dsmith101abn

Way behind here but.. Plans, specs, and estimates, the construction package/requirement. that was the delivery. everything a CO needed to solicit and award.

I agree this is a tough question, there are so many what ifs. The redbook is a great resource but it’s a hard read. I don’t know what you’re doing but maybe ask your programming/finance/fiscal office and go from there. You aren’t going to read the redbook and come to a conclusion overnight and convince the world of your opinion. i'm making the assumption it's end of fiscal year and you're trying to think something thru.

My agency does have a sustainability team that can assist contractors, COs/PMs. From a CO standpoint it’s a 1 or 2. From a project or program managers standpoint, probably or a 4 or 5. So depending on what way I look at the question I could rate a 1 or 5. While challenging, Small businesses should not be exempt. Agencies should be helping. For example fly ash. most people wouldn't know what that is if you didn't have a team to educate them.

I couldn’t find an electronic copy but read a hard copy procedural manual from 1970. Construction projects used to take 3 days to post a solicitation between the time the requirements were provided to contracting to the time it took to post a solicitation. Award time was 10 days between delivery of the construction project to award. It’s 90-120 days now. More history lessons – Yellowstone flooded a couple years ago – this is an opinion from 1906: “I am firmly of the opinion that if the water in the Gardner River is as high next summer as it has been this season, that someday the road will be so washed out as to require using the old road from Gardiner to Mammoth Hot Springs which runs over the hills and which has not been used for 12 years or more” https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/yell_roads/hrs1-13.htm That is what happened.

I don’t know if I can answer your question but can share an experience. At my previous agency I inherited a contract like this where the AE was to provide construction period services and the period of performance was tied to the construction contractor’s completion date. The construction contractor had 700 days to complete the project and was 2 years behind with a pending termination for default when I left that agency. I thought the AE was due some compensation but everything I knew at the time I left was the AE was on the hook for providing responses to RFIs, ASIs, etc. and was contractually owed nothing. Like Joel mentioned what’s your contract say? You might want an attorney.

I’m kinda all over the place in my thought. On the one hand I agree with JJ, there may be nothing against doing what you’re wanting to do. On the other hand I’ve operated in some way the way Culham explains it. 12 month base + options with non-work windows. We do this a lot with fish and bird migration, there’s certain times you have work restrictions, which I think could apply in different scenarios. On the third hand I agree with Vern’s thought there may be other areas that may be outside 48 CFR that have some say in it. Consider the 23 U.S.C. 201(b)(6). Our projects are obligated before we even solicit them, or 23 U.S.C. 203(a)(5) (yes it has been interpreted as competitive bidding means sealed bidding). I imagine there are other nuances.

What he said ^ Ask the question. When i was a new CO I was asked a similar question by a contractor and I didn't have a good response. Going forward, I started adding more if could like must be 50% complete, all complete, substantially complete, etc. if i was rating things like past performance or previous experience. I'm not exactly an expert on source selection and don't know anything about the requirement, so take that with a grain of salt.

What's 52.245-1 say? How about your agency supplement, manual, etc.? What do you want to do? Can you do what you want to? Do you care which way you go? I would guess maintenance is getting paid for one way or another. Maybe it depends on whose paying the bill but it's gonna be paid.

I saw a solicitation last month to stop a landslide. Section L and M were super simple. It went something like this… Checklist – Did I sign my 1442? Did I include my subk plan? Are my reps & certs updated in SAM and/or did I include them? Did I attach my technical proposal? Did I provide past performance information? Did I submit a price? Is the physical or email address correct? Is my SAM registration active? What do I submit? 1. 1442 2. Subk plan 3. Reps & certs 4. Technical proposal 5. Past performance information not previously reported in CPARS 6. Price How will we make award? .. …. ……. Point being it was the most simple way to state what submittals were required and how proposals were evaluated. Didn’t look like it took 10 - 20 + pages, multiple volumes, etc., just to the point. It was in Alaska, I’ll see if I can find the SAM link.

That should be a course, mandatory for certain CO's, if it isn't. Once you learn the lingo, abutment, at-grade, embankment, headwall, cross sections, BIM, riprap. etc. everything else comes together for the non-engineer... in my experience.

probably somewhere in between, I can only speculate, I'd guess my sustainability team will put some process together in phases where someone is going to want to see what we're buying, maybe have some incentive for products and services that use sustainability. They'll probably put together some agency goal that is X% of awards include sustainability products and services, and of those awards Y% of the products and services are lower carbon, energy efficient, etc. Operating administrations will probably get data calls to self report progress. CO's will try and get an exception for most everything. Outside of simple supply and services, I'd gather this is going to be more focused on the PM/Designer, etc. to figure out how they're going to manage project delivery and the CO will have little input since some agencies don't include CO's in the IPT's. Totally unsupported negative outlook of an opinion, but that's what i think will happen... at least where i work.

I wasn't briefed, but was notified via an email with a link to the federal register. I have not had any training or heard about plans to provide any. I would guess my agency's sustainability team is going to put something together, but I do not know that.

I don't think that extended to civilian agencies.

If I understand your question, and I don’t know I fully do, if you have the original contract and all the mods, is there a reason you can’t keep your contract up to date and the Government should do it for you?

I think it’s a great idea but would be super hard to implement. Maybe scale it down as a phased approach. By that I mean start with a no GAO protests against things the Government isn’t great at, like IT procurements first and then move on from there. I don’t have a roadmap but that would be the idea. Final phase would be eliminate GAO protests. Also, since GAO recommends the Government cover the protesters costs if the Government loses a protest, maybe GAO also recommends the denied protester covers the Governments cost, inclusive of delay costs, etc. maybe that’s already a thing or just makes further litigation costs I dono just typing outload loud if you will as an alternative.

I'm told by my finance/fiscal office there's not a mechanism to pay other federal/state/county/city organizations if there is no SAM registration. System limitation. Whether that applies to other executive agencies I do not know. Whether that is a requirement of any regulation i do not know that ether.

Some do. I don't exactly know why but assume there is a reason. My civilian sub agency does. Perhaps I should ask.

i dont know what you're doing and i'm not into 20 questions, but did you look through 2 CFR and see if there's something there applicable to your situation? Is checking SAM registration a burden? arbitrary questions.

13 CFR 121.404. There might be a FAR reference but i didn't look for it. Always can go to the SBA and let them make that determination. I'm not certain.

yeah, my new T-11R didn't deploy. It's been known to happen. I shouldn't have said what i said. but lol on some of the responses.

^^^ Thanks.

I couldn't get acquisition.gov to open and didn't try any other avenues, but isn't 5 days prescribed in FAR 33, not 10 days? so if 4 and 48 CFR conflict which one do you follow? I'd gather with a degree of certainty this has happened before. Another question, since the regulations use the word offered, i could potentially offer a post award debrief 5 days after a written request for one, and if 5 days is the time limitation to protest, the contractor would be untimely in their protest since i didn't give it until day 5? that seems shady but that's what i took away.

I took a innovation in contracting class recently. there were about 30 of us. There were more procurement attorneys then 1102's. one of the opening questions was why we wanted to take this class. almost all of the attorneys said they wanted to know where the innovation training was coming from because they had been seeing more garbage (my term) then they where historically used to.

Thanks everyone. I'm not going to respond to all the what if's and questions, but I'll leave some final words just to close up the thread. ↓ yup, we didn't get enough proposals to make the number of awards we planned on. I appreciate you trying to flush out the thoughts and details, but in the end with leaving all the gaps in what i haven't explained, i don't think we're at a cardinal change. I don't know how long deviations take in most of the Government, but for the few agencies I've worked for, it's not quick. the quicker option had we not planned on a deviation at the beginning would be to resolicited. GSA is the Tom Brady of federal agencies, GSA gets away with a lot of stuff. This is the conclusion i gathered and i believe the solicitation allows for some awards now and more after discussions. I appreciate everyone's time and input. I have nothing further. Dsmith out.

Correct. I guess a piece of information that would have helped, we're using seed projects to evaluate price, which were solicited with the IDIQs. so not necessarily for just the PM but for the project schedules. The evaluation criteria, i think, wasn't that complex or hard to understand. I think with discussions, revisions, reviews, 8-12 weeks, majority of which is internal Leadtime (a different discussion).