Boof

In my case, time is the reason I do not communicate more with contractors. H2H is correct. I am buried in Taskers from inside and outside my Agency. OIG, GAO, SIGAR, Congress, the Press, FOIA, OMB, OFPP and on and on, There truely is not time for getting our jobs done now.

I am at Department of State and my conference POC determined that none of your listed meetings were conferences even though the word conference was in thier name. I think it may be up to your agency and the person controlling the conferences.

Don't lose hope on USAJobs. I applied in June, got called in September, and interviewed in October. It was so long that I had look in my pile of applications to see what I even applied for. But it paid off in a GS 7 to 13 ladder. I couldn't believe my good luck. Then it took from October to March for security to do my background check. Slow but definitely worth it. That was back in 1998 and I am a GS15 now. .

Don't see how you could have such a clause. We have T4D the prime and awarded several bridge contracts to all the subs via J&A but those a separate documented actions. . Different situation but somewhat related......They are changing the FAR to state that if a contractor has too much pass through costs then you should consider award directly to their sub. Easy to say but not implement. This would require a new competition or a J&A if sole source could be justified..

Consider a letter or email to the agency competition advocate requesting consideration for future orders. It may get your foot in the door or it may not but you won't be out much (less than the posts on this site). I am a Competion Advocate and take such emails seriously and discuss the sole source with the CO and provide the company a reasonable answer. Most COs get the message and compete future requirements if they really had no reason for sole source.

Jwomack is right. Some manufacturers won't compete with thier resellers. They just tell you that they can give a high quote if you need a third. Some try to compete but thier reseller accepts such a small mark up that they win. You never know.

I would question why we were not buying new widgets and tossing out the old ones if the OEM will provide new ones for the same price.

Thanks all. Problem at least temporariy delayed for 6 months. Several agencies complained to GSA and they will extend the BPAs for us.

Madamski, If you return, please describe the requirment better.

Yes host countries can tax contract hires working in thier country. Depends on the status of forces agreement or other diplomatic documents. In some cases they require the contractor to withhold and pay the taxes to them just like our IRS does. And yes they have sometimes changed the rules in the middle of your tour of duty. Unfortunately tax law is very complicated and it depends on the country, the specific tax law, the terms of the contract and specific circumstances as to if the funds can be reimbursed to make you whole. Corporate attorneys have to work with the Government attorneys to determine if these taxes are reimbursable to the company or not.

DW21 Sounds like my agency. We do verbals way too frequently. It is usually to keep services going while we process the funding modifications. Sometimes we are just getting final contract approvals and come up a couple of days short. Many times it is due to the customer having a real bureaucratic system for getting funds approved (one had 16 stops before coming to Acquisisitons. 16 chances for the approver to be out of office. My only huge concern giving verbals was having the funds especially when the program office seemed to be having difficulty providing them. I always get a written fund citation with dollar amount signed by the executive officer who is over the budget office of the supported organization. Then I call the company at 6PM on Friday night to give them the good news that they can keep on working and a funding document will be forthcoming in about a week. A letter contract is what is needed if all the terms and conditions have not been resolved but urgent services are needed immediately.

C and Marine-1, Thanks for the advice and research. The GSA FSS contract is not expiring. The FSSI BPA GSA awarded against it is. We place calls against that BPA. We don't want to make our own BPAs or contract orders because we would have to compete the requirements under FAR 8GSA suggest we should award a non funded, broadly worded BPA call that would allow us to continue making purchases beyond the end of thier BPA. So we would be making BPA calls against another BPA Call that is working like a IDIQ. Yes it makes you head spin to think about it. Then you add to it that our orders are automatically generated and sent to the vendors by our writing system and it gets even more complicated. Thanks all.

To avoid the most delays, they need to get the Acquisitions Office involved at this early stage. With that said, I do realize that many COs are not all that customer friendly and some won't talk to a program office until they submit a "complete package". We have to straighten that issue out in our Office quite often. Elevate to management if they don't want early involvement.

I realize there is no such thing as an IDIQ BPA Call but I call it that because it has no items on it other than to say "everything on the BPA" , no quantitites and no funding. It one and only purpose is to extend the BPA past its expiration.

I am hoping a GSA expert can help me out on something. Situation: GSA has FSS schedule contracts for Office Supplies. They competed and awarded BPAs against these contracts as part of the Strategic Sourcing Initiative (OS2). Our Agency mandated that all supplies by bought by either purchase card or BPA Call against these BPAs. The BPAs are expiring next month and GSA decided to award IDIQ contracts outside the FSS program for the Strategic Sourcing Initative instead of reawarding the BPAs. The IDIQs are not awarded yet and when we asked about a BPA exention the GSA CO said they were not planning on doing so. Instead they suggested we award a very broad "delivery order" against each BPA before it expires to essentially extend the BPA on our own. We need about a year to downselect the IDIQ vendors and catalog thier products in our automated system. I believe this would have to be an IDIQ BPA Call not a "delivery order". This seems incorrect on the surface but I cannot think of a reason that it couldn't be done. Anyone see an issue with this plan. Some questions: 1. Can you have a IDIQ BPA Call that extends past the expiration of the BPA? 2. Can you award a BPA call against another BPA Call? (never mind my problems with our automated system) I would just like to hear some expert comments on this whole idea.

We had an all day GSA FSS training class at our Agency a couple of weeks ago and the instructors clearly pointed out that a GSA FSS contractor could procure any supplies/services he needed from other GSA FSS holders and thus avoid our having to deal with Open Market Items being on the order. They said the clause about the FAR 51 deviation autority allowed them to do this. I am sure we will be using it often on many of our Calls against GSA FSS BPAs. It made us very happy to add it to our toolkit.

We never moved effort but we have excercised options early many times. It shortens the total contract period of course and sometimes causes option year prices to be charged early. One five year contract got wiped out in 2 years because of changing world events. Expeditious but not necessarily cost effective.

Book: Lord of the Rings Song: Anything by Bob Seger Movie: Caddy Shack, Fast Times at Ridgemont High Poet: None. Can't understand poetry at all

Apsofacto Gee, I posted over a year ago. I didn't expect this topic to be resurrected. Thanks for the added information. One thing my Agency is definitely good at is awarding work by the hour without knowing what the outcome should be. Nothing like good old Time and Material for those who don't know where they are going.

Thanks all, I sometimes wonder how some of these phrases ever come about.

Some one brought up a "force account clause" at a meeting and in 30 years of Government I have never heard of it. I Googled it and came up with very little but there was one court case who also used the term with quotes around it and seemed to indicate it had something to do with added materials at a construction site.

Even though GSA says its FSS pricing is fair and reasonable based on thier evaluation criteria for awarding the FSS contract, but we all know prices vary widely with some contractors giving up to 50% or more discounts when made to compete. So how is that pricing really fair and reasonable. I think DPAP just wants all the COs to not accept the theory that all GSA FSS prices are Fair and actually look at the prices.

The CO must have a supervisor. Thats how you get them to answer. Go up the chain and hopefully someone will care.

I have always wondered what the advantage of using the Hill AFB site is over the official FAR site that has the FAR in both HTML and PDF formats. Can anyone provide good reasons I should use Hill AFB. I am a non DoD FED.

The dictionary says prospecive is "potential, likely or expected". The problem is with "potential". Any company could be potential.