Don Mansfield

Here are my thoughts: 1. I am in favor of removing the GAO from the bid protest process. I've always held this opinion. The Legislative Branch has no business reviewing individual solicitations and award decisions of agencies. 2. I am in favor of a venue like an agency board of contract appeals that an interested party can appeal to after receiving a decision on a protest from the contracting officer--like the disputes process. 3. I am not in favor of eliminating the COFC's bid protest jurisdiction. From a balance of powers perspective, I think that executive branch decisions regarding how it plans to conduct an acquisition and how it chooses a contractor should be subject to judicial review.

Yes, because it is not prohibited. See FAR 1.102(d).

Because it's not. It's being done for administrative convenience.

Two ideas: 1. Don't ask for resumes. 2. If you do ask for resumes, don't ask for resumes of people who the offeror says will perform the work. Ask for resumes of people who are currently performing similar contracts for the offeror.

Because not all documents with the header "BPA" are actually BPAs. FAR part 13 BPAs are required to contain the terms and conditions at FAR 13.303-3(a), including-- (2) Extent of obligation. A statement that the Government is obligated only to the extent of authorized purchases actually made under the BPA.

How is the contractor getting paid--contract financing or just delivery payments?

A friend of mine told me that the training contracts awarded by FAI use LPTA.

Why not present that to the COR as your QASP?

The Government is typically accepting the seller's terms in a GCPC purchase. What are the seller's terms for partial cancellation?

I don't know why that would not be coded as a flow-down clause in the matrix--it obviously is. So what? In a contract between the prime and the sub, wouldn't the sub be the contractor? In any case, the "substance" of the clause needs to flowed down--it doesn't need to be verbatim.

@joel hoffman, What do you expect a contracting officer to do? It seems like Fara Fasat is trying hard to do more than just rely on a self-certification, but is getting nowhere.

I'm not saying it couldn't be used--I'm just questioning how useful it is in assessing an offeror's ability to perform a contract. I'm all for considering an offeror's "reasonable and cooperative behavior" in performing Government contracts. However, I don't think it's reasonable to impute an offeror's behavior in competing for contracts to their expected behavior when performing a contract. It seems needlessly punitive.

BTW, yes I know that Congress made the Pilot Program permanent. Yes, I know that some civilian agencies issued class deviations. Yes, I know there is a FAR case pending. None of those things detract from my point.

Only three votes? Oh, well. The reason I posted was that I thought the clause prescription was remarkably incomplete. The scope of the subpart at FAR 3.900 reads: The clause prescription merely says to insert the clause in solicitations and contracts over the SAT. Nothing about the clause applying to civilian agencies other than NASA or the Coast Guard. Nothing about the clause not applying after January 1, 2017. So much for the guidance for writing clause prescriptions in the FAR Drafting Guide:

I think that makes perfect sense. FAR 42.1501(a)(4) includes the contractor's record of "reasonable and cooperative behavior and commitment to customer satisfaction" on previously and current contracts as part of past performance information. However, an offeror's record of protesting is not within the scope of such an evaluation.