Voyager

Does anyone really think our duties of negotiation are just one big math problem into which no one puts enough effort? I doubt that you do. So why not think and discuss the mastery of negotiation more in this thread? Wifcon as a whole, if it were more secure, could have one big forum for discussing negotiations, but it doesn't; instead, it has a "contract award process" forum. Give that processing to the AIs, I say, and let us specialize instead. Negotiation is both where the career field excels for the American taxpayer and where the human mind teaches AI, through the mind's experiential learning and through its unique ability to correlate seemingly disparate concepts. AI LLMs can only learn what past humans have correlated and done, you see - human minds are on the cutting edge here. Negotiation is also where the AI can assist in the math and the rote tasks of documentation to free up the humans for abstract thinking. I don't know if your fatalism was "about the regulations" or if it was placed somewhere besides negotiations in the "contract award process", @Vern Edwards, but I have hope that I will yet become a master at the original federal job title I had: Contract Negotiator. The (uniquely human) competitive spirit that drives me to seek the best deal reasonably and graciously to both parties is what will drive me to that mastery.

So then, select managerial candidates incumbent upon their ability to discern B.S. in employees. By "B.S.", I mean: Or else the manager couldn't do the job of selecting CO candidates.

What's really scary is knowing that the individual quoted here will only live a finite life and then his replacement will have grown up consuming and sharing workslop. I don't like leaving such depressing one-liners here. What can be done now by the current workforce to extend the life of corporate knowledge before we hand tasks requiring that prerequisite knowledge over to machines? I'm asking how to leave a legacy of thinking to people whom will not need to think.

Yesterday was the cutoff for general feedback on the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul any of us practitioners wanted to provide the OFPP. I provided the attached. An A.I. tool my agency provides helped me prepare this. The A.I. suggested, and I decided, that the RFO initiative needs to balance accountability with agility, and procedural correctness with mission success. I did not let the A.I. base its perspective outside of Wifcon.com. That means, subject to any user error and the limits of the technology I used, 27 years of forum activity is advising this document. What do you think? Would anyone like to augment, refine, or disagree with these points on this forum? If you agree with any of these points, what is an example of it in the RFO Parts that could lead to actionable public comments on the Federal Register? I view this feedback as merely a conversation starter. RFO Feedback.pdf

But it's not, if the CO customer knows what he or she is doing. A MAS is just a place for a contractor to state prices available to all customers. A BPA is a place for a price negotiated down to a certain customer for a certain repeatable task. It's a device for removing risk from the MAS price. An opportunity - in the right hands.

You guys are probably right. Does it matter? Common sense says we do a lot of commercial transactions. Business sense says we should make those less lawyerly (take procedures out of the law) and less onerous (make the APA inapplicable).

FAR Part 15 award procedures are for the COs with noncommercial requirements. In the U.S. Government's award data reported by COs in FPDS, if you look at the number of transactions, COs report that most transactions - and that means most of their work hours - use commercial procedures. It stands to reason, then, that the first place COs need reform is in the procedural burden of awarding commercial requirements. It's the low-hanging fruit. I agree with @FrankJon above that it is only natural for bureaucrats to revert to their old ways, and I venture to guess that might be why this increment of change did not attempt to take them on and change their ways all at once. In this way, even the current increment of change is agile. The early adopters of the overhauled FAR procedures will instead be the COs with commercial requirements, and they have nearly all of the reformers' collective focus on them now. The "revolution" is occurring in their world, as evidenced by the obliteration of FAR Subpart 8.4 - a law you used to have to know.

We're digging ourselves out of a hole. We won't just emerge all at once. At this point in the likely decade-long reforms needed to federal acquisition, aren't the reformers just restoring common sense? Their orders are literally Executive Order 14275, Restoring Common Sense to Federal Procurement. Common sense says less instructions and less prerequisite knowledge needed to read the remaining instructions will mean less complexity in execution. Then the buying guides can fill in the knowledge gaps without the onerousness of the Administrative Procedures Act. Then the culture will value risk aversion less and value efficiency and effectiveness more. Then the hiring will naturally improve. That latter activity will all be done in the agile sense of modular improvements based on current known needs. This might take a while. The prerequisite knowledge of the law is the problem right now, so they're solving that.

With the "facts or circumstances" language put back in, that leaves open Vern's two questions still: A binding contract requires offer, acceptance of the offer, and consideration. Assuming FAR Part 15 source selection procedures were used, prior to award the Contractor proposal's promissory statements were the offer, and, unless the Government counteroffered in discussions, the award document was acceptance of the offer. Consideration, according to The Government Contracts Reference Book, is either a benefit to the offeror or a detriment to the buyer, so at time of award without discussions, consideration was the Government's promise to pay the sums stated in the contract. Now, here at time of contract modification, I assume the parties are actually negotiating. Now the supplemental agreement drafted by the Government is the offer, as it captures the REA proposal's promissory statements and any other promises the Government offers to the Contractor buyer for bilateral signature. Again, consideration must be either a benefit to the offeror or a detriment to the buyer. Here the detriment to the buyer is the promise to release claims. Look at this phrase again: it seems to say the "modification(s)" are the consideration*. But I just said the promise to release claims is the consideration. It is unclear as written. I therefore propose the whole entire template language remain the same except for the first word. Change "In" to "As". Then the offer is the supplemental agreement draft, the acceptance is the Contractor's bilateral signature, and the consideration is the promise to release. *Here, the modification is actually the binding contract. It is the instrument that requires offer, acceptance, and consideration.

I see in the language @Vaughn sets forth we lose the applicability of the release to the underlying facts or circumstances surrounding the change the Government made. We instead apply the release of claims to all things the Contractor wrote in their proposal. So, they could just issue a new proposal and get another swing at it. Imagine a disgruntled contractor up at the plate: "Strike 8 - try again!" In DOD I once had a boss who was a former NCO that used to say, "Disapproved! Please submit again in 90 days for further disapproval."

Oh. Hence, the change order required no further consideration to be made effective. I get that now, so my proposition is null. But I disagree with this, based on my understanding of the English involved here. I assume that the beginning phrase (from "In" to "adjustment,'") is an adverbial phrase modifying the verb "releases". The noun in the sentence is "Contractor". Based on my above assumption, I would say the Contractor's promise to release claims is consideration for the Government's offered contract modification. Especially since "releases" is active, not passive. If my above assumption is false, then "in consideration of" is mere colloquialism as you suggest.

This has me scratching my head at FAR 43.204(c)(2): It says the consideration, or thing of value, that the contractor brings to a supplemental agreement containing an equitable adjustment as the result of a change order is a promise that it will not hold liable the government for further equitable adjustments. Isn't the consideration the promise to perform the contract as changed?

Is your typical businessperson really hiring (because that's all this is) professionals for their butts in seats? Because that's what the majority of professional services contracts are - especially the ones with no deliverables, or with "Monthly Progress Report" deliverables. This takes no business sense, which is why 1102s are currently so confounded or scared to negotiate that they sometimes document their files the way @General.Zhukov describes - even now, at current acquisition thresholds. The majority of these contracts are governmental hiring workarounds to avoid paying pensions and being unable to fire a Fed. We are not going to change those facts of life (except maybe to force negotiations), so I say let the PMs hire who they want this way and let the markets subsequently flood so the price of these butts goes down.

In reference to this OP: Eliminating Bid Protests - Contract Award Process - The Wifcon Forums and Blogs - 27 Years Online See GAO response to its FY2025 NDAA mandates: GAO Response to Section 885 of the FY2025 NDAA | U.S. GAO

@joel hoffman Where does one find the best guidance on how to effectively execute successful D-B programs today? Applicable to my workload. Thanks.