History lesson

[dsmith101abn]

I couldn’t find an electronic copy but read a hard copy procedural manual from 1970.

Construction projects used to take 3 days to post a solicitation between the time the requirements were provided to contracting to the time it took to post a solicitation. Award time was 10 days between delivery of the construction project to award. It’s 90-120 days now.

 

More history lessons –

 

Yellowstone flooded a couple years ago – this is an opinion from 1906:

“I am firmly of the opinion that if the water in the Gardner River is as high next summer as it has been this season, that someday the road will be so washed out as to require using the old road from Gardiner to Mammoth Hot Springs which runs over the hills and which has not been used for 12 years or more”

 

https://www.nps.gov/parkhistory/online_books/yell_roads/hrs1-13.htm

 

That is what happened.

[formerfed]

Reminds me of the government buying and deploying obsolete desktop workstations in the 1980s.  The contract lead time was so long, the computers often were two generations old when award occurred and computers deployed to users.

[joel hoffman]

2 hours ago, dsmith101abn said:

 

I couldn’t find an electronic copy but read a hard copy procedural manual from 1970.

Construction projects used to take 3 days to post a solicitation between the time the requirements were provided to contracting to the time it took to post a solicitation. Award time was 10 days between delivery of the construction project to award. It’s 90-120 days now.

Those were most likely Invitations for Bids - IFBs. I don’t know what you mean by  “delivery of the construction project “ in this context. 

[Vern Edwards]

1 hour ago, formerfed said:

Reminds me of the government buying and deploying obsolete desktop workstations in the 1980s.  The contract lead time was so long, the computers often were two generations old when award occurred and computers deployed to users.

See: Information Technology: A Statistical Study of Acquisition Time, GAO/AIMD-95-65, March 13, 1995:

Quote

Contracts under $250,000 took an average of 158 days to award, while contracts $25 million and more took 669 days to award.

***

This report addresses three IT acquisition stages—presolicitation, solicitation, and source selection. During the presolicitation phase, contracting personnel develop specifications, prepare the acquisition plan, and apply for and receive a delegation of procurement authority (DPA). In the solicitation phase, agencies prepare and release the solicitation, respond to vendor questions, and close the solicitation. During source selection, agencies evaluate the proposals, may negotiate with vendors, call for best and final offers, and award the contract.

***

Sole source contracts from $25,000 to $250,000 averaged 150 days to award, while such contracts of $25 million and more took an average of 295 days. Fully competitive contracts in the lowest dollar strata averaged 184 days, and it took an average of 708 days to award them in the highest dollar strata.

***

Contracting officers issue amendments to add, change, or clarify some aspect of the contract solicitation including the requirements, evaluation criteria, or closing date. For all dollar strata, contracts that had amended solicitations took longer to award than contracts without amended solicitations—ranging from an average of 45 days longer at the smallest dollar strata to 406 days longer at the largest dollar strata. Figure 6 shows the average days to award contracts with amended and unamended solicitations for each dollar strata.

I would not be surprised to learn that lead times are longer now.

[joel hoffman]

On 8/2/2024 at 4:15 PM, joel hoffman said:

Those were most likely Invitations for Bids - IFBs. I don’t know what you mean by  “delivery of the construction project “ in this context. 

In the pre-FAR and pre-RFP days, the Corps of Engineers Districts’ Engineering Divisions would typically provide “Procurement and Supply” with a complete set of plans, specs and clauses, etc. to advertise for bids. The District Engineer or one of their Deputies was the KO. The military officers were usually a Colonel, LTC or Major and were engineer officers. The KO’s shifted to 1102’s in the early 1990’s.

Most construction contract solicitations shifted to RFP source selections in the late 1980’s to early 90’s.

P&S were the KO’s for supply, services  and real estate contracts.

 

[dsmith101abn]

Way behind here but..

Plans, specs, and estimates, the construction package/requirement. that was the delivery. everything a CO needed to solicit and award.