I'm a bit confused so I'll ask, even though I know it's a naïve question.

Recently, the Army awarded a $249 Million firm-fixed-price contract for architect and engineering services. Apparently, this is an ID/IQ contract award but the DoD Daily Digest Bulletin for 11 April doesn't expressly say so. It does say that bids were solicited via the internet. Thirteen bids were received and thirteen contracts were awarded. Each awardee "will compete for each order." Also:
"work locations and funding will be determined with each order."

Why?

Why have firms compete for a contract when, just by submitting a bid, you get an award? Clearly there were no down selects; apparently no competitive range was established. All 13 bidders were winners … but winners of what? They were awarded a contract that means nothing because all 13 winners will still need to submit proposals for each task order. They were awarded a contract that is not relevant because there is no current obligated funding. (There was no mention if any guaranteed minimum amounts were awarded; pretty sure they were because they would have to be, right?.)

Given the new administration's emphasis on reducing waste in acquisitions, I was wondering why do this? Is there not a more streamlined, straight-forward way to acquire architect and engineering services?

Yes, naïve question, I know. For some reason, I felt compelled to post it. Thanks for letting me vent.

To add to your confusion, I searched and found several multiple award contracts for A&E services for $249 million. Apparently agencies want to stay under the $250 million OFPP review threshold.

At first blush without seeing the announcement and any information about the selection process I just wonder how this passed muster pursuant to FAR part 36.6 and the Brooks Act. Sounds like they should have just issued 13 BPA's (lol).

19 hours ago, here_2_help said:

Why?

Let me answer your question with a question:

Assuming that each task order under an IDIQ contract is a separate A-E acquisition that would otherwise have to be separately competed using the procedures of FAR Subpart 36.6, would conducting such separate acquisitions be more or less costly and time consuming than issuing task orders pursuant to FAR 16.505?

Keep in mind that protests agains task order selections pursuant to FAR 16.505 valued are prohibited in many cases.

2 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

Let me answer your question with a question:

Assuming that each task order under an IDIQ contract is a separate A-E acquisition that would otherwise have to be separately competed using the procedures of FAR Subpart 36.6, would conducting such separate acquisitions be more or less costly and time consuming than issuing task orders pursuant to FAR 16.505?

Keep in mind that protests agains task order selections pursuant to FAR 16.505 valued are prohibited in many cases.

Seems to me that the Army intends to compete each individual task order anyway, Vern. I don't see any time savings; in fact, I see duplicate efforts (one competition for the 13 awardees; a 2nd competitive for each task order).

As to your second point, are you implying that the acquisition strategy is based on protest avoidance? If so, then that is ... sad.

Just now, here_2_help said:

Seems to me that the Army intends to compete each individual task order anyway, Vern. I don't see any time savings

@here_2_help Keep in mind that task order competition procedures are much simpler than FAR Part 15 procedures. Unfortunately, most agencies follow FAR Part 15 type procedures anyway.

Am I implying that the acquisition strategy is to avoid protests. Well, I think that often is at least part of the acquisition strategy, although many if not most MATOC agencies would likely deny it. Having said that, I think that calling agency plans acquisition "strategies" is assigning them more dignity than they deserve. I think most are cut-and-paste jobs.

Is he MATOC procedure wasteful? Yes. But what government procedure isn't? When there is a choice the question is which procedure is the least wasteful.

One thing that really annoys me is the large number of contracts awarded for the MATOCs. That certainly doesn’t promote efficiency. In this case it’s 13 but the little bit of information I glimpsed makes me think every company that felt qualified and submitted received an award.

If the government was really interested in efficiency, they would limit contact awards to a manageable number to ensure reasonable competition for task order needs. I remember a VA competition where the solicitation stated a sufficient number of contract awards would be made to cover anticipate task order competition with at least three contractors for each major technical subject area. That makes sense and is a logical approach for timely and efficient task order awards.

These instances of 30, 50, 100 or even 500 contract awards is ridiculous. I’ve seen agencies awarding contracts to protesters just to keep the announced award schedule on track.

16 hours ago, formerfed said:

If the government was really interested in efficiency, they would limit contact awards to a manageable number to ensure reasonable competition for task order needs.

By experience it was efficent but intent has changed. I was CO for many a MATOC for A-E where they were used equal to establising a pool for future orders equal to or less than the SAT, think short selection process. Things have changed and today they are simply veiled as "competitions" to establish "contracts" veiled as either IDIQs or even BPA's that act like IDIQs that are not really the FAR envisioned IDIQ's to put all interested contractors in the pool so as not to offend them. Participation awards that may never evolve into actual performance awards. And I believe agencies adopted the processes not only to avoid the whinners (make then inclusive) but to make the acquisition force lives "seem" easier with the shrinking workforce.