or category of customers) that was the basis of award. Note the trigger in (iii): disturbing the price/discount relationship between your GSA Schedule price and price to the basis of award customer. Considering the above, I think you may want to retain a schedule consultant to help you understand and resolve any compliance issues. Of course, the PRC will be eventually be removed from all PSS SINs and other schedule contracts, but as far as I know there's no timeline for that.
  8. One of the customers listed on the CSP is your basis of award; this is the result of your negotiation. GSA tends to allow its contractor partners to believe they must offer GSA their "best price" (i.e., the most-favored customer and the basis of award customer must be the same), but this is not true. For example, why should GSA receive the same discount as a distributor who warehouses product and assists the offeror with marketing and sales?
  9. Sorry, regarding second question: You decide how to structure your disclosures to GSA on the CSP. Generally, you would strategize so your disclosures guide the negotiation. The basis of award is a customer or category of customers for purposes of the PRC. Ignore everything else you read about it. It may be your most-favored customer, or it may not.
  10. The PRC won't be generally be triggered by selling at a higher price than the Schedule price, although that depends on your discount relationship. Only sales within your basis of award can trigger the PRC, exclusive of any deviations.
  11. Presumably the OP meant basis of award, which is the customer or category of customers that triggers the price reductions clause.
  12. T&M requires a competent project manager on the client and contractor sides. Such contracts are routinely used successfully in the commercial sector. For the government, they reduce risk the contractor will understaff. There is different risk on both sides than FFP, which can be mitigated through skilled project management, and which I hope is a prereq on any engagement. That contractors need not receive acceptance for payment is a huge advantage to them.
  13. If you are asking specifically about Federal Supply Schedule CTAs, then yes, all members of the CTA must (1) hold an appropriate schedule contract and (2) be small on that contract. This has been true since set-asides were added to Part 8.4. You may be thinking of the backdoor set-asides contracting officers used to achieve by using size status as an eval factor, including the primary eval factor, in which case they could (and still can) specify all or only one member of the CTA be small.
  14. Agreed. My experience is GSA KOs will only allow a federal agency as BOA when the company has no commercial sales, and will typically stipulate that should the contractor gain a commercial client (including a federal prime), it must notify the KO and the BOA will change to commercial customers.
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