formerfed

I’ve had lots of experiences with conferences and I completely agree with Joel.   Speakers are often selected as those participants most want to hear and think as beneficial.  Agencies just don’t compete speakers.   If you need documentation for your file,  it should be easy to write assuming the amount exceeds the micro purchase threshold. 

2 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

I think that conducting competitions for the "award" of SAP BPAs is a needless complication of simplified acquisition. It is not clear to me what practical advantage there is in such a process. I think GSA's hijacking of the term has poisoned the well of common sense. But I am open to be educated.

No doubt hijacking of the terms has a lot to do with the way current SAPs evolved.  I’ve seen several ways BPAs are used, some of which are probably improper.  But without seeing details or agency documentation and rational, it’s hard to pass judgement.  For example:

• Synopsizing upfront the intent to competitively award BPAs.  The synopsis includes the scope of the BPAs and orders are not further synopsized regardless of dollar value
• Competition at the order level is limited to BPA holders
• Program office individuals are authorized to place calls for supplies and some services and contracting officers later consolidate all calls on a recurring basis such as monthly 
• Program officers may solicit quotes from BPA holders directly
• A single order is placed as bulk funding and subsequent orders for supplies/services draw down from the bulk funds
• As many BPAs are for commercial items, orders can be significant in terms of dollar value
• Noncompetitive orders are justified in narrative terms with only contracting officer approval or selection of a specific source is based upon past performance 

2 hours ago, Jamaal Valentine said:

Over time, it seems that BPAs stopped being used this way. The modern practice for many BPAs more closely resembles the thing FAR 13.303-2(a)(3) implies they were supposed to avoid - writing numerous purchase orders.

Now, purchase requisitions and accounting and appropriation data initiate many orders and the literal calls of the past are extinct. In there place are ad-hoc electronically written orders—from a contract writing system—for each delivery or performance required.

Today, BPAs are used more like standing RFQs or a poor man’s multi-award contract (noting that they are not contracts at all) rather than charge accounts. There aren’t any billing periods and invoices have replaced delivery tickets.

 Has anyone else had similar experiences/observations? What about in the civilian agencies?

Yes.  I’ve seen similar situations all across the government in both DoD and civilian agencies.   The practices vary but they are for the most part just as you described.  In some instances, individuals in program offices are designated as ordering officials and place “calls” through use of P-cards.

I’m posting this from LinkedIn.  It’s a Ryan Connell comment.  Interesting and shows promise that our acquisition process can be more responsive to our nations needs.

Quote

If I were to buy AI for my mission today:

Step 1: I'd need to seek approval within my command, showcasing a requirement and ensuring budget availability from FM

Step 2: Since Tradewinds satisfies Competition In Contracting Act (CICA), I'd watch pitch videos until a solution seems like a good fit

Step 3: Reach out to solution provider and ask for a quote on specific/conceptual requirements

Step 4: Since I've already satisfied my requirement to compete (No J&A), I can simply conduct price analysis to validate quote is fair and reasonable.. if this DOESN'T work, I can ask for 3 quotes from Tradewinds solution providers to satisfy adequate price competition 

Step 5: Award Contract, likely using FAR 13.5 (simplified acquisition for commercial NTE $7.5M)- because you can treat ANY non traditional defense contractor AS IF THEY ARE COMMERCIAL just because they are a non trad..(DFARS 212.102)

Did you know the average PALT for FAR13.5 in FY23 is ~60days start to finish? That said, I heard Kristina Botelho  did one in 8 days at #SXSW

#commercial #acquisition DoD Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA)

Here’s more information on Tradewinds  https://www.tradewindai.com

@Vern Edwards  Most agencies I see have too few supervisors to perform this.  Plus not all supervisors are the best at teaching.   There are some really good 1102s that just enjoy their jobs and don’t want to supervise.

Vern,

I just quickly did this.  It’s not good but I think the idea should come across
 

• Provide developmental assignments, conduct oversight of work, provide guidance and assistance, and provide educational instruction as needed
• Allow trainee to assist in and participate with completing own (Mentor’s) advanced work assignments.  Allow trainee to “shadow” mentor in meetings, events, and other activities.

Joel,  your description is often typical.  That’s because “mentors” are assigned based because management sees no other useful purpose for them.  I’m talking about assigning bright, insightful, and highly knowledgeable people that love to teach and help individuals grow and learn.  The process also is a two way street where the trainee is the right fit.  I’ve seen it done successfully many times.  Off the top of my head I can quickly think of three current SESers that advanced that way.

1 hour ago, Voyager said:

There was once a culture where the best of the best in its education system were the wise.  Not the knowledge obtainers who passed all the open-book tests that were graded "on the curve" - NO, the wise.  The unwise would compete for a spot to spend all of their time being with the wise.  For years.  Then, little by little, the unwise would become wiser.  Then, manifestly, the newly wise would do wise things.

 Maybe the most beneficial training method I’ve seen involves mentoring.   But the mentor has to be among the wisest as you put it as well as enjoy teaching and imparting knowledge.

There isn’t.  It’s negotiable.  In fact, assumptions often are included but subtlety overlooked.  Offerors make assumptions in proposals and contracting officers then incorporate technical proposals as part of the contract.  It’s a sloppy way of doing business but quite common.  

Whatever.   Apparently you wanted to argue this charge account terminology with your post yesterday in response to Vern’s question.  I’m done.

 It doesn’t make any difference.  You’re conflating language of FAR 13 BPAs which always existed under FSS contracts and what is done using now with the multi-million dollar BPAs.  The former could be “charge account” with verbal and informal calls.  I recently saw one of the F8.4 actions with a $500 million ceiling and initials orders in excess of $20 million.  These are BPAs in name only.  It was a poor choice of words but GSA thought they had to come up with a term for what several agencies were doing with zero dollar orders containing IDIQ type language.  By the way I know for a fact the term originated with GSA and not the FAR drafters.

There’s no need to continue this because it’s really a moot point.  But it’s flat out wrong to all them “charge accounts.”  It’s no different than calling IDIQ contracts “charge accounts.”

Let’s just say we disagree and move on.

11 hours ago, joel hoffman said:

@formerfed, just curious. Was David Drabkin involved with the above mentioned FAR 8.4 initiative? 

He was but I can’t remember exactly what his role was.  I think at the time he represented DoD when the ideas were kicked around.  But he ultimately approved the FAR changes when became the SPE at GSA and was one of the FAR signatories.

Yes, it’s common.  Sometimes agencies don’t have sufficient in-house expertise.  Occasionally, they want independent views.  Other times they seek buy-in from another agency through the other agency being part.

1 hour ago, C Culham said:

It seems the allowance to use BPAs for GSA FSS is derived from FAR subpart 13.303-2(3) and as such a simplified acquisition method.  The CBP effort for establishing the BPA's was not simplified.

It wasn’t.  I was involved a long time ago when GSA did it.  GSA encouraged use of FAR part 13 BPAs for decades.  But FAR 8.4 came across as completely different.  It was devised as something akin to IDIQ contracts after a few agencies established initial orders with the capability of placing “sub orders” under it.

As Vern posted in the old thread, it’s a shame GSA chose the same term.

When you get down to it, it’s just a means to down-select to either a single or a few contractors for future task order work.
 

2 hours ago, C Culham said:

Oversimplification or misuse of a Simplified Acquisiton method.  Afterall the Court reasoned that it was not a negotiated procurement.

When one looks at the current practices and matches it against the regulations, I don’t think it could be called misuse.  Now if one compares it against practices from years ago, someone might shake their head in wonder.  The current processes evolved over time for the benefit of ordering agencies, contractors, and GSA.  FAR 8.4 can’t be labeled as a Simplified Acquisition method because it’s unique.

54 minutes ago, C Culham said:

Setting up "charge accounts" for such work does not make sense to me.

The “charge account” terminology is an oversimplification.  In practice these BPAs are similar to IDIQ contracts and the orders are placed after offerors often submit very complex proposal responses to RFQs.  In fact the ordering process often resembles a full blown FAR compeitive technical/price tradeoff acquisition 

2 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

Each man spent a total of three hours digging and cutting and six hours watching.

Have the three men exerted nine hours of effort or 27 (3 x 9) hours?

I don’t believe it’s 27.   It seems like the three exerted a total of nine hours (3 x 3) hours.   The time watching isn’t expending energy or exerting for the stump removal.

Vern,

I scanned through an old physics textbook as well as some PM training material.  I combined two excerps to come up with this: 

Effort is the physical or mental energy exerted to achieve a purpose or result. It can be measured in various ways, depending on the context. In a physical sense, effort can be measured by the amount of force or energy expended to perform a task. In a mental sense, effort involves applying skills and knowledge and can be measured by the level of concentration, determination, or perseverance required to accomplish a goal. Effort can also be measured by the time and resources invested in a particular endeavor.

2 hours ago, here_2_help said:

But the nature of the awards means that work will be handled on an individual order basis. The Track 1 contractors will have difficulty establishing long-term partnerships with the CBP staff because of the nature of how the work is managed. The Track 2 contractors will have difficulty seeing the bigger picture because of the nature of how the work is awarded.

Wholeheartedly agree.  I was going to post something similar.

The basic strategic problem is CBP is trying to interject the small business program where it doesn’t fit.  

1 hour ago, Voyager said:

Stating that you are holding a competition again, for a BPA, when you don't have to, just invites protest that the government is being anticompetitive.

But FAR 8.405-3(b)(2) requires an RFQ be either posted to eBuy or sent to a sufficient number of contractors to reasonably ensure at least three responses are received.  This applies when the estimated value exceeds the SAT.

One alternative to what CBP did is conduct market research to identify viable sources and solicit enough sources to comply - that may be as few as three!

2 hours ago, Vern Edwards said:

Question: Does that kind of contract action make sense?

It doesn’t to me.  Having more than one contractor to compete on individual task requirements often is good.  By that I mean a group of 2 or 3 companies.  But most of these contract actions involve contractor pools of dozens and often many more.  If nothing else, the administrative time and expense to compete task orders can be huge.  Complying with Fair Opportunity can be tedious time consuming and that’s even before task order competition even begins.  

Apart from the task order competition, the award of the basic contracts is burdensome.  The current CIO-SP4 procurement is a tragedy.  Acquiescing to potential protests and letting complaining offerors into the award pool is common.  The Navy Seaport contract has 450 contractors for 23 functional areas.  Or some cases the governments makes entry very easy like STARS3.  GSA initially awarded 426 contracts and later added another 557! 

So many of these actions (multiple award IDIQ contracts or BPAs) are protested, especially set asides.  Some reasons are companies don’t want left out of the future task order competition, they see their competitors winning and it makes them look bad, over zealous marketing people oversell opportunities within the company and are worried about their jobs, and the companies want another shot at winning. There are lots of historical instances where protesting lets companies back in for additional consideration and award. This all gives agencies incentive to just make one or two large IDIQ contract awards on an unrestricted basis where the successful contractor can perform all the required tasks.  In addition just developing strategies so the entire scope of work gets divided up into bite size pieces so small companies can participate on segments is difficult.

4 hours ago, Don Mansfield said:

Hopefully, we would draw the conclusion that evaluating technical approaches is a waste of time. 

Years ago, there were some saying experience and past performance might be all that’s needed for many acquisitions.  One very convincing advocate felt past performance done the easy way - sending surveys to offeror references (or “friends of the offeror) and use of CPARS was mostly a waster of time.  He went on saying the contracting team needs to find instances of offeror performance and personally question those customers to get meaningful data.

1 hour ago, Me_BOX_Me said:

That's the conclusion my agency arrived at 5 years ago. Now we either do 1) "management approaches" that are so high level they might as well not exist, 2) a basic technical approach to contract transition, or 3) what I did on my last SEB which was to only evaluate Key Personnel and Past Performance. 

It has worked very well for us so far and I try and strip out the technical/management approach on each SEB I run. Most of the contracts are follow-on contracts anyway so there's nothing groundbreaking the agency wants/needs. Besides all the BS horse and pony shows.

For some projects such as R&D or responding to a SOO type requirements statement, a technical approach or some description of the offerors way of addressing the need might be necessary if for nothing more than assessing feasibility. 

57 minutes ago, Me_BOX_Me said:

No. I was referring to this part: "At the end of performance no one compares what was described in the winning proposal to what was actually received and writes a comparative assessment." 

There are situations where performance evolved into something different than what the government envisioned and what the contractor proposed.  And it was mutually beneficial as both parties gained insight and experience.

1 hour ago, Salus said:

We have a contract ombudsman. Do you think it would be worth reaching out to them to see if they might have better luck tracking someone down at the SBA, or should we limit our conversations to the CO for now?

It might be worth it.  I’ve always found the best way to pursue these issues, at least initially, is through informal dialog.  I know SBA is very slow to act and even reluctant or suspicious to do much at all unless a formal request is made.  Do you have any relationships within SBA or through an agency small business representative?  SBA people seem to provide advice and personal insights off the record though.