Vern Edwards

See GAO, Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, Volume 1, Chapter 5, Availability of Appropriations: Time, Section B: The Bona Fide Needs Rule. To the best of my knowledge, OTs are not exempt from the bona fide needs rule. But it might depend on the specific transaction.

Read this: ESSAY-WRITING CONTESTS How Did We Get Here.pdf

Their mission was to shorten the FAR by eliminating non-statutory requirements and others that are not necessary and that constrain would-be innovators. Their mission was not to improve the FAR by rewriting it.

@WifWaf Are they competent to evaluate "approaches" if they don't have experience? If they don't have experience, how would they know what to ask about an "approach"? How would they know which "approach" is better? They may just be asking for "approaches" because the contracting officer has not shown them another, more effective, more efficient way to evaluate offerors and their offers. This is where COs must use professional knowledge to take a leadership role. I think we have exhausted this topic.

Assuming that question was addressed to me, my answer is that it would depend on the questions.

Emphasis added. I have been teaching for more than 50 years. Since before I entered Federal service. In my experience what matters most is the students themselves. Are they committed to learning? Do they have the necessary learning skills? Are they willing, even eager, to struggle? Also in my experience, most do not have those traits. And while most want to know, too many don't like to learn. Learning is hard work. On occasion, it can even involve suffering, which I know because I'm not very smart. When I got out of the Army and went to a junior college I was shocked to realize that while I understood the mechanics of reading, I lacked the skills. Thank God for a couple of sympathetic professors who helped me, who showed me how. It has made me very sad late in life, because there are few things more rewarding than teaching those who want to do the hard work of learning.

@Scrutor What you have described is a failure of requirements analysis and market research. Asking for a proposed approach should not be a substitute for competent requirements analysis. But I think you already know that.

It's nice to see how GSA has simplified procurement.

Although I could quibble with some of tht wording ("a construct of risks justifying profit"), and some people might quibble with price being an estimate, I think that even a so-called "firm-fixed price" is often nothing more than an estimate of what the government will have to pay for goods and services, e.g., construction and system full-scale development. Price is a very complicated idea to which the current FAR Subpart 15.4 and the overhauled Subpart 15.4 do not do justice.

@FrankJon Well, yeah, that statement was probably overly optimistic. 😂 😏 😞

No, it's not stronger than I think.

The Heilmeier "catechism" is used to evaluate proposals to fund research projects. I don't know if it's been used in FAR Part 15 competitive negotiations ("source selections"). I doubt it. For those who don't know about it, here are some links" https://www.darpa.mil/about/heilmeier-catechism https://www.depts.ttu.edu/research/ordc/Resources/heilmeier-catechism.php https://userpages.cs.umbc.edu/finin/home/heilmeyerCatechism.html https://userpages.cs.umbc.edu/finin/home/heilmeyerCatechism.html

Does this publication provide the answer you are looking for? https://www.esrs.gov/documents/eSRS_Quick_Reference_for_Contractors_Filing_an_SSR_Individual_Report.pdf How about this? https://business.defense.gov/Portals/57/Guide%20to%20Preparing%20and%20Reviewing%20a%20Summary%20Subcontract%20Report%20%28SSR%29%20for%20an%20Individual%20Subcontracting%20Plan%20%28May%202024%29.pdf Or this? https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/25_0329_osdbu-esrs_business-rules-and-process_v1.1-1.pdf

I think it's a good idea, but I don't want to oversell it. We already have too much mindless mimicry in the contracting business. The main idea is to put more thought into how we do what we do, instead of engaging in so much cutting and pasting.

Instead of instructing offerors to "describe your proposed approach", why not instruct them to answer a set of specific questions? Why shouldn't contracting officer tell technical personnel to develop a list of specific questions they want offerors to answer? Requiring them to develop a list of specific questions would force them to think through what they want to know. The CO could sit with them and edit the questions for clarity and specificity. The questions could then be ordered logically. Instructing the offerors to answer the same specific questions in the same order would force them to write focused responses. The CO could set a maximum word count for each question, rather than an overall proposal page limit. Every proposal would thus be structured in the same way, and every offeror's answers would be directly comparable to every other offeror's answers. Offerors could thus be evaluated and compared based on their specific responses, which would be fair and would facilitate efficient evaluation and ranking. It would also make it easier to pinpoint strengths, weaknesses, and deficiencies. Of course, that approach would require literacy, articulacy, clear thinking, and competence on the part of all involved, so maybe it's too difficult for government work. But it would be innovative. And isn't that the buzzword of the day? 🤔

The question is: What do we mean by "approach"? When we ask offerors to describe their proposed approach to this or that, what do we want them to include in the description? Here's the definition of approach (noun) from the Chambers Dictionary:

I think we need to agree on what is meant by "approach". Early on in acquisition the word approach referred to a conceptual design of a product or system, and programs evaluated design approaches. What do we mean by it now? When you ask offerors to describe their proposed approaches to performing a service contract, what do we want to know?

Well, yeah, until they hand you the hemlock cup.

Thanks for that Don. Good AI response. I also recommend the entry on a priori knowledge in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

Both I and Professor Nash have warned against that practice. In government competitive contract awards the "meeting of the minds" is purely a matter of form. In many if not most cases competitive awards are made without discussions. The minds have never met. They have signed up to who knows what and then argue about it during performance. Now, you have told me what your definition of price "flows from", but you haven't told me your definition.

Sure. But first, tell me your definition of price. Are you saying physics is not a matter of the mind? Really? Euclid and Newton are products of the mind. Have you the Elements? Pure logic. (Not physics.) Have you tried to read Newton's Principia? Do you own a copy? Have you studied the force diagrams? One of the greatest products of the mind in human history. Anyway, my comment was addressed to Don, who will get it. Really, WifWaf, stick to procurement. Now, how do you define price?

Euclid, Newton, and any number of mathematicians and astronomers might disagree with that assertion.

Well, rather than telling them "no," we should explain why what they want to do would be wasteful of their time and resources and then suggest something different, perhaps like oral presentations and Q&A sessions instead of written "technical proposals". Most of a CO's clients want to conduct source selections the way they were taught to conduct them by contracting personnel. They need to be counseled, untaught, shown better ways, and persuaded rather than be ordered around. As often as not, if properly advised, their reactions will be, "Can we really do that? That would be great!"

Here's the problem with evaluating proposed "approaches": The Marine Corps issued RFP M6700425R0009 on July 21 for "Logistics Integration Support". Proposals were due September 19. The RFP is 65 pages long. It includes seven base-year CLINs. The "performance work statement" is an additional 51 pages. This was a typical FAR Part 15 competitive procurement. The RFP required a "technical proposal" as follows: The RFP limited the technical proposals to 100 pages. 🤣 That is a rather typical proposal preparation instruction, written by a clueless person or group of government personnel. I don't know about you, but to me this kind of "approach" thing is absurd. There would be no chance for prospective offerors to sit down one-on-one with the Government team to go through the PWS and other terms in order ensure mutual understanding. Only the incumbent would know enough to provide well-developed responses in the time available for proposal preparation. It is highly unlikely that any of the proposals other than the incumbent's would represent a knowledgable "approach". Anyway, that is why I think that kind of "competition" is ridiculous. The CO who put that RFP on the street either didn't care or didn't know better. I would not have let my team mates do that to themselves. As CO, I would work with them to develop a sensible way to go about the job.. BTW, if what they really want is to get the incumbent back, then the only evaluation factors they would need are experience, past performance, and price. No need for a "technical approach." The same is true if they didn't want the incumbent back. I could say more, explain more, but I've said all I'm going to say on this topic. My many writings over the years cover the ground more completely.

I don't know about that. The thing to know about Socrates was that he was a cunning questioner. If you had spoken and he then asked you a question about what you said, you were in trouble. I'm not skilled enough or patient enough to be cunning. Don Mansfield is the Socratic guy. The Athenians would have executed him along with Socrates. But here is a book that you might enjoy reading: The Socratic Method: A Practitioner's Handbook, by Ward Farnsworth ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ A really good book and a pleasant read. Especially good for contract negotiators.