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Everything posted by REA'n Maker
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Show me where the FAR says anything about an "Alt-COR". Is there such a thing as a FAC-ALTCOR cert? USAID are a bunch of Birkenstock-wearing-ex-Peace Corps-hippies so I wouldn't put a lot of stock in anything they have to say about procurement (yes, I was there. Very nice people but my assessment stands 😋). What does 'absence' even mean? 'Absence' because the primary COR had to leave early to pick their kid up at school or 'absence' because they were unexpectedly deployed to the USAID Mission in Nairobi? Do I need to pull T&A records if I am concerned about compliance with my delegation? Hence my statement As a practical matter we have to assume our appointed CORs are competent and acting in the government's best interests, so I trust them to work together. If I can't measure it or enforce it, I'm not going to include it in my delegation. But that's just me. Happy Friday!
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Has anyone read FAR 45.600? Back in the 90's when DoD was down-selecting a lot of multiple-source programs like Tomahawk, I had to deal with 20+ years of GFP piled up in McDonnell Douglas GFP cages when we selected Hughes as the sole supplier. There was a checkoff process that began with the plant clearance officer which ended many times with the government abandoning the GFP in place, at which point M-D auctioned it off to the general public (and let a guy named "Snake" leave the auction with a bunch of aircraft-grade aluminum billets that he never paid for. You'd think they would naturally keep an eye on a guy named "Snake" but apparently not. It was in Florida after all. lol). Then we negotiated with Hughes Aircraft over the value of the remaining GFP that they could use on their Tomahawk production line. After reading 45.600, I would suggest you catalog your GFP and submit it to the prime for disposition, cc:ing the CO on the original contract. Personally, I wouldn't worry too much about privity at this point because whatever the prime/sub scenario is, you have GFP you are accountable for. Not to be too discouraging, but my Tomahawk negotiation took 2 years to complete.
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You can call it whatever you want, but it's multiple CORs receiving a delegation from the same CO with each possessing identical superpowers. Any term other than "COR" is a fiction. I suppose the CO could prescribe different delegated duties but that just makes my head hurt. Having set up more contract writing system user accounts than I can count, I can affirmatively state that all it takes is a branch-chief level authorization to set up a new user (e.g., temporary auditor accounts, etc.). If they can't approve invoices, there's not much point in appointing them COR.
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Part 36 of the FAR talks about qualifications for A-E selection board members, which sounds more like what your customer is talking about. I've worked for two agencies that designated "Alternate CORs" (to me a COR is a COR is a COR, but I digress). As far as I know there is no statutory limit on how many CORs you can have, but our contract writing system only allows 2 CORs to have designated authority to approve invoices so that's the practical limit. Do you want 2 CORs signing invoices? Even if that is not the intent, it may be a result.
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VAO on Fixed Unit Price Contracts
REA'n Maker replied to Freyr's topic in Contract Pricing Including CAS & Allowable Costs
The problem is that DCAA only provides non-DoD audit assistance when they are not doing DoD work. I have seen funded "DCAA non-DoD audit agreements" in place for years where the actual services provided were zero. "We'll get to it when we get to it" doesn't really fly when you are running up against an award deadline. Regardless, unless the audit capability is institutionalized, there should be no "final rate determinations" being made if for no other reason that the vendors turn around and use that assent on their other contracts. I'm dealing with a vendor right now who declared a change to their accounting procedures and is submitting an entirely new methodology that has not been reviewed or approved by anyone. How am I supposed to work "audit of new accounting procedures" into a milestone schedule AFTER we received proposals when we don't even have auditors? I looked at the numbers they submitted and they come out just fine, but the propriety of dropping direct O/H on consultants and subcontractors and replacing it with a lower G&A rate on a base consisting of all costs including subs & consultants? Who knows? (My approach has been to only look at the difference between the approved method and the proposed method and only negotiate that amount. That way I don't have to declare anything "compliant" or whatever the accounting term is.) -
VAO on Fixed Unit Price Contracts
REA'n Maker replied to Freyr's topic in Contract Pricing Including CAS & Allowable Costs
Because FAR 52.216-7 Allowable Cost and Payment. On my $300M nationwide cost-reimbursement contract consisting of 3 JV partners and 15 subcontractors, a final indirect rate determination is required every year based on a proposal (i.e., subject to negotiation and settlement) submitted 6 months following the end of each vendor FY. There are 3 of these contracts split geographically for a total of 9 JV partners and ~45 subs. All of them submit their indirect rates directly to me so as not to disclose sensitive corporate information to their JV primes. Reconciling billed vs final rates is the final step. Then do all this two more times. For one program. (Note that the 52.216-7 states that indirect rate proposals are to be submitted to the CO and auditor.) I can run circles around 99% of my colleagues with my contract cost analysis skills, but I have no clue whether (for example) state and local contracts can be included in a federal contract indirect cost base. (I actually wouldn't be averse to learning how to do corporate-level rate determinations, but I would also need relief from about 95% of my contracting workload). That 3 hours of FAR Part 31 'training' I received as part of my FAC-C Level III cert doesn't really qualify me for this kind of thing. As Dirty Harry used to say, "A man's gotta' know his limitations". -
You are buying a service, not filling a position. Focus on what needs to be accomplished and assume it's not a personal service until proven otherwise - personal services contracts require very high-level approval so don't even let that term enter your brain unless the requiring activity has already expended monumental effort in that regard.
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VAO on Fixed Unit Price Contracts
REA'n Maker replied to Freyr's topic in Contract Pricing Including CAS & Allowable Costs
Ouch (note my lack of disagreement). The other farce is how agencies with no audit capability are allowed to award cost-reimbursement* contracts at all (the current answer is that they foist audit responsibility onto the COs and call it a day). The Judicial Branch (at least when I was there) hard a hard prohibition on anything other than FFP just for that reason. * edit -
52.217-8 Option to Extend Services (Evaluation)
REA'n Maker replied to ArmyofOne's topic in Contract Administration
TCV in FPDS, Congressional Notifications, etc. 😃😆🤣 Classic -
52.217-8 Option to Extend Services (Evaluation)
REA'n Maker replied to ArmyofOne's topic in Contract Administration
How could 'evaluating' a number you derived by adding 50% of the last option price to every proposal possibly affect an award decision? It's a wash. (I suppose it's possible that it could affect an award decision if someone's pricing was really unbalanced but that's a problem in itself regardless of any -8 calculations). I was referring to reporting, not really the procurement process per se. You can't exercise the -9 without available funds either and we include the -9 options in the total price so why not the -8? We are under no more obligation to exercise the -9 than the -8. -
52.217-8 Option to Extend Services (Evaluation)
REA'n Maker replied to ArmyofOne's topic in Contract Administration
How arithmetic addition equates to an evaluation is beyond me. If the point was to capture the full potential government obligation it would make sense, but you literally write a+b=c in the PNM and move on, never to mention or consider the product of your mad math skills at any other point in the process. -
I've been doing this since 1992 and have never seen such political micro-managing. When I first heard someone at my agency say "the White House wants this $70M spent before November 2024*" I thought it was the usual program office BS/flexing, but it turned out to be true. Never mind that there are no bona fide needs identified, but By the Grace of God we're gonna' spend it. *🤔 So much for the Hatch Act.
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52.217-8 Option to Extend Services (Evaluation)
REA'n Maker replied to ArmyofOne's topic in Contract Administration
DHS prohibits creating separate -8 CLINs for the reasons cited by Witty. But you have to "evaluate the -8 by adding the price for six months of performance to the total proposed price" even though the vendor never proposed it (that's exactly how it reads: "evaluate by adding".) But don't include it in the contract price. Or in the Congressional Notification. Or anywhere else for that matter. 😐 -
Onboarding Process and Lack of Appropriate Paperwork
REA'n Maker replied to lawyergirl's topic in Contract Administration
Note the OP said the requirement was for a local driver's license, which for a Federal contract is nuts. -
Yes to this. When I was a consultant I used to have a similar discussion with my back-office accounting people regarding "rates" on an FFP vehicle. They couldn't separate the estimating methodology (hours x rates = total price) from the contract terms (FFP). You should have seen the smoke come out of their ears when I introduced the concept of what IBM used to call a "management challenge" (offering a bottom-line discount to the estimated hours x rates).
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NIH seems to be resting on the premise that over 350 protests, 120 of which were sustained by GAO in one swoop 2 years into a procurement, is just fine and dandy. The way they shift the goalposts from "120 sustained protests" to "only three sustained allegations" is masterful (isn't that actually 3 allegations x 120 protests = 360 sustained allegations? 🤪) True innovation involves simplification, not more steps/failure points and increased document generation. That NIH methodology is absolutely ludicrous, evidenced by the fact that NIH has spent two years on this thing and still has not received proposals upon which an award can be made. That's krazy with a 'k'.
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Seems like the wish for competency testing has been granted with the new DAU curriculum overhaul. IRS has been using testing for quite some time and it seems to be successful*. (*I say this because it weeded out an incompetent GS14 from our agency who accepted an IRS job contingent on passing the exam - he didn't, and is now back at my agency. As a COR. 😭)
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Yeah formerfed I agree every experience is different but based on my experience in 25 agencies in all 3 branches of government, DoD is the place to be as an 1102. Why else does every civilian agency copy DoD to the point of teaching the proper use of WPN funding (!) in their 'training classes'? Civilian agencies definitely have fewer rules and regs but I also know of at least 2 agencies who believe that task orders are cost-type and delivery orders are FFP (I'm not making that up). I would advise the OP to look at the mission of whatever agency they are considering. Have a great weekend!
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From my experience, DoD is in general a better place for 1102s than the civilian side because DoD acquisition is vital to its mission. DoD also has acquisition curriculum, systems and processes in place that have been developed over several decades as well as a respect for basic stuff like the chain of command. The civilian side is a politically-driven money-wasting machine more concerned about where something is procured than what is procured.
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I would consider it a major victory if someone would develop a reliable clause logic engine- it's inherently a rules-based process, which should be extremely easy to automate. Yet to date, all we've gotten are useless macros that miss the most obvious clauses imaginable and in general crank out pages and pages of garbage (e.g., not selecting any Part 36 clauses for an A-E procurement) Having sat on the contractor side of the house for 20 years, I can affirmatively state that the people writing code for every Federal contract writing system don't have the slightest clue how these systems are to be used. My point being that I don't see AI being a factor in Federal procurement anytime soon.
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AKA total IDIQ value/contract maximum. It was intended to address stuff like the $7.5M CAS thresholds. I think it's a totally fair statement to say that CAS is applied at the task order level, but I also think that the determination to do so is in the IDIQ. It's sort of like how you make a SB set-aside determination at the IDIQ level even though you are actually setting aside the TOs. Assuming the maximum order value on a $100M IDIQ is over $7.5M, that would practically dictate CAS coverage. It's definitely not an exact science, or a science at all for that matter, but I've never heard of CAS coverage being a big deal to any vendor proposing on a $100M federal contract. Aren't CAS basically GAAP anyway?* That's not rhetorical; I honestly don't know for sure. (* I believe this construction is bizarre yet grammatically correct however I am also a product of the American public school system)