Don Acquisition's Blog

There has been a considerable amount of controversy over the last year or so in the area of small business programs. In International Program Group, Inc., (B?400278, B?400308, 19 September 2008) the Government Accountability Office (GAO) held that HUBZone set-asides took priority over service-disabled veteran-owned small business (SDVOSB) set-asides and S...

When taking a class on the Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) last year, I came across a DCAA rule that made perfect sense to the auditors, but left some of the contracting officers scratching their heads. The rule deals with how to calculate the cost impact of a CAS noncompliance or accounting change on a cost-plus-award-fee (CPAF) contract. Chapter 8 of th...

Did you ever wonder about the type of debate that goes on before an acquisition rule becomes final and is incorporated into the Federal Acquisition Regulation System? This information can be found in the Background section of the final rule when it appears in the Federal Register. I make a point of reading this section whenever a new rule comes out becaus...

The end of the fiscal year is always a good time to start brush up on fiscal law?particularly the bona fide needs rule. Contracting offices may soon face questions of fiscal law that have already been answered in Volume I, Chapter 5, of Principles of Federal Appropriations Law (GAO Red Book).One interesting case of fiscal law, which you won't find in...

There seems to be a closely held belief by some in the Federal contracting community that the FAR requires the contracting officer to perform a price analysis before awarding any contract. CON 111 used to contain the following statements:QUOTE You must use price analysis to ensure that the overall price is fair and reasonable. Even when an offeror is requ...

WARNING: OMB issued a memorandum on July 10 directing executive agencies to temporarily disregard the two GAO decisions discussed below until a full review can be conducted.  Until such a review is conducted, do not use the table. Depending on your point of view, two recent GAO decisions have either clarified or muddied our understanding of the rules pert...

In TYBRIN Corporation, B-298364.6; B-298364.7, March 13,2007, the GAO held that an offeror's cost estimate that indicated that it would not perform 51% of the contract work on a small business set-aside rendered the offer unacceptable, even though the offeror did not explicitly take exception to the solicitation's limitation on subcontracting clau...

In a remarkable statement issued today, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) apologized to the Department of Defense for what it called "decades of unwarranted and unsubstantiated criticism."  The admission came in the wake of the release of a March 2009 GAO report titled Defense Acquisitions: Assessments of Selected Weapon Programs that cla...

The myth about communication being 93% nonverbal probably didn't start in the contracting field, but we are partly responsible for its spread.  This is especially true when it comes to the subject of contract negotiation.  The course manual for CON 100 used to state that communication was 90% nonverbal as a matter of fact.  A speaker at a recent confe...

Myth-Information:QUOTE You have to rate proposals in a source selection.When discussing the evaluation of competitive proposals with my students, I make a point of asking the following two questions (in order):1. Are agencies required to evaluate proposals?2. Are agencies required to rate proposals?Usually, students respond affirmatively to question #1 an...