All,

Our PMO wants to break one very large prime contract up into 7 separate contracts at the recompete point. Since the administration will overwhelm the manpower both the program and contracting they want to award the Program Management Office services to a third party contractor. The PMO is expected to ride herd over the other 6 large and small prime contractors, do all the admin work for deploying the other contractors, ensure the other contractors stay on schedule, do quality assurance on the other 6 and advise the CORs of thier findings. This would seem to lead to a lot of fingure pointing every time something doesn't get done. However, I was told by industry that this is becoming common and it works most of the time. I am not sure they were fully honest with me.

The Program sees this arrangement as giving them more direct control over the 6 primes that used to be subcontractors. They also see savings in not paying the prime for the overhead and fee on all the subcontracted work. I am not sure the PMO and the CORs will be able to coordinate the complex efforts required of the 6 other contractors.

So does any WIFCON readers have any experience in this type of arrangement? Anyone have any success or failure stories? I am fearing we will do a lot of work and have it be declared a failure a in the first year. However I want to have an open mind on this.

I don't doubt it does happen, and it might even work quite well. But, I can't recommend it be done as blatantly as you suggest.

It sounds to me like you'd be asking the PMO contractor to perform inherently governmental work. If your PMO contractor were, instead, helping government employees do their contractor oversight work, then it should be more palatable.

Our PMO wants to break one very large prime contract up into 7 separate contracts at the recompete point. Since the administration will overwhelm the manpower both the program and contracting they want to award the Program Management Office services to a third party contractor. The PMO is expected to ride herd over the other 6 large and small prime contractors, do all the admin work for deploying the other contractors, ensure the other contractors stay on schedule, do quality assurance on the other 6 and advise the CORs of thier findings.

Please clarify. In the first sentence, "Our PMO" sounds like a government office. But in the third sentence I get the sense that PMO refers to a contractor when you say "ride herd over the other... contractors" and "ensure the other contractors stay on schedule." In the third sentence did you mean "The PMO support contractor is expected to ride herd... ."?

Sorry Vern,

I noticed the error as soon as I logged back in. My requirements office wants to replace a large prime contract with lots of subs with 7 contracts. 6 stove pipes and a PMO cloud over them and coordinating all thier efforts.

.

Please clarify to the extent that you can what the nature of the individual contracts would be and how much interaction between contractors there is is. For instance, how interdependant, interactive or independant is the work? Do the schedules of individual firms rely upon the schedule and activities of other contracts ? Are they for segregable activities? etc.

duplicate post.

Deleted

.

Boof,

In my opinion your Post #8 released too much specific information. We don't need such specific information. I suggest that you use the edit function to delete it.

Vern,

I deleted the posting but since we are months away from a formal solicitation I don't think it harmful. We are in market research mode right now. We held an industry day for over 200 companies last month giving our current requirment and asking thier advice. We held over 100 twenty minute one on ones. (Speed dating for vendors) We really have a blank sheet of paper but after the meetings, the requirements office began pushing for the multi stove pipe system I described. We must separate a couple of functions to award to small business primes but my management and I are not sold on having more than one large business contract. Thus my request for comment from the WIFCON community. I don't want to obstructionist if it is really a 21st century success story but it defied my logic.

Boof,

What's the difference between what you are proposing and contracting out the functions of a COR?

Boof,

What's the difference between what you are proposing and contracting out the functions of a COR?

Don, I will let Boof respond but I see some possible differences. Boof used a lot of colloquial language and terms in the first post, including "ride herd over the other 6 large and small prime contractors, do all the admin work for deploying the other contractors" and "ensure the other contractors stay on schedule". It depends upon the specific meaning of the terms, but those appear to be true management activities, not often performed by the government as part of it's contract administration role. I don't know what "ride herd" means. But from the individual contract scope descriptions that Boof deleted, it appears that there needs to be a management entity to schedule, coordinate, direct and otherwise integrate the overall program work among different contractor's that may depend upon other's timely and effective performance.

COR duties are more related to assuring that the Contractor's are performing what's required but not usually interating, coordinating, scheduling and directing performance of various individual contractors that must often rely on each other to make the whole program work. Those are typically prime contractor roles and functions - in my opinion.

In the Corps of Engineers' world, we distinguish between "quality control", which is the Contractor's responsibility and "quality assurance", which is our responsibility. Controlling the quality of work and maintaining interrelated schedules of subcontractor's is inherently a prime Contractor's role. Assuring that the Contractor is effectively performing its QC and management roles would be an owner's COR duty in our world.

Regardless of what terms are used for QC/QA functions, I think that the contractual roles are similar to what I described.

It would be very difficult, in my mind, for an independent contractor to try to manage the work, schedules, integration, interaction, control quality, etc. of many other individual contractors performing interdependant.work.

It looked like some of the above (but now deleted) scopes that Boof described were independant of others, while some were interdependant, requring an entity to integrate management and control of the various performers, whether they be contractors or subs.

It sounds like COR work to me.

Sorry Vern,

...My requirements office wants to replace a large prime contract with lots of subs with 7 contracts. 6 stove pipes and a PMO cloud over them and coordinating all thier efforts.

What does "a PMO cloud over them and coordinating all thier efforts" mean?

It would take one heck of a COR organization to coordinate the "efforts" of 6 different contractors, if the 6 must interact and respond to each other or to schedule the "efforts" of 6 separate firms to meet missions as they develop.

It would take one heck of a COR organization to coordinate the "efforts" of 6 different contractors, if the 6 must interact and respond to each other or to schedule the "efforts" of 6 separate firms to meet missions as they develop.

That's why the PMO wants to award one contract to oversee the other six. It can't (or doesn't want to) do the job, so it wants to hire someone else to do it.

One ring to rule them all.

That's why the PMO wants to award one contract to oversee the other six. It can't (or doesn't want to) do the job, so it wants to hire someone else to do it.

One ring to rule them all.

I agree - but I don't think it is "COR" work, if that means "Contracting Officer's Representative". Unless I misread the now deleted descriptions of the various contracts, It appeasrs to be management, control and integration of those many interrelated Programmatic Work Breakdown activities.

Joel:

On what are you basing your definition of COR work? The work of the contractors was described in the first post as follows:

The PMO [contractor] is expected to ride herd over the other 6 large and small prime contractors, do all the admin work for deploying the other contractors, ensure the other contractors stay on schedule, do quality assurance on the other 6 and advise the CORs of thier findings.

While the language used in that sentence is imprecise and not professional ("ride herd"), it certainly seems to me to describe the kind of work that ACOs are responsible for and that can be delegated to a COR. The decisions that lead to communications with the contractor are management, but communicating those instructions to the contractors and directing them is contract admin.

Vern, I based my thoughts about what type of work that Boof's organization would want a "PMO" contractor to do on Boof's message #8, which attempted to clarify the imprecise language used in message #1. Unfortunately, Boof deleted message #8 after you said that Boof released too much specific information and suggested that Boof delete it.

It would be nice if Boof was clearer. Without any more information, I felt that they were looking for an integrator, not a contractor to simply look over the shoulders of the 6 other firms. I may well be wrong. I can't interpret message #1 from the language used.

Well, whether the integration is done by the government or by a contractor, it is a form of contract administration as far as I'm concerned. Someone has to communicate with the contractors to clarify the government's requirements, provide technical direction, coordinate activities, and observe performance. If authority to do that is delegated by the CO to someone else, that someone else is a COR.

Thanks all,

One vendor cited an example of a program management contract but the term "integrater" was used by the Government contract specialist so they may be close to the same thing. The PMO is really doing what the Prime contractor would normally do in coordinating sub-contractors and compiling the subcontract costs into a single invoice. The requirements office wants direct control of what used to be sub-contracted functions but don't have the manpower to do all the administration that the current prime does for us. So when several companies that only manage projects came to our industry day and stated that hiring management companies was a new trend, our requirements office was convinced this would work great. They also want to build a body shop element into the contract so any time they get a surge, they can just order up some more personnel to help them.

I am concerned about some functions being inherently Governmental and some functions causing proprietary issues. I am told that Associate Contractor Agreements put together with a locally written clause will enforce the contractors cooperating with each other but I am not convinced yet and nothing I have read on this forum so far is changing my mind.

Boof

FWIW, I share your concerns and I am also skeptical that this approach makes sense for the customer. If the customer wants "direct control" of subcontractors, then hiring another contractor to manage them may not accomplish that goal. Certainly, it's hard to imagine any cost savings that would result from this change.

The current Prime was likely selected based on a number of factors -- including (I presume) its management approach. Now the customer is saying that the same management approach which was good enough to win the original competition is insufficient to meet the real needs. Perhaps it is the "real needs" that form the real problem here, and not the prime's management approach?

In any case, I don't see why somebody can't structure the successor contract so as to incentivize subcontractor management and subcontractor responsiveness to the customer's needs. Wouldn't that solve the perceived problems at a lower cost to the government?

.

Boof,

Assuming that the six contracts being discussed are not firm-fixed-price, then FAR 1.602-2( d ) requires the appointment of a COR if the CO does not retain and execute the duties of the COR. Further, FAR 1.602-2 ( d )(1) requires the COR to be a government employee unless your agency regulations authorize otherwise. In your scenario, let's assume that you are required to appoint a COR to each of the six contracts and the CORs must be government employees. What would these CORs do that is different than what the PMO contractor would do?

.