dsmith101abn

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. 

10 minutes ago, Retreadfed said:

See FAR 33.104 (Procedures for protests to GAO are found at 4 CFR Part 21 (GAO Bid Protest Regulations). In the event guidance concerning GAO procedure in this section conflicts with 4 CFR Part 21, 4 CFR Part 21 governs.)  This should answer your other question.

^^^ Thanks. 

On 3/8/2023 at 7:11 AM, Vern Edwards said:

In such cases, with respect to any protest basis which is known or should have been known either before or as a result of the debriefing, and which does not involve an alleged solicitation impropriety covered by paragraph (a)(1) of this section, the initial protest shall not be filed before the debriefing date offered to the protester, but shall be filed not later than 10 days after the date on which the debriefing is held.

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. 

54 minutes ago, Vern Edwards said:

Don Mansfield and I recently had a conversation about innovation in acquisition and I pointed out that we know very little about whether innovations, such as incentive contracts and performance-based acquisition, word as advertised. Basically, what happens in our business is that when an innovation has been described and adopted it is almost immediately declared to be a success and accepted as such by noncritical thinkers. Rarely do we collect information that would enable us to reach an informed conclusion in that regard. We design, but we don't test.

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. 

17 hours ago, joel hoffman said:

2-3 months for discussions , revisions, reviews??

Edit: Hard for me to comprehend taking that long.  

↓

18 hours ago, dsmith101abn said:

8-12 weeks, majority of which is internal Leadtime (a different discussion).

17 hours ago, joel hoffman said:

You say you want to award 8-10 ID/IQ’s. But the current universe is seven proposals…

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.

14 hours ago, C Culham said:

The other thought I had, and again it may be too late, is to seek an individual deviation from FAR 16.505(b)(2) that is stopping your idea.

Overall GSA does it so it seems to me that it can be done even at the point your are now at.

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. 

6 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

I do not know of any law or regulation requiring that you award all MATOCs resulting from a single solicitation on the same date with the same period of performance. And see FAR 52.215-1(f)(5).

But, what you do must be consistent with the terms of the solicitation itself.

Off hand, I do not see why you cannot award four contracts now, without discussions, and three more later, after discussions and final proposal revisions. While negotiating with the three, I don't see why you cannot provide fair opportunities to the four.

But check what your solicitation says and the terms of the proposals.

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. 

2 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

So you want to make the PM happy by awarding four contracts now, with three more to follow after discussions and final proposal revisions. Right?

How long do you think discussions and final proposal revisions will take?

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).

from a project manager standpoint, over a certain $ threshold you have to go to a board, which is one day a month, usually towards the end of the month, and the approval comes a few weeks later, so it's schedule. PM's tend to think their projects are the most important thing in the world. 

Our office gets a periodical about contracting stuff, and i disagree with it.  what prompted my question was the below, and i don't agree with it. 

Nothing Magic about 5 Years, other then prices have changed dramatically over 5 years, and in this particular area, we dont want to limit the experience of other contractors. 

I have a question where I thought there was a simple answer, and there still may be. I was talking through what I wanted to do with a peer and now I’m not sure on the answer. I know what I can get away with, but looking at the right answer.

I want to award 8-10 IDIQ’s. A solicitation was advertised LPTA and we received 7 proposals, 4 of which were acceptable; however the capacity of 4 contractors most likely would not fulfil our 5 year planned requirements, so I want to negotiate with 3 of the unacceptable offerors and try to give the offerors a chance to cure the deficiencies.  I want to award at least one IDIQ now so work can start on a TO and then negotiate with the contractors that had deficiencies in their IDIQ proposals, award those IDIQ’s later, and have different POP among the IDIQ awardees.  

So Question, can you have a MATOC with multiple IDIQ contract awardees with different POP’s?

How, if anything, would that affect the fair opportunity requirement?

is that still considered a MATOC? 

Do you have different POP for an agency MATOC’s or do you modify the IDIQ’s to have the same POP after negotiations?

What am I not thinking about? Am I making this too hard?

I have an idea what I’m gonna do, but thought I’d ask hoping for non-hostile input.

* I’m not spelling out acronyms. Interpret acronyms as used in common practice.

I don't know what GovCons or M&A mean. 

23 minutes ago, joel hoffman said:

 for construction, numerous agencies use  the UCF. Many of my non-DoD students in my D-B class over a period of 20 years confirmed that.

Understood, do attachments have a different contract meaning vs being included as part of a contract full text? I know we're talking about C vs H but what about J?

Reason for my quote, I'm non-DOD and  i'd like to take a D-B class sometime. If you can let me know what you teach (if you still do) or otherwise recommend I'd appreciate it. I don't do a lot of D/B stuff but once in a while it presents itself. 

7 hours ago, joel hoffman said:

completely familiar with the CSI format for construction contracts

Some construction industries use this format. others use modified formats, some use the AASHTO format. Maybe unrelated to this forum.

O and the survey was focused on our industry specifically. 

I got an agency protest. First one in a long while. I looked back 6 years and found 3 size standard protests and one agency. We did an informal survey and found most contractors don’t protest because they think we treat them in good faith (my industry is very specific to a certain kind of work).

Weren’t evaluated right, unfair advantage, etc. etc. but if we were more transparent and not so scared to talk to the contractor community would protests chill out?

Thanks Vern. I agree!! 

On 10/15/2022 at 2:26 PM, ji20874 said:

I have never used these labels in my exchanges with offerors.  I regret that some DHS contracting officers think they must.

I'll go even further -- it is not necessary to use these labels even in the internal technical evaluation report.  I have led evaluations where we scrupulously avoided using those labels.

On 10/15/2022 at 6:52 PM, Vern Edwards said:

Agree.

I'm not saying I disagree, just wanted to clarify if y'all are suggesting labels shouldn't be used or just that labels are not required to be used? 

o and it wouldn't have to be a prize or award for ever exercise. 

I'm not a noob but i still looked for the answer and i liked the exercise. would anyone have interest in doing this regularly? i'm thinking exercise of the week like what's the limitation on contractors fee under an A/E contract. i'd guess some people know it but couldn't find the citation. 

59 minutes ago, C Culham said:

Hope I have helped no matter the approach you and your team decide to take.  .  Best of luck moving forward.

Thanks Carl.

I especially appreciate the leeway comment. When I had my first kid i was overwhelmed by parent advice, some of people who had young kids, some older kids, some had kids 40 years ago and some with never having kids. To this advice I would say good idea, turn around and do whatever the F i wanted. I appreciate the idea that not one way is correct and the other is wrong and there are options. I feel HQ might be out of touch with the field here! or I'm an idiot, that's a possibility.

That's not to downplay the value of the feedback I've received on this form. It is much appreciated.  hopefully nobody's offended.

perhaps nothing. 

6.305 Availability of the justification.

I appreciate everyone's feedback. Although I probably wont respond to everyone's posts I'll give some morning statements. 

I'm aware of the COC process. 

There are several state laws governing blasting such as ORS 480. 

Again i'm doing an IFB, so i'm limited to evaluating price and price related factors with bids. (not a 2-step). I could, but do not want to, use the source selection process at 15.1.

I'm familiar with the FP-14 (was on the team that updated it from the FP-03), and coming soon to a screen near you is the FP-24. 

I'm still gonna do what i said i'm gonna do, but as what i "think" will be my last question, towards the criticism of using a special standard or responsibility in my circumstance, can you, or will you, provide an example of when one might benefit from using a special standard? presumably that process is in the FAR for a reason, and i'm apparently not understanding why or when it would be appropriate to use.

And lastly, 

1 hour ago, formerfed said:

But I get so annoyed at COs who won’t make decisions or do things without checking first with their management, policy/review personnel, lawyer, etc. on even the most basic issues.  

 I dont like that either. Why the Army works is NCO's can make field decisions based on the best info they have at the time. 

I’ve read all of the posts in this thread and most of the cited references. While I’m not going to try and shoot myself in the foot or make anything more difficult for myself, I’m going to try using a definitive or special standard or responsibility and include some requirements in the SCRs along with describing how substitutions might work.  

Right or wrong beneficial or not I’m doing it.

While my current office deals with a fairly large dollar amount of construction work, our contracting office only has 6 other COs, most with under 5 years’ experience, so I appreciate everyone’s thoughts, references and inputs.   

If anyone cares to know I can post my outcome in the What Happened thread. Not a lot of posts in there so don’t know if that interests anyone.

1 hour ago, joel hoffman said:

Yes, you can require the contractor to use the key personnel and key subtractors

Could i require this if i didn't evaluate a proposal IAW 15.3 but a bid IAW 14 using a special standard of responsibility? 

47 minutes ago, Don Mansfield said:

See Chapter 4 of Formation of Government Contracts, Fourth Edition, pp. 428-434.

Thanks Don. I found a 3rd edition laying around my office and found the section starting on page 422. I'll read that while i'm thinking about this, and thank you too JJ for the discussion. 

12 minutes ago, ji20874 said:

Take your pick, but remember that these are different.

Right! let me think this through a little further and we'll see where I end up. I may be creating a potential problem out of nothing. 

I’ve not seen Sureties do a whole lot when we’ve run into issues. They’ll argue to days end to not pay for completion contracts, but my experience is a very small sample.