Vern Edwards' Blog

Now that President?Elect Obama has announced his intention to launch a massive public works program to fight the recession, we can look forward to more entries in the perennial debate about whether or not Congress should repeal the Davis-Bacon Act, 40 U.S.C. ? 3141 et seq., 29 C.F.R. Part 5, and FAR 22.403-1 and 22.404.Davis-Bacon, enacted in 1931 and app...

How about a contracting think tank?I recently sat on a panel with Professor Emeritus Ralph Nash and Associate Professor Steve Schooner of The George Washington University Law School, and Paul Dennett, a former administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, to discuss the state of government contract administration. The consensus was that the g...

In my last post I used the terms ?mentor? and ?mentoring.? I tell my students that when they use a word or term they must make sure that they know what it means and what they mean by it. Well, what?s good for the student is good for the teacher. As I read my own post I asked myself: What do I mean by mentor and mentoring? What  does a mentor do? How does...

Last week, at the 2008 Nash & Cibinic Report Roundtable, several panels addressed the issue of the quality of the acquisition workforce. The good news is that agencies are hiring some first rate interns. That?s also the bad news. We are bringing in some really smart and eager people, but we are not ready for them?to educate and train them and to prepa...