T&M or IDIQ

[cb3]

I'm having a debate with friends on which contract type to use for Translation Service (T&M or IDIQ). The translation service charges per word / language and has a fixed hourly rate. It recently was setup as T&M, and I don't think that was the proper contract type, remind you that the enduser doesn't have a set number/ quantity of words. What do you think? Pleas advise.

[Marine_1]

I'm having a debate with friends on which contract type to use for Translation Service (T&M or IDIQ). The translation service charges per word / language and has a fixed hourly rate. It recently was setup as T&M, and I don't think that was the proper contract type, remind you that the enduser doesn't have a set number/ quantity of words. What do you think? Pleas advise.

I've always tried to avoid T&M efforts, especially those tied to piece-work. If the work is largely conventional based upon a known language qualification rating (e.g., DLPT 3, etc.) then I would identify the anticipated volume of work based upon historical estimates, or some benchmark measure, build out the pricing around 1860-hrs. for an FTE basis, and identify objectives aligned with some work standard. That way you can fix price the effort around some projected percentage of the FTE workyear and tie that to performance output and quality.

[DCFed]

T&M and IDIQ are not mutually exclusive. You can have an IDIQ contract where you place T&M task orders (16.501-2©). In the case of a translation service with a fixed hourly rate, you could write the task orders to be either T&M (really LH) - ordering the number of hours you need for each job - or FFP - ordering each hour as its own fixed-price unit.