formerfed

This says it all: Unions demand and get higher wages from their employers. But that puts them at a disadvantage when competing against non-union sources. This propsed action eliminates the disadvantage. The Administration is pro-Union. It's that simple. Counter-intutitive until it's time to pay back for votes.

A few offices used to use the SF 18 to obtain information, mostly for budgeting and estimating purposes. It wasn't a wise practice and isn't done much at all now. If you look at the language on the RFQ in block 10, it says "this is a request for information...". Another possible scenario is thinking an action falls within the Simplifed Acquisition Threshold (SAT) and you issue an RFQ. The quotes come back and exceed the SAT, so you then proceed with an RFP.

An RFQ can be used to obtain information for planning purposes. Once that information is received, analyzed, and utilized, you can issue an RFP

I don't think Congress will change anything. For one reason, Congress has so many other things to deal with which are a higher priority. For example, health care gets forced upon them again in the next couple weeks. Another reason is the issue is both complicated as well as potentially embarrassing because all the HUBZone abuses with no remedy in sight. federalcontracts previously brought up a good point with this comment: So one could argue HUBZone is the priority. Then you have Sen. Snowe saying it?s only fair that all small businesses have a chance and wants parity If HUBZone remains a priority, more companies will try and get business improperly and additional stories of abuse occur for the newspapers. SBA will be expected to monitor the program but we know they can't. It's a no win situation. So the answer for Congress is do nothing.

I don't think that will happen. To me, it's just a matter of Northrop seeing that the requirements are geared towards a smaller aircraft. If they thought they could influence the requirements so they stood a chance, they would.

Sen. Snowe yesterday urged passage of the bill now. At the same time Sen. Landrieu plans to introduce another stand-alone bill in place of the amendment that establishes parity but was stripped off another bill. Here an article with more details: http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?arti...oref=todaysnews The GovExec article also says "The matter also could be resolved through a regulatory change. A proposed FAR rule, filed in March 2008, would have clarified that no order of award preference exists among small business programs. That rule remains under review." I don't see how a rule can simply "clarify" now with the Court's opinion. The article also says the Administration may appeal the decision as well.

The "old guard" I learned from a previous generation wasn't much better. There wasn't as much job mobility, sharing best practices and lessons learned, and just general communications between people in our field. Case law updates were provided by a Procurement Analyst who read through a stack of GAO decisions that came in the mail. The Analyst often missed key decisions and communicated incorrectly other issues. The "old guard" taught newbie?s like me how to do things but they often were wrong and nobody knew. Training was generally geared towards new people in the field - basic contracting, cost and price analysis/negotiation techniques, and contract administration. These all were in the first couple years. After that, courses were few and far between. But I will say the average contract specialist then was more capable than the average 1102 now. That?s beacuse one was required to demonstrate competence and expertise prior to being considered for a promotion.

According to their website, CCH may be the only place that has it electronically that far back. http://onlinestore.cch.com/productdetail.a...tid=200#Pricing

I assume you are with the Department of Commerce. You should ask a policy person in your Department. But your question also doesn't make sense. How can you have a no cost contract that's valued over $100,000. A no cost contract should have a $0 value.

I just noticed an interesting and timely article for this thread in Federal Computer Week by Steve Kelman. http://fcw.com/Blogs/Lectern/2010/02/steve...c-sourcing.aspx Here's a couple of quotes. The first concerns a comparsion Steve makes about interviewing newbies versus more senior people. "I asked both groups to tell me one thing they had done professionally over the past year or so of which they were proud, and to share one thing that frustrated them. The newbies told only of frustrations. The more-senior folks emphasized achievements of which they were proud, and there were some interesting patterns in responses. One source of pride (mentioned by two of the people around the table) was working with program people to persuade them of the value of competition in recompeting a contract. One person told about a customer who wanted to recompete a contract as a sole source, in a situation in which many firms that could have been able to do the work. The contracting person persuaded the customer to test the marketplace, and the result was a good vendor, with whom the customer is satisfied (not the incumbent) at a 20 percent lower cost. Two people also talked about working to better understand what was being bought, so the contracting person could contribute more to the procurement process. Listening to both these people, it became clear that they were quite knowledgeable about the marketplace in the area where they were buying." This is intriguing to me because I was fortunate enough to have always find work excited and rarely frustrated. I started out as a GS-5 intern and spent most of my first two years supporting a senior contract specialist. He taught me well and let me grow as fast as I could. One of the contracts I worked with him on was terminated for default. We did the reprocurement on a sole source basis due to urgency and the terminated contractor filed a claim with the GSBCA for the excess reprocurement costs. At the time of the trial, I had moved on to another assignment as a GS-9 but was called back by the government as a witness to support the government's case. My brand new boss was amazed and wondered what could a young GS-9 could add to a huge claim valued in the millions. He didn't understand that my former mentor had me so indoctrinated I knew almost about the matter as he did as far as deciding only one source had the production capacity to perform on time. So I learned the value of mentoring and letting people grow as fast as they can and want to.

As others say, one needs a solid understanding of what the clauses/provisions say and mean to accurately and completely prepare a solicitation. Once you have that and understand the nuances of the specific software, contract writing systems can be very beneficial. By way of background, PD2 started out extremely well but DoD screwed it up. Originally they selected AMS's Procurement Desktop (PD) as the core of the system. However instead of using the Federal version of PD, they used the commercial version. This was supposed to provide greater flexibility in meeting the widespread needs of DoD. Once it was time to work out the details and implement, things feel apart. It was a perfect example of design by committee. Everyone involved felt they didn't want to give up any feature they present system had - another example of paving over the cow path. What a mess it turned out.

I've got a couple reactions. First, I'm not so sure that establishing "satisfactory" or defining minimums will save the government money. Before "best value" was used only with major systems and R&D, the government defined requirements in terms of minimum needs. Often those minimum needs were "gold plated" to ensure not getting junk. Now programs not need to worry about that as much. The second reaction is I agree that "best value" is used way to much. I saw a solicitation recently for help desk services. The evaluation factors included such things as technical approach, corporate experience, qualifications of key presonnel, and management plan. I would say that all they need to pick a source is price and past performance. I wouldn't leave out past performance because I think it's important to consider how well a source has performed.

I totally agree. An excellent way of finding out what's going on in the marketplace, including best practices and what has worked and what hasn't, is ask industry first. It's almost impossible to start with agencies and try to find this out. Instead go to the companies that do this work and ask them. A great question to also ask is "If you were in our position, how would you go about to develop this procurement?"

The Contracting Officer is obligated to ensure that the award is based upon fair and reasonable prices. Using cost or pricing data is just one way to do that. Your existing rates are fixed price. The question is does the additional work in task order 2 constitute a basis for the contractor to provide lower prices? Since you said task order 2 doesn't increase the number of staff but just extends the period of performance, it probably does not. If you are comfortable with the rates and can justify them through documentation of fair and reasonable pricing, I would just do a supplemental agreement and modify the contract without obtaining a proposal.

Vern, Thanks for explaining what you envisioned by the classroom time. That makes sense having the sessions more like college courses. The best government course I had was taught similar to that. Ron Berger, who used to be at GAO, taught contract law at the USDA Grad School. Most of the work consisted of students, both individually and in groups. doing research. He amde assignments using actual cases, and we studied and did presentations on how we think they were decided. It was also fun.

Vern - My first thought to your program is it's tough. But it should be since these are a relatively select few - 100 for the entire gvernment. My next thought is this wouldn't sell because of what many feel is too much training and not enough productive time. But then I realized it's not much more intense than the standard DoD intern program when I started. That consisted of five weeks for the basic contracts course, almost four weeks for cost/price analysis & negotiation techniques, and three weeks in the contract administration course. So that's three months of classroom training in the first two months, exclusive of the OJT time, and that's just in the first two years at the GS-5/7 level. I think our new OFPP Administrator, Dan Gordon, could help a whole more by establishing a program like this than he could with the plans to spend $158 million at civilan agencies to hire more acqusition personnel. Just getting more bodies won't help. shinaku - OPM has a good training programs for the "soft skills" in their Federal Executive Institute. I've never been there but lots of co-workers felt it's very beneficial.

JML's experience is all too common now. I think several things contribute to that. The ones that come to mind are: The belief that extensive levels of review makes better work products. This drives very conservative approaches designed to minimalize criticism in the reviews. It also adds extensive delays in getting to contract award. The use of only tried and proven acquisition approaches, even when they aren't the most appropriate one. Supervisors and managers who moved up without obtaining the necessary experience. Consequently they aren't able to provide advice and assistance to the people they supervise. For a simailr reason, there's a general lack of mentoring. The use of automated tools like contract writing system has help bring about a workforce that doesn't know what clauses say and mean. A general philosophy that contract people don't need to know their agency mission and what the program offices they support are all about.

Since it's sole source, why the concern? Why not let the order lapse then and write a new order later?

I know nothing about Seaport but I see similar situations and they are handled one of two ways. Depending upon the agency, their mission, and the language in their appropriation, the lead agency funds the entire task/work and seeks reimbursement from the other agencies after the fact. The other method is setting up a working capital fund wheer each agency is required to regularly deposit their share in the fund for the lead agency to spend. Both avoid incremental funding with dribs and drabs,

I think the part about "...appropriations available for new obligations..." refers to period of continuing resolutions where the appropriation is available only for continuing government operations and not new initiatives/obligations.

Yes, VA is surprising in that way. I know of a huge VA project valued at over $1 billion and the Contracting Officer was the selection authority. I personally don't think that's a good idea on projects that significant. It's extremely rare for a GS-13 or 14 CO to be knowledgable enough about major programs to make those decisions.

Technically I think you are in compliance using NYS funds. However if I were FHA, I might say you are not complying with the spirit of the Cooperative Agreement. A lot probably depends upon the nature of your agreement with NYS and the conditions upon which you obtained that funding. To be safe, I would notify FHA on what you are doing.

We need a couple clarifications to answer. Who are you organizationally? A state? Are you asking does your providing funds from the State of New York qualify as your 20% matching contribution to the project?

I see a lot of that. One reason is people just don't make the task order competition simple. They fail to understand that it can be very easy and quick. Consequently they do things like making a task order award as you described to avoid having to do competition all over again. In many cases, that's not bad. One big reason for competition is it helps ensure the government is getting a good deal. But if people do a good job with their negotiations on a single award IDIQ task order, the outcome is positive. One problem though is competition can be for things other than the best price such as competition for ideas and solutions. A single award eliminates that concept.

I started out as an Army intern and went to the "Fort Lee" basic contracting course just after starting the job. I literally knew nothing going in. Because of that I studied long and heard and carefully listened during class/lectures. I did well on the exams and much better than many "experiened" 1102s. I think many of the experiened people didn't listen carefully in class because they felt they already knew the subjects. I know they also spent much more time than I did at the Officer's Club each evening while I studied.