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Games or other interesting ways to train?
REA'n Maker replied to Supes's topic in Contracting Workforce
I'm not sure "games" are a good way to garner respect from our fellow procurement professionals and customers. What this profession needs are more serious thinkers, not thoughtless memorizers. Applying procurement principles is hard; memorizing procurement principles is easy. -
It would be nice to keep his legacy alive.
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Bob's contribution to the Federal procurement community was immeasurable.
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One wonders whether the "Task Order" distinction has any real meaning anymore, considering for example that GSA OASIS "task orders" are functionally indistinguishable from open-market contract competitions. When you have a $100M procurement employing a 2-phase down-select, oral presentations, evaluation factors and sub-factors, a schedule of hundreds of prospective bidders, and a best value award basis, the protest landscape is practically identical whether it's a TO or a C-type contract. Obviously, the protest threshold is different, but that's almost a cheat (not that I'm complaining, but I don't think it's a stretch to say the primary reasoning behind the $10M threshold is to temper GAO workload.)
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Small world. I was there from 2013-2019 as the PM for a consultant team supporting Office of Procurement and a couple of the programs. One thing our team did was to help OP codify and institute the policies that recognized the flexibilities allowed USPTO per 35 U.S.C. 2(b)(4)(A), as a result of their fee-funded model. ptag.pdf (One caveat is that the entire USPTO FY procurement spend is less than one contract under my current cognizance as CO).
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At one point during a protest against a $90M Part 16 (OASIS) award, I had four attorneys pouring over every word I wrote in the agency response. For several weeks. This was after GAO had dismissed most of their protest or the protestor dropped several points including an OCI allegation which called out an expired contract that had absolutely zero relevance. The lawyers did hit paydirt however when they legitimately caught my mistake of using the word "it" in the debrief when I should have said "the offeror's [agency] experience". Serves me right for trying to provide useful feedback by condensing the tech eval comments down into cogent bullet points for the PA debrief. I had literally produced hundreds of pages of documents related to this procurement and that was the best they could do. This began in January and the GAO decision was issued in September. Guess who the incumbent was? Get rid of perverse incentives in the procurement system and eliminate the CICA stay. (Postscript: what has two thumbs and won a $90M protest? This guy!)
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Is he though? My direct supervisor was just deployed to Texas to deal with the "influx of Ukranian refugees" (which no one on the team was aware of), and we're only a component agency of DHS (but not ICE/CBP/USCIS). He's an 1102. We're still waiting for an explanation for what that is all about. More on-point, if we were able to use the policy and procedures of sub-part 36.6 for work outside the A-E world, that would be the bee's knees. "Expertise-based selection at a fair and reasonable price". Edit: just saw Vern's item#24. Great minds yada yada 🤣
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BLUF should only be used for rather simple messages regarding a policy or rule, not in a document such as a D&F whose purpose is to convince an educated reader that a particular decision chosen from numerous options is supported by the best available facts. For example, "BLUF: stop sticking chewing gum under the mess hall tables", followed by a Parade of Horribles about the detrimental effects of said chewing gum. No need to persuade anybody, just "learn it; love it; live it". D&F: "the determination to halt chewing gum sales in the PX is supported by the following findings". BLUF="here's what we're doing" D&F="here's my reasoning for what we're doing" (* my opinion)
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How to fix unauthorized approvals?
REA'n Maker replied to Philistines's topic in Contract Administration
I'd guess about as much time and money as the term 'PIN number' has cost the banking industry. 🙃 -
Contractual Remedies-mischarging?
REA'n Maker replied to Neurotic's topic in Contract Administration
I mean it's not overtly set up as a vehicle to accomplish an objective at a FFP, rather, the contract schedule and PWS is a detailed collection of labor categories priced by hours * rates added up to a total price. The result is that CORs "manage" by counting the hours of whoever they have a petty gripe with at any given time and decrementing the invoice accordingly. -
Contractual Remedies-mischarging?
REA'n Maker replied to Neurotic's topic in Contract Administration
The contractor disclosed the basis of estimate in their proposal, which cannot be conflated with contract type. All service contract prices are estimated by hours * rates, but that doesn't mean the contract is not FFP. As a consultant, that was an endless source of frustration on my part - my company would disclose hours/rates on an FFP proposal which then flowed through to award, so we ended up with an FFP contract that looked like cost-type. What most people on the Federal side miss is that even though a proposed FFP is estimated based on cost, in the FFP world a vendor can make a top-line decrement to the total price for competitive purposes. IBM used to refer to it as "management challenge". CORs always hate FFP because it requires them to manage performance and results, not count butts in seats. -
Yeah; I'm not sure how that would work. Does the contract have both commercial and non-commercial clauses?
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Contractual Remedies-mischarging?
REA'n Maker replied to Neurotic's topic in Contract Administration
Stop making sense. -
There are armies of program analysts just waiting to write the most ridiculous rules and regulations you can imagine, for the mere sake of justifying their existence. My agency has at least 10 policy specialists and we don't even have an agency-level FAR supplement. Perverse incentives are the problem - no one got their 14 by eliminating stupid and wasteful rules, they got their 14 by writing stupid and wasteful rules. Case in point: How do I evaluate whether an offeror "promotes diversity of perspective, experience, and background in contractor staffing" might you ask? Well, that's an operational issue, not a policy question...