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What is the ultimate pain point for you in your acquisitions workflow?


Susan A

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What part of your acquisition workflow keeps you up at night because it's just that painful and miserable? If you had a magic wand, how and where would you use it in your workflow? For example, what are the bottlenecks, inefficiencies or complete blackholes of time and effort? 

 

Susan

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Untrained/inexperienced program office personnel who don’t know the acquisition process and what’s needs done.  The magic wand is require program offices to share long range acquisition plans and seek contracting officer support and mutual collaboration early.  

A second issue is higher level reviewers that lack knowledge. The magic wand is only designate reviewers that have the necessary experience and expertise to do tye job.

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8 hours ago, Susan A said:

What part of your acquisition workflow keeps you up at night because it's just that painful and miserable? If you had a magic wand, how and where would you use it in your workflow? For example, what are the bottlenecks, inefficiencies or complete blackholes of time and effort? 

@Susan AWould it be correct to say that you want to know what policies, inputs, and processes are the biggest sources of  delay in the acquisition process?

If so, then I would say that the biggest source is the statutory requirement to obtain full and open competition through the use of competitive procedures for the selection of contractors and the award of contracts. If you take those rules as a given, then the biggest sources of delay are (1) system complexity and (2) workforce incompetence.

In wartime, when time would be of the essence in the selection of contractors and the award of contracts, competition, bid protests, and all associated policies and procedures would have to be the first things to go if we were to survive. The second thing would be the truth in negotiations act (requirement for certified cost or pricing data). The third thing would be congressional carping about prices paid.

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On 5/5/2023 at 7:44 PM, Vern Edwards said:

Would it be correct to say that you want to know what policies, inputs, and processes are the biggest sources of  delay in the acquisition process?

If so, then I would say that the biggest source is the statutory requirement to obtain full and open competition through the use of competitive procedures for the selection of contractors and the award of contracts. If you take those rules as a given, then the biggest sources of delay are (1) system complexity and (2) workforce incompetence.

Regardless of any talk of repealing CICA, award system complexity increases when you don't get competition, because then many COs (with or without reviewing DFARS PGI 215.404-2) decide to get a proposal audit.  Background on this problem is best stated by the Section 809 Panel in its Recommendation 7 (footnotes removed and emphasis my own):

Quote

Background
Contracting officers require input from outside advisors to make sound business decisions in the public best interest. Contracting officers express they do not believe auditors can or will tailor their services to meet contracting officer needs, especially in the preaward area relating to cost and pricing services. At one stakeholder meeting, the Section 809 Panel asked a group of acquisition professionals about the specific insights DCAA provides contracting officers, and whether an audit is required to obtain such information. Several stakeholders stated trained and experienced contracting officers should be able to decide whether a proposed cost is fair and reasonable. Contracting officers feel they must request an audit anyway, however, because of certain dollar thresholds and to avoid criticism later. Audits inappropriately requested by contracting officers or provided by DCAA delay the acquisition process and decrease their utility. It is imperative for the appropriate engagement (audit/advisory) to be performed by the most qualified compliance professional with the required expertise and skills to ensure contracting officer needs are met.

Findings
Today, contract auditors perform an attestation examination for virtually all contract audit services provided.

It goes on to say an attestation examination engagement of a contractor proposal produces an audit product irrelevant to the Contracting Officer's need (to develop a negotiating position).  My magic wand to solve this problem, then, is to establish a go-to cadre of personable, informed, non-risk-averse DCAA auditors that are able to provide COs the tailored assistance the Panel goes on to recommend.  See those at the Panel's DTIC website here, under Subrecommendation 7c, e.g., the one listed below:

Quote

Attestation Agreed-Upon Procedures: Agreed-upon procedures consist of auditors performing specific procedures on the subject matter and issuing a report of findings based on the agreed-upon procedures. In an agreed-upon procedures engagement, the auditor does not express an opinion or conclusion, but only reports on agreed-upon procedures in the form of procedures and findings related to the specific procedures applied.

The cadre could follow the DCMA Commercial Item Group's model of manifesting itself.

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  • 4 weeks later...

An MFT in construction with little to no understanding of the Contracting Process, or better yet, an MFT with 0 care for the end user of the construction projects. 

 

Then again I would say this is our fault for not providing enough customer education. 

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2 hours ago, Thurley4397 said:

 

Then again I would say this is our fault for not providing enough customer education. 

The most successful MFTs I’ve seen include prudent selection of members including strong contract specialists/COs, active involvement of end users, and upfront training of the entire team on the team based process.  In addition if the PM doesn’t have facilitation skills, the addition of a facilitator is important so that certain personality types don’t dominate and everyone listens to the appropriate subject matter experts when discussions center on specific areas like contracting, technical, and legal.

Otherwise MFTs usually are teams in name only.

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