3 hours ago, joel hoffman said:

Let me modify that to say: “So anyone handling micro-purchases at a higher increased threshold either needs to be an adequately trained 1102 with business sense or adequately trained in a 1105 type series.”

2 hours ago, Motorcity said:

You won't need as many employees to do the work if it is streamlined to such levels - or would you?

41 minutes ago, formerfed said:

Good revision

Not withstanding all the issues related to fraud and abuse, because they happen throughout the contracting world for all kinds of dollar amounts I wonder since micro-purchase authority is implied to be used by "anyone" (Ref - FAR 1.603-3(b)) maybe the adequately trained should be applied to "anyone"? I say this because I wonder what determines the line in the sand as after all folks like me and you have bought and buy stuff personally well above $10,000 on many occassions in their life time and even used a credit card in some cases to do so.

55 minutes ago, C Culham said:

Not withstanding all the issues related to fraud and abuse, because they happen throughout the contracting world for all kinds of dollar amounts I wonder since micro-purchase authority is implied to be used by "anyone" (Ref - FAR 1.603-3(b)) maybe the adequately trained should be applied to "anyone"?

That’s really something that needs much thought and consideration. Good catch.

Micro-purchase authority is delegated quite often to program people and other non contracting personnel. So if an agency head, per FAR 1-603-3(b), does delegations especially at a higher dollar value level, it should place an increased burden on that agency head to monitor delegated actions to ensure they are proper.

15 minutes ago, formerfed said:

it should place an increased burden on that agency head to monitor delegated actions to ensure they are proper.

On 8/21/2025 at 9:09 AM, formerfed said:

I see problems with justifying fair and reasonable pricing.

I think the whole point of raising the micro-purchase threshold is to raise the threshold above which agency heads have to monitor actions to ensure they are proper and buyers have to justify fair and reasonable pricing, trading off increased risk of waste or abuse for anticipated faster purchasing.

So, if agency heads are going to increase their scrutiny of "bigger" micro-purchases or impose some higher standard than the FAR 13.203(a)(2) standard that the purchaser "considers the price to be reasonable" then it may not make sense to raise the threshold in the first place.

6 hours ago, joel hoffman said:

So anyone handling micro-purchases at a higher increased threshold either needs to be an adequately trained 1102 with business sense

Is your typical businessperson really hiring (because that's all this is) professionals for their butts in seats? Because that's what the majority of professional services contracts are - especially the ones with no deliverables, or with "Monthly Progress Report" deliverables. This takes no business sense, which is why 1102s are currently so confounded or scared to negotiate that they sometimes document their files the way @General.Zhukov describes - even now, at current acquisition thresholds.

3) Your IGCE is literally just the sentence "2 x Specialist III at $150/HR, 2,000 hours/year is $600,000."

The majority of these contracts are governmental hiring workarounds to avoid paying pensions and being unable to fire a Fed.

We are not going to change those facts of life (except maybe to force negotiations), so I say let the PMs hire who they want this way and let the markets subsequently flood so the price of these butts goes down.

1 hour ago, Witty_Username said:

I think the whole point of raising the micro-purchase threshold is to raise the threshold above which agency heads have to monitor actions to ensure they are proper and buyers have to justify fair and reasonable pricing, trading off increased risk of waste or abuse for anticipated faster purchasing.

Pricing isn't the trade-off.

I have compared ALTs for comparable commercial products which were purchased via one of three methods - 1) an order (from GSA or some Best-In-Class source), 2) purchase order (FAR 13 but over MPT), or 3) Micropurchases (FAR 13, < MPT). Methods 1 & 3 are indeed faster - a lot faster. But if you examine why the ALTS are longer for purchase orders of commercial products - those reasons aren't price-related.

Why not? These commercial products have abundant price data. Fair and reasonable pricing determination is (usually) equally trivial for all three methods. The large majority take less than a day. Roughly 95% take less than a week.

The biggest difference in ALT is in the pre-solicitation phase, and I am not sure if FAR 13 is the cause. My data doesn't cover that.

I have seen smaller dollar warrants, especially for local (overseas) employees/staff members $25k. However, I have p-card usage approvals/authorizes, but that authority didn't come in a "warrant" format. If the micro-purchase threshold does get bumped up much higher, I do wonder how program offices will handle transactions. I wonder if the Acquisition HCAs will permit program offices to draft their own "paper" purchase orders, or if they will stick to using the plastic. I ask because at my agency, at least, its more cumbersome to use a p-card than it is to draft a PR and kick it over to the acq team to draft a manual purchase order.

2 hours ago, Motorcity said:

I have seen smaller dollar warrants, especially for local (overseas) employees/staff members $25k. However, I have p-card usage approvals/authorizes, but that authority didn't come in a "warrant" format. If the micro-purchase threshold does get bumped up much higher, I do wonder how program offices will handle transactions. I wonder if the Acquisition HCAs will permit program offices to draft their own "paper" purchase orders, or if they will stick to using the plastic. I ask because at my agency, at least, its more cumbersome to use a p-card than it is to draft a PR and kick it over to the acq team to draft a manual purchase order.

My experience is dated but I would tend to agree with you on plastic versus paper. Along with the fact that plastic has created its own internal snowball of internal oversight. Its use as the ideal fix for "Just in Time" purchasing and reducing the acquisition workforce got caught up in the bureaucratic BS. And yes I mean BS in some cases. I think you raise a valid point wherein in my view the increase in the micropurchase threshold might just require the "reinvention" of the series GS-1105.

My thoughts do not mean I am not in favor of the increase to the micropurchase threshold only that waving the magic wand to do so needs to come with critical thinking of what now with its increase. In my reading of all the recommendations regarding the increase I see nothing that "this" also needs to be done too, with the "this" being that a well planned strategy needs to come with the increase. But then that gets right back into the 360 of creating some mind boggling bureaucratic mess that hamstrings it unless it is really well thought out.

On 8/22/2025 at 12:55 PM, General.Zhukov said:

The biggest difference in ALT is in the pre-solicitation phase, and I am not sure if FAR 13 is the cause. My data doesn't cover that.

Need to publicize in FedBizOpps seems to be the likely cause for longer time using the second method (purchase order (FAR 13 but over MPT))