AllGray

Yes, a negotiation between groups with completely inequal power is always a great idea. I suspect I know why you enjoy this completely inequal distribution of power. You seem ignorant of how this works from both ends. The threat of protest is often enough to move the needle where it needs to be, or more importantly, where it should have been if the acquisition was undertaken by someone competent to run it, and who cares enough to do it right.

I was speaking to you, and I did read the article. Although it's literally just a bunch of "someone else should do x," why not jump all that and say procurement officials SHOULD do things correctly to begin with? Your follow-up even says that the issue needs to be dealt with through better management, correct? So now you want better managers, processes, and people, while stripping some of the protections afforded to those who need to push back when this happens. Not really touching on the overloading of GAO or the likely increase to that 180day limit that would affect right? Do you understand the differences in Costs etc for a small business doing an agency-level protest vs GAO or FC? Would you say providing for the reimbursement for lawyers' fees and proposal preparation fees would be acceptable? Expect some interesting proposal spending in the future. "Protests against the evaluation of bids and proposals and contractor selection decisions should be eliminated entirely." - because of that aforementioned quality management, you point out this is a fun one. You also go into saying you could see paying for proposal preparation costs but no changes of direction to the actual contract, re-evaluation, or re-award. It sounds to me like you want to turn the government into an unassailable movement machine that lays to the wayside any concept of checks and balances in favor of moving unethical/incorrect/foolish contracting actions forward simply in the necessity of this "speed" which is already caused by that inefficient management and all the rest you pointed out. So yeah man. I read it. I quoted what you said precisely, and I completely disagree. Bringing the fear of a protest to someone who is obviously doing things the wrong way is one of the only ways that we keep this juggernaut on the right track.

In our experience, an ANC will only deal with you to get in at a customer, and then you will never get the work again. You can't compete with a fake small business with billions backing them who put on each prop/rfi/statement that they have a 250M war chest to handle any contract issues, on top of an extremely difficult-to-touch benefit/compensation structure. They have already completely cooked the game their direction, if they need you it wont be for long.

Solid point and the initial post did have a bit of " this was my first time doing this, so I wanted to make it much cheaper to look good" The over 99% pay band item is pretty surprising, but they seem to have quite a bit of power in this negotiation and can tell the prime to leave them alone; you seem to be forced to deal with them as well, so perhaps their stance is because they know they can win?

Have any of you had a chance to read this book? In her book, the former CIO of HUD and ED says to do exactly these things: take the COs out to sporting events, provide gifts, go to family events, children's birthday parties, etc. At no time in the book does she spend any time on the actual technical response portions or anything else aside from pure social dynamics and getting as close to the CO's life as possible. It's pretty clear that this will only continue when people in power outright say that's what you have to do to win work with them. The Billion Dollar Secret: Secrets to Winning Business from a Former Government Executive (ParkerGroup) Paperback – July 23, 2020 by Gloria Parker (Author), Mike Rice (Author)

Best of Luck Sir!

If the procurements weren't incorrect or incorrectly managed to begin with, we wouldn't need the protests, right? Eliminating a check-and-balance step from something with this much riding on it is nothing short of pure catastrophe. It invites increased "insider" and wildly unethical actions to become more common. Have you checked out this recent gem? The Billion Dollar Secret: Secrets to Winning Business from a Former Government Executive (ParkerGroup) Paperback – July 23, 2020 by Gloria Parker (Author), Mike Rice (Author) This previous ED / HUD CIO outright states that contractors need to take government people to sporting events, buy gifts, and attend children's birthday parties. And you want to remove protests? If you don't have anything to hide, why are you trying to prevent someone from investigating how you did it?