joel hoffman

I hope so, too. To be quite frank, I believe that Boeing REALLY doesn't want EADS to get a foothold in the US. EADS had already announced that, if it gets the Tanker contract, the plant will also be used to assemble commercial A330 aircraft in Mobile, AL., with much associated supplier and fabrication in surrounding SE states. I think that has been more important to Boeing than the tanker contract, itself. Of course, I'm speculating but that is the Scuttlebutt around town. I suppose that EADS would like to at least partially amortize the cost of building the plant and assembly line through the Tanker contract. Boeing has heavily criticized how EADS would build its planes with much outsourcing. However, Boeing's skilled labor force went out on strike the year before last because Boeing planned to do the same (or similar) assembly process with its new Dreamliner. Hmmm... The 767 series is assembled using Legacy assembly construction processes that Boeing can't ditch due to labor agreements and the need to completely retool to change the way they build the 767's (tankers included).

Well, it didn't work the first time they negotiated sole source with Boeing for Tanker leases. Both parties have to agree to the prices. One party owns a whole lot of 50 year old tankers ... The law of supply and demand will be evident. I doubt if it will be be "simple".

I think that the Air Force's apparent decision to stress price and meeting the requirements will probably backfire if Boeing ends up being the only proposer. Boeing also had the benefit of knowing N-G/Eads' pricing during the previous Protest. N-G/E recently requested that the Air Force release Boeing's pricing from the last round, too to help even the playing field. But the AF declined.

Reading between the lines... Are you indicating that you have not exceeded the "ordering capacity" for the currently awarded option period, therefore you'd like to extend the period in order to award additional task or delivery orders and that you also want to award the next option year for ordering purposes? If so, do you want to award it "early"? As Vern said, please be clear about what you are asking...

Vern, I was responding to your statement "In sealed bidding you consider "only price and price-related factors." In LPTA you consider technical acceptability and 'evaluated price.' " It appeared that you were trying to make a distinction between "price and price-related factors" and "evaluated price". I wanted to mention that price and price-related factors in an IFB can be considered in the "evaluated price". I don't think that we necessarily disagree about LPTA. I used to use LPTA and liked it. In fact, our situation with the trade-off process on our projects for a favorite DoD Service back in the 1990's was very frustrating. At one point I convinced our KO to use LPTA until they would quit demanding a "Cadillac desire" on a "Yugo Budget" for every project. Turns out that the client installation would have our A/E or in-house designers stack the scope of work and include a bunch of options and/or betterment options. Then they insisted that we stress a desire to obtain the best contractor team on construction and design-build projects. We actually ran off some of the best national contractors for several years because we discovered that the budget was so slim that all we could afford were the lowest-priced, minimally acceptable contractor teams, construction products and/or design solutions. With LPTA, we often ended up with the best technical qualifications as well as the lowest price. And the typical dirt-bags didn't bother to propose! At least we were being honest with industry and they appreciated the candor. I am just trying to point out that LPTA doesn't necessarily guarantee a lower price than the trade-off process when it is clear that price is the most important factor. And it often isn't easy to perform life cycle cost analysis. I won't bother with the details that I wrote about but didn't post.

Vern, it is also possible in an IFB to manipulate various criteria as price related factors and use a "total evaluated cost method" to determine the lowest bidder.USACE did this about 16 years ago but it was controversial, unpopular with industry and a bit cumbersome. It survided the Protest process but went by the wayside. I recall that we used factors such as average time growth with a bid daily compensable time extension rate, average cost growth with a bid overhead and bond rates, etc., then added these factors to the construction bid price to determine the lowest "total evaluated cost" to determine the winner.

Vern, I prepared a response, but my personal laptop isn't recognizing the wirelss card, the desktop bit the dust this morning and I can't transfer the data to my government laptop due to Army security restrictions. And I'm not going to retype it all on this BB, which also has to be replaced, because it decides itself when to lock up in the middle of typing. I'll post it when I get things going here. Of course you are right that the government COULD include a life cycle analysis in the price evaluation. I actually knew that but it has been so long since I have personally worked with LPTA (Army hasn't wanted us to use it for many years and officially discouraged it in 2004) that I forgot it. I should have indicated that wekd have to incoporate some type of Life cycle cost analysis or other price or cost evaluation in order to be able to pay $1 more... My post will discuss some impracticalities of doing this in all situations where we'd want to be able to select better products or systems.

A big disadvantage of LPTA is that we normally can't pay $1 more for a better or more capable product or service, including those which offer a lower life cycle cost but cost more up front. The biggest advantage to me of LPTA is the relative ease of evaluation and selection. But the method doesn't necessarily guarantee or result in the lowest price that the buyer could otherwise get using trade-off process.

I think that there are many situations where the trade-off approach with price as most important factor would drive lower prices than LPTA. In situations where there are significant differences between products, a slightly cheaper but significantly less capable product wins in LPTA, whereas in the trade-off, the proposer of the less capable product, assuming that it knows the competition, may be motivated to reduce its price significantly to ensure that the buyer doesn't select the more capable product. Example might be the B 767 tanker, which (according to Nothrup-Gruman/Eads: NGE) doesn't really offer much more refueling capability than the present B707 era (1950's) tankers vs. the larger Airbus KC-45, based on the A-330, which I think was more expensive. Both firms know their competition's capability. Boeing knows Northrup-Grumman/EADs' prices from the earlier Protest but the Air Force refused to provide Boeing's prices to NGE. I haven't read the new criteria, but NGE says they are going to pull out because the criteria is stacked toward Boeing. So I suspect that the criteria is heavily weighted toward price with both planes meeting the minimum technical criteria. Also at present, the Army requres high level approval to use LPTA per the AFARs/Army Source Selection Manual.

To make that easier, I recommend getting a second monitor so you don't have to toggle; you can keep both windows open. Works great for many applications. Everyone should have 2 monitors if you ever have to review anything and comment at the same time. They only cost around $100 these days. The productivity gains make it pay for itself.

To fully explain the MILCON Transformation program to you would take hours and a major article length narrative. We have several courses to explain the MT program and the design-build process and a web-site that contains the outline, Army goals and objectives.guidance, sample tools, policies, etc. I've been part of the team that developed our Programatic procdures and processes Over the past 5 years to meet the Challenge. How do we know that it works. The GAO is reviewing the program and results now to see how well it works. The ARmy program last year was about $12 billion in comparison with traditional $2 billion with better results..Overall Corps programs were somewhere in the $22 billion range, not to quote - that is my recollection from the Chief's end of year report.

Vern, we could probably have saved money using LPTA. However, I think we would have accomplished it at the expense of the aforementioned higher than "minimum acceptable" material and systems quality, faster completion times and quality of contractors. We didn't have the resources that would have been necessary to develop the designs for each project to the extent necessary to fully prescribe high quality within the budget and we would not have been able to.have the benefit of industry being able to provide appropriate design solutions to fit local market conditions within the budget. Programmatically, we stressed performance specifications, time and quality and allowed the proposers as much flexibility as we felt we could to meet or exceed the requirements within the budget. We would give the budget with price as the least important factor- as long as prices were within budget and competition tended to reign in prices. Our legacy processes typically resulted in less than 100% scope at full budget. Programmatically, we were awarding somewhere around 85% on average of scope at 100% budget, which correspnds to exceedimg the budgeted cost per square foot by about 16% while obtaining less than full scope. By awarding most projects for full scope within the budget, we saved close to 16% on on average per project on a program that was somewhere around 5-6 times larger than it was prior to the initiative I can't prove that the state of the construction economy didn't also play a major role in meeting our goals (standardized design criteria and facility operational and functional requirements, 30% shorter acquisition cycle to turnover, 15% cost reduction, acheive full scope within budget, maintain or improve "quality", increase sustainability and environmental protection, use industry standards and performance requirements wherever possible instead of prescribing one design solution, etc.). I think that both the economy and the programmatic acquisition approach with a lot of dedication from hard-working project delivery teams accomplished essentially all those goals. Could we have done the same thing in this economy with prescribed solutions, LPTA and other legacy processes? We had not been able to do it as well for many years before on a program about one sixth this size so I don't know. I agree with your argument concerning the probable dubious value achieved using the tradeoff method for many typical service contracts. The pumped up proposals don't appear to be contractually binding anyway.

I don't necessarily agree that the trade-off process doesn't provide a real benefit to the government that would justify the additional expense, at least in construction and design-build construction when higher quality systems, materials and finishes can be shown to have a lower life cycle cost and better contractors often will complete the project faster and with lower incidences of requests for equitable adjustments and less claims than during the IFB years. Those are real savings in collateral costs to the taxpayers. Stressing best quality within the budget over stressing price on the Army MILCON program last year produced a significant overall increase in award of full scope within the budget compared with Legacy methods. We had the best record in years for scope and price, which effectively reduced costs by almost 16% overall. However, I fully agree that many Contracting, Program and Technical personnel have little understanding of the complexities of the trade-off process. Since the leadership doesn't know much if any more than newbies, it will continue to present a great challenge to effectively "train the next generation" in the nuances of the trade-off process. I also agree with Vern that the country is broke and we can't afford to purchase goods and services at Cadillac prices.

One would never know that "This was supposed to provide greater flexibility in meeting the widespread needs of DoD" by the present system. This is a perfect example of the "tail wagging the dog". The present system seems to be controlled by persons who appear to think that every peg will fit in a round hole and that all contract types are the same.

Prezmil, what you said is how it is usually intended to work. I was responding to the question "Can the PCO be the COR?" However, the PCO signs and acts in the PCO capacity, not as a "COR".

I've been trying to refrain from this but I pretty much agree with Vern. The question was "Can the Contracting Officer, even though he/she did not take the required COR training courses, be a COR?" Then there was a bunch of additional discussion about required COR courses, etc. The COR is an authorized "Representative of the Contracting Officer". Yes, there may or may not be differences between any particular Technical Contracting Officer's Representative and a COR. A COR might be qualified or not be qualified to adminster all of the technical aspects of contract performance. A TCOR is usually used for technical oversight and decisions. But a regular COR must be qualified to at least handle or oversee the contract admin duties that are within their assignment, which. in my experience, may relate to understanding the contract clauses and conditions and performing the normal contract admin duties. The COR and/or PCO can enlist specialists to aid in the technical administration, whether they be TCOR's, inspectors, engineers, or other quality assurance personnel who aren't officially appointed as COR's. All COR's have authority that is limited to some degree and can draw on specialists to help them, too. Our offices have various specialists to handle various inspections, data input, estimating, conducting various meetings, etc. A PCO duties include determination of merit and otherwise resolving claims, overseeing and being responsible for the performance of their COR's, making decisions to terminate or not, selecting the contractor, executing the contract, ultimately being responsible for the negotiation process for mods, etc., etc. If the PCO isn't allowed or qualified to be a regular COR, I'd think that they may be in the wrong line of work and should start immediately looking for other jobs. I also agree with Vern that it may or may not be wise for the KO to be the COR, but I'd surely think that the KO is legally allowed to administer their own contract if they have to.

16.5 "(d) The statutory multiple award preference implemented by this subpart does not apply to architect-engineer contracts subject to the procedures in Subpart 36.6. However, agencies are not precluded from making multiple awards for architect-engineer services using the procedures in this subpart, provided the selection of contractors and placement of orders are consistent with Subpart 36.6." The above says that orders must be consistent with Subpart 36.6. See also 36.101 -- Applicability. "(a) Construction and architect-engineer contracts are subject to the requirements in other parts of this regulation, which shall be followed when applicable. ( When a requirement in this part is inconsistent with a requirement in another part of this regulation, this Part 36 shall take precedence if the acquisition of construction or architect-engineer services is involved." I also quoted DFARS for DoD orders.

FAR 16.505 (a) (8)" In accordance with section 1427( of Public Law 108-136, orders placed under multi-agency contracts for services that substantially or to a dominant extent specify performance of architect-engineer services, as defined in 2.101, shall? (i) Be awarded using the procedures at Subpart 36.6; and (ii) Require the direct supervision of a professional architect or engineer licensed, registered or certified in the State, Federal District, or outlying area, in which the services are to be performed."

Nevermind

Per March 9, 2005 Federal Register Notice at http://edocket.access.gpo.gov/2005/05-4084.htm that announced the Interim Rule and asked for comments, "...This action is necessary because Federal agencies require clear guidance to avoid inadvertently violating the requirements of the Brooks Architect-Engineers Act and section 1427( of the Services Acquisition Reform Act of 2003 (Title XIV of Pub. L. 108-136.) Section 1427( went into effect November 24, 2003." Per the Notice of Final Rule at http://74.125.113.132/search?q=cache:vwf1Y...ient=firefox-a: "This final rule constitutes the implementation in the FAR of Section 1427 of the Services Acquisition Reform Act of 2003 (Title XIV of Public Law 108-136) to ensure that the requirements of the Brooks Architect-Engineers Act (40 U.S.C. 1102 et seq.) are not circumvented through the placement of orders under GSA MAS contracts and Governmentwide task and delivery order contracts that were not awarded using FAR Subpart 36.6 procedures. An order cannot be issued consistent with FAR Subpart 36.6, as currently required by FAR 16.500(d), unless the basic underlying contract was awarded using the Brooks Architect-Engineers Act procedures. This final rule amends FAR parts 2, 8, 16, and 36 to ensure appropriate procedures are followed when ordering architect-engineer services. The interim rule was published in the Federal Register at 70 FR 11737, March 9, 2005." There is no reason why single agency ID/IQ contracts should be any different from the Schedules. The law was passed to reign in use of the Schedules and to ensure that the underlying contracts were awarded using the Brooks Act procedures in Subpart 36.6. Obviously there was a need to do this and I remember coverage of such abuses and lack of discipline within GSA in complying with the Brooks Act. PL 108-106 (National Defense Authorization Act for FY 2004, Title XIV?Services Acquisition Reform , The Services Acquisition Reform Act of 2003 (SARA)) also clarified that mapping and serveying contracts fall under the Brooks Act procedures.

I think so. I provided two other references, one general and one for DOD contracts. FAR 16.505(a)(8) implemented the referenced public law. I think it was specifically meant to address GSA schedules and other GWAC's. I think that they were often using price competition for orders, not using quality based selection procedures as otherwise required by the other reference I provided.

She didn't mention anything about a multiagency contract.

Vern, I never said anything about the fair opportunity process nor did I attempt to contradict anything you said. You said that "Rotating orders among multiple award contractors, which is a form of "allocation," is forbidden by FAR 16.505((1)(iii)(." You didn't address the price competition that missgamecock mentioned. My point was, in addition to yours, that price competition isn't allowed for task order competition. Instead, task orders are placed using quality-based selection procedures. I don't understand your question. The Brooks Act describes the requirements for qualifications-based selection of A-E firms. This has been implemented in FAR Subpart 36.6. FAR 16.5 (d) allows agencies to use multiple award contracts for A-E services as long as placement of orders are consistent with FAR 36.6. See also 16.505 (a)(8) for multi-agency contracts, which requires those task orders to be placed using the procedures of FAR 36.6. For DOD, DFARS 216.505-70 "Orders under multiple award contracts" doesn't apply to orders for A-E services "which shall be placed in accordance with the procedures in FAR Subpart 36.6."

I was going to reply to the first statement above that was quoted in Vern's reply. Selecting an A/E for a task order based upon price competition violates the Brooks Act, which stipulates that the selection of a firm to perform A/E services is to be based upon qualifications and then negotiate a reasonable price. This is implemented in FAR 36. For task orders you can simplify this. You should also consider past performance in your evaluations, in my opinion.

Note that DoD Directives, Instructions and Publications are general in nature and will often identify the responsible subject(s) in sentences. When specifying, specs and statements of work are generally intended for "the Contractor". Thus, there is no need to keep identifying the subject unless you are mixing different subjects (for example, the contractor and the government or different contractors).