REA'n Maker

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.

Bob's contribution to the Federal procurement community was immeasurable.

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.)

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).

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!)

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 🤣

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)

I'd guess about as much time and money as the term 'PIN number' has cost the banking industry. 🙃

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.

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?

Stop making sense.

It is kind of funny that the literal read of "negative performance incentive" sounds like "an incentive to perform negatively". 🤨

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...

Just out of curiosity, why are you so keen on eliminating an offer based on an administrative technicality?

Have you considered the possibility that your program office is a bunch of idiots? Overheads, etc., are not in the program office's purview regardless of the contract type scenario. Is the IDIQ single or multi-award? If it's under Part 36 that has implications as well.

You're being disingenuous. Nothing is immortal, so you are certainly correct in the most pedantic way possible, however I'm fairly certain that no one took that statement to mean that any regulation enacted today will still be around when the sun goes supernova. According to you my professors at the GWU Graduate School of Business were also obviously stupid, because the tendency of regulations to persist once enacted was an axiom throughout the entire Business and Government Relations curriculum.

Regulations are enacted through FAR clauses, so I'd say it's 100% related to contracting. The SNAFU regarding the COVID clause is a perfect example.

Yeah; good luck with that. I basically had to assume the role of TET lead because the entire technical team was an arrogant, ignorant, incompetent bunch of stewed cabbages. My justification was that it was Part 16 therefore the technical team were 'advisors'. I found out after award that the DHS PIL was holding meetings with the TET on an active competitive procurement without my knowledge. The protest decision is due in 2 weeks. For those of you in DoD, on the civilian side the program technical/engineering expertise is atrocious. I have Theatre majors acting as CORs on billion-dollar A-E contracts and no one bats an eye.

Selecting "at least 3 8(a) A-E firms to discuss and base its selection of the highly qualified firms" sounds exactly like Part 36.6 to me. Where does "sole source" come into it? Isn't a J&A required somewhere in there? (If your argument turns on the vagaries of the 8(a) program, that is a rabbit hole I shall not follow you down. 8(a) awards are administration of a socio-economic program, not "acquisition". I'm focused on the sole-source/36.6 aspect and will gladly defer to your 8(a) expertise). The FAR states that "Agencies shall evaluate each potential contractor..." using specific selection criteria detailed under 36.602-1, that "[t]o be considered for architect-engineer contracts, a firm must file with the appropriate office or board the Standard Form 330" (36.603), and that agencies shall conduct the A-E tech eval using specific people (36.602-2) following specific procedures (36.602-3). Also note that per 36.602-4, the CO is not the source selection authority and that all 3 ranked-order firms are considered "selected" in the SSA decision. Saying the CO can restrict the pool of qualified vendors based on [insert unknown criteria here] does not make sense in this scenario. I'm speaking from experience. Our program attorney was of the (wrong...) opinion that Subpart 36.6 prohibits sole source, so rather than fight that battle we followed Brooks Act procedures using qualification criteria that were previously used to justify the sole source strategy. The process led to the same result - solicitation of a non-competitive price proposal, C or P Data cert, negotiations, F&R cost determination, and award to the single most qualified firm. Why is it worth so much time and effort to force-feed any procurement into the sole-source lane when you can achieve the same result using Brooks Act procedures?

Interesting thought exercise. As long as those terms are unambiguous there seems to be nothing that says you can't. I would be more concerned about obtaining the necessary HCA-level pre-approvals for a PoP longer than 5 years (if it's base + 4).

Maybe they just like saying "cyber". It's not as much fun to say as "Francisco", but it's close. 😐

I was saying both business processes lead to the same result, never suggested sole-source wasn't allowable (I asked "why do it" if it's not necessary), and deliberately didn't cite regulations and statutes because that wasn't my point. I'm also not following the "regulatory bureaucracy I am creating" comment - there's no bureaucracy created by following 36.6 without exception. If your point is regarding the SBA aspect, that's a wash either way, correct? It would be cleaner if we were not involving SBA, but that's the same for everything else in Federal contracting so why should this be any different...?

Yet another reason to just follow 36.6. Put out your public notice regarding submission of SF-330's restricted to 8(a), evaluate them, rank them, negotiate price with the top ranked guy, and award. The first 3 steps are essentially what you should do (informally) to properly support a sole-source J&A anyway. Both processes lead to the same result, but only one constitutes competitive procedures. Neither procurement involves competitive pricing, so C or P data requirements are a wash. Sole-source Bad; Competition Good!