formerfed

Until the OP responds, we don’t know the reason why the KO wants to convert. But the company I worked for faced similar situations several times. It usually started out negotiating a firm fixed price contract with options for continued performance. We went in proposing the level of effort and mix of personnel we were comfortable with to perform well. Over time we learned the work, found efficiencies, and were able to get by with fewer staff hours while achieving consistent performance results. We continued though to provide the same high caliber people we initially proposed and won the competition with. The government though expressed we made too much money and sought reductions in price or negotiating another contract type. I think in all but one instance, the government backed off after we explained all the benefits we provided that they likely lost sight of. In one instance, neither us nor the government budged. We continued to perform the next option which gave the government time to conduct a new competition and we ended up walking away.

Great find Carl. So the answer is pretty sample.

I’m in charge? My response: I would call an all hands meeting. My first point is communicating to everyone is we have an important mission to support and we are severely understaffed. We need extraordinary measures. Second all internal review, approvals and policy not critical to responsively meeting objectives we face are waived. Third, contracting officers are empowered to make decisions on their own to the maximum extent. If a contracting officer makes blatant errors, they also will be held accountable. Personnel will be assigned based on their experience, expertise, and track record of delivering results to the most critical programs. Those that come through will be rewarded and in a perfect position to advance. Those that fail won’t stay in their job and I’ll recruit people that can perform.

Use contractor staff to function as contract specialists. Contracting officers make decisions and sign award documents.

I think the bold portion reflects two seperate thoughts - consider past performance in the commercial market and past performance as a subcontractor.

Past performance has the potential to be a very powerful and useful tool. However for the most part, it is meaningless. For one reason, it relies mostly on CPARS. While the concept of a governmentwide database of contractor performance seems good, in practice the application of ratings to individual contract selections doesn’t do much in differentiating sources. Less than 2% of contractors receive less than Satisfactory ratings. Then there is the survey process. As someone whose opinion I greatly respect once described, you essentially ask in a solicitation for companies to give you information about their government “friends.” Then you sent a survey to their “friends!” Of course we wouldn’t think about calling up references or other sources we might find on our own and ask direct and pointed questions about how well they did. We talk about the role of the contracting officer of the future and that of a business advisor. Shouldn’t the contracting officer be either leading the process to obtain useful marketplace past performance information on offerors and perhaps doing it themselves? That often produces some very enlightening information when you take the effort to research performance on just relying on CPARS and information from “friends.”

Exactly. I’ve performed lots of reviews of the contracting office function across many agencies. A very common theme of both legal and policy personnel is they seem expected to review, critique, and revise what looks like rough drafts from contracting staff.

I occasionally think about this issue. I can’t come up with a single solid reason but I suspect it’s partially due to some of these situations: When I started, the contracting officer was well respected. Few 1102s received a warrant. It took years of experience and demonstrated competence to earn one. They possessed knowledge that few others had. A trend started throughout the government to provide warrants to many more people. At some agencies, almost everyone received a warrant with dollar limitations consistent with their position grades. This meant less qualified 1102s with warrants making improper and incorrect decisions and diluting the previous respect and prestige of contracting officers. Access to contracting regulations, policies, and procedures became widely available. 1102s no longer became the sole keeper of information so program officers and others could research issues on their own, formulate positions and strategies which may differ from the contracting officers, and challenge their opinions. A trend toward “team based activities” that eliminates stovepipes, isolated processing of work components, and sequential processing of steps. Instead of each member responsible for their specialized piece, everyone does a little of each other’s jobs to formulate a team work product. The contracting officers job is considered less of a unique one. The growth of policy, oversight, and legal in roles of reviewing and approving actions. Often a contract specialist/contracting officer doesn’t do a thorough research and preparation because they feel their work will be overridden by others. This just further diminishes their role.

The program is excellent, Vern. This is so much related to the topic here on the CO of the future. Students learn the concepts, principles, practices, and techniques of contracting instead of just being about to spout FAR language by rote.

Yes, this is a necessity for what the paper is about. You can’t have empowerment, trust, and accountability unless one has the proper education as a foundation for practicing. It’s too bad completion of your type of seminar along with some means of testing knowledge isn’t a requirement to receive a contracting officer warrant.

No doubt things will be much different in the future. People can speculate but AI will bring about lots of new things no one can anticipate including opportunities. As long as we stay inquisitive, eager to learn, excited about discoveries, and flexible, a challenging career will still be there. A career that’s just not possible to precisely identify right now.

This paper really hits in mark in my opinion. I personally dislike the business advisor term but I can’t think of something better. A contracting officers future value will be judged in how well they solve program and mission needs and not how well they know the regulations and pass internal reviews by policy analysts, legal, and oversight boards. Automated tools will take over much of that work spouting out the FAR and preparing the perfect solicitation and contract. What’s needed is empowering contracting officers and holding them accountable for results. Rewarding them for exceptional results and removing/downgrading for blatant failures. We shouldn’t be holding back capable 1102s because incompetent ones aren’t doing jobs. We also should be appropriating rewarding the exceptional ones and not with the current trivial recognitions like a certificate or a step increase.

Very informative and enlightening. Also the conclusion suspecting “few COs have much experience negotiating complex contract terms, and the RFO FAR COMPANION and the practice guides are, in their present state, are practically useless. Will COs conduct competitive negotiations competently? If so, how will they do it? We do not know, but if history is any guide, the RFO will be followed by lengthy period of uncertainty, confusion, and bid protest litigation” will undoubtably prove true in my opinion. Over time, new legislation, FAR changes, and policies will address what are perceived as fixes. This results in greatly expanded regulations prescribing in detail how everything should be done. Ultimately we end up with as bad, if not worse, situation as we have before the RFO. The only solution I see is a rush movement to make the Guides more relevant and useful coupled with meaningful and comprehensive training. Senior contract management must ensure close oversight initially of all work. Mentoring of inexperienced personnel is a necessity.

Yeah, something is missing. GSA needs to clarify. The regulation either needs to specify approval levels above the contracting officer for justifications exceeding the SAT or clarify the approval level is still the CO but only after considering responses received from the publication requirement under 538.7104-3. Since MAS ordering procedures are now in GSAM, it’s GSA’s call.

This reminds me of something I read from a senior manager. He stressed how important empowerment, training, and trust is. The gauge he uses for his personal management performance on these areas is his golf score. When he has sufficiently trained and empowered his subordinates, he can take off a lot of time for golfing. He doesn’t need to worry about the job not being done and his golf improves.

Great article, Vern. Thanks for posting it. I hope a few read it, get motivated, and change their outlook on their jobs a little differently. This excerpt is a compelling message for those seeking employment and for managers seeking the best hires:

There’s no better advice for those interested in advancing their career. Right now there’s a mass of confusion out there. The workforce is largely risk adverse. It looks for regulations to be broken down into detailed instructions and precise steps to be take. The majority want to physically see what works so they can copy for their assigned tasks. So not much has happened thus far with the RFO. A few hopefully will see the light. They will do as Vern states - study, learn, and explain to others. I’ll add they will seize the opportunity to apply the revised process to newly selected contracting assignments. They do this before all the policy, analysts, and writers of procurement instructions spend months producing something. They then become the “experts” others turn to including the policy writers. The bulk of the workforce needs led with examples and told the steps to follow. I think that’s largely due to the risk adverse environment created. 25 years ago, Performance Based Acquisition was in vogue. Despite the push to adopt it, not much initially happened because people waited for someone else to take the lead. The company I worked for had knowledge and experience in helping craft the Seven Steps process. Once the word got out we could assist, we had to turn away work due to the demand. The 1102 community wanted someone to tell and show them how to proceed. Another example concerns when the government tried Zero Based Budgeting. Few at the operational level knew what it was about. A newly hired young employee became interested and read, studied, and asked questions. Despite her age, she quickly became recognized as the expert. She saw what’s needed to be done to succeed from that experience and advanced applying that same inquisitive nature to everything she did. She rose to an SES position within record time. To address Carls point, it’s more than just being nimble and flexible. It’s grasping beneficial concepts, studying and inquiring, developing insights and understandings on what needs done to apply, and taking the lead in doing the work as well as continual application throughout your career.

This site contains many of the historical documents affecting our profession. It starts with the 1955 Hoover Commission Report and goes up to the present. https://procurementroundtable.org/#history

@Vern Edwards I would work closely with the program official official who needed help in preparing the SOW. I always liked collaborating with program officials in preparing the SOW and other documents.

AI is most useful in its current stage of development for instructing preparation of items like SOW. It doesn’t produce a complete document by any means but it provides examples, instructions, and means to complete through iterative prompts. I just played around with a SOW for help desk services. ChatGPT provided a simple template which is good to convey what’s needed. Gemini, which is what Google uses, is more informative and referred to examples from HHS and others. Claude gave the closest to a finished product. If I were a CO and had a program office official who looked for help in drafting a SOW, AI can help. Of course, I would need to work closely as the document went through to final. The nice aspect is it avoids copying from other documents which may not be relevant.

You are not alone. The complexity results from a host of varying solutions to changing legal, regulatory, technological, and marketplace conditions. It’s a matter of considering what’s currently happening, “how can we make the Schedules attractive for continual and even greater use?“ So the result is a maze resulting from band-aid revisions. There are lots of complaints from buying agencies - too complicated to follow the rules, prices aren’t good, don’t want to pay the hidden 0.75% GSA fees, and want to utilize their own teams and conditions. Still I find them very beneficial in the right situations. For example, instead of establishing a pool multiple award contracts for supplies or services which might take several months maybe running into a year, award BPAs under the Schedules. One simply does market research, identifies three of four capable sources, and you’re done.

I may not fully understand. But are you asking if it’s okay to develop non-commercial applications using commercial software licenses/tools? Is the office developing the applications government? Or is the office a commercial entity where the application is integrated with the commercial license?

There are many odd appearing actions. But this one is really surprising to me. VA just released a new solicitation for Community Managed Healthcare. The resulting contracts are for 10 years in duration valued at $1 trillion. The solicitation is for commercial items using a combined solicitation/synopsis. There are approximately 40 attachments. https://sam.gov/workspace/contract/opp/7b2734002e4048bfa2ac4cc5b0479930/view The synopsis says “The Government will award a Firm-Fixed Price plus Incentives, Multiyear, Multiple Award, Indefinite Delivery Indefinite Quantity contract resulting from this solicitation to the Offerors whose proposal conforms to the solicitation and represents the best value to the government.” The proposal response time seems very compressed. The synopsis was posted four days ago. Offeror questions are due Jan 6 with a pre proposal conference on Jan 22. Proposals are due March 15. A trillion dollar procurement using a combined solicitation/synopsis with a 90 day proposal due date! Then there’s the contract type of firm-fixed-price plus incentives multiple award IDIQ!

Going back in this thread, here’s an interesting comment about tools to track I copied from another forum: Flywheel of Failure: Stop Managing Programs. Start Managi...Mark says it best - government CULTURE "... rewards the perfect management of a failure, rather than the messy iteration of a success." We need to embrace OUTCOMES over process. Battlefield success“And I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that there is almost zero correlation between a program marked "Green" on a PowerPoint slide and a piece of software that actually works for the mission. This is the enduring flywheel of failure facing the Department of Defense (DoD) today. We are culturally addicted to Program Management—the administration of contracts, schedules, and compliance artifacts. But we are starving for Product Management—the relentless pursuit of value, quality, and user satisfaction. We have built a system that rewards the perfect management of a failure, rather than the messy iteration of a success”

So true. The RFO provides a means for someone to shine. While others sit back and wait for additional guidance, detailed policy memorandums, examples to copy, and see that’s it fine to proceed, a few will see the opportunity to be a pioneer. They will just jump in and use RFO now. Those will be looked at as taking bold actions and not timid. They will be in demand. Others will be eager to listen to or read what they have to say. I know already what the typical reactions to this will be - “wish I could but I can’t do that where I work.” If you are motivated, you’ll just be able to do it. I saw this in another site on a completely different topic. But it’s relevant here. “While your organization debates strategies, policies, governance, and pilot plans….you could be operating in expert mode.”