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February 3, 2021 By cs

Border wall construction paused, contracts and funding under review

President Biden paused construction of the U.S.-Mexico border wall and ordered a review of its contracts and funding, hours after being sworn in on Jan. 20. 
Photo credit: DoD

The border wall was a signature of President Trump who made strict immigration policies a cornerstone of his administration.  However, many viewed the wall as a waste of taxpayer resources and symbolism for xenophobia.  Biden’s executive order on the border wall was one of the first he signed on Wednesday evening and one of several aimed at reversing the Trump administration’s immigration agenda.

“Like every nation, the United States has a right and a duty to secure its borders and protect its people against threats. But building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution,” said the executive order.   “It is a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.  My administration is committed to ensuring that the United States has a comprehensive and humane immigration system that operates consistently with our nation’s values.”

The order terminated the national emergency for the Southern border that Trump issued on February 15, 2019, shortly after the end of the longest shutdown in history, which resulted from differences over funding for the wall.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2021/01/biden-pauses-construction-border-wall/171548/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Army Corps of Engineers, border wall, contract termination, Customs and Border Patrol, Customs and Border Protection, DHS, Immigration and Customs Enforcement

December 16, 2020 By cs

GAO: Agencies should assess contracting workforce needs and purchase card fraud risk

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently examined how federal agencies use contracts and purchase cards to acquire goods and services to get urgently needed items after a disaster.

Specifically, GAO assessed selected agencies’ planning for contracting workforce needs and purchase card fraud risks related to disaster response.

Overall, here’s what they found:

  • Not all agencies planned for or assessed their contracting workforce needs for disaster response.
  • Only 1 of the 6 agencies assessed how purchase card fraud risks change during disaster response.
Contracting Workforce

The efforts of selected agencies to plan for disaster contracting activities and assess contracting workforce needs varied.  The U.S. Forest Service initiated efforts to address its disaster response contracting workforce needs while three agencies — the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the U.S. Coast Guard, and Department of the Interior (DOI) — partially addressed these needs.  The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) indicated it did not have concerns fulfilling its disaster contracting responsibilities.

Within three agencies examined, GAO found the following:

  • USACE assigned clear roles and responsibilities for disaster response contracting activities, but has not formally assessed its contracting workforce to determine if it can fulfill these roles.
  • The Coast Guard has a process to assess its workforce needs, but it does not account for contracting for disaster response activities.
  • DOI is developing a strategic acquisition plan and additional guidance for its bureaus on how to structure their contracting functions, but currently does not account for disaster contracting responsibilities.

Contracting officials at all three of these agencies identified challenges executing their regular responsibilities along with their disaster-related responsibilities during the 2017 and 2018 hurricane and wildfire seasons.  For example, Coast Guard contracting officials stated they have fallen increasingly behind since 2017 and that future disaster response missions would not be sustainable with their current workforce.

GAO’s strategic workforce planning principles call for agencies to determine the critical skills and competencies needed to achieve future programmatic results. Without accounting for disaster response contracting activities in workforce planning, these agencies are missing opportunities to ensure their contracting workforces are equipped to respond to future disasters.

Purchase Cards

Among the five agencies GAO reviewed, plus the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), more than $20 million was collectively spent for 2017 and 2018 disaster response activities using purchase cards.  GAO found that two of these six agencies — Forest Service and EPA — have not completed fraud risk profiles for their purchase card programs that align with leading practices in GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework.  Additionally, five of the six agencies have not assessed or documented how their fraud risk for purchase card use might differ in a disaster response environment.  DOI completed such an assessment during the course of our review.

An OMB memorandum requires agencies to complete risk profiles for their purchase card programs that include fraud risk.  GAO’s Fraud Risk Framework states managers should assess fraud risk regularly and document those assessments in risk profiles.  The framework also states that risk profiles may differ in the context of disaster response when managers may have a higher fraud risk tolerance since individuals in these environments have an urgent need for products and services.  Without assessing fraud risk for purchase card programs or how risk may change in a disaster response environment, agencies may not design or implement effective internal controls, such as search criteria to identify fraudulent transactions.

Recommendations

As a result of its review, GAO made a total of 12 recommendations which address the need for three agencies to assess disaster response contracting needs as a part of overall workforce planning, and for five agencies to assess fraud risk for purchase card use in support of disaster response.  GAO’s complete report can be found here: https://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-21-42#summary.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Army Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard, disaster recovery, disaster relief, EPA, FEMA, Forest Service, fraud, Fraud Risk Framework, GAO, Interior Dept., risk management, USACE

May 6, 2020 By cs

Job order contracting: The Army’s own IDIQ procurement solution

Indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts have been used by the United States Armed Forces as a standard form of construction procurement for nearly a half century.

IDIQ contracts deliver both flexibility and cost by allowing owners to complete an unlimited number of construction projects under a single, longstanding contract rather than needing to take each individual project to bid. There are several types of IDIQ contracts, but one particularly effective method is Job Order Contracting (JOC), also referred to as a SATOC (Single Award Task Order Contract).

Originally created by the Army Corps of Engineers, JOC is now utilized by all levels of government. JOC’s popularity and success is due to its process design, which emphasizes collaboration, continuous improvement and LEAN principles. Every JOC program is based on a Unit Price Book, which provides preset prices to any tasks needed to complete projects detailed in the Scope of Work. Owners can order any job or task listed in the Unit Price Book from the awarded contractor without having to take an individual project through a bid process, since tasks are priced in advance.

Ken Davis helped implement the JOC program at Fort Stewart during his 38 years of service to the U.S. Army. Davis emphasized time saving as one of the advantages of Job Order Contracting

“We were bidding on everything one at a time with individual, standalone contracts. We had to come up with specifications for every single contract or task order. JOC allowed us to begin projects in about half the time it took to do a standalone contract.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/federal-insights/2020/04/job-order-contracting-the-armys-own-idiq-procurement-solution/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Army, Army Corps of Engineers, flexibility, IDIQ, job order contracting, JOC, lean, SATOC, single award task order contract

February 28, 2020 By cs

DHS waives contracting rules for border wall

The Department of Homeland Security will waive traditional contracting rules to expedite construction of a wall along sections of the four states on the southern border.

According to a Federal Register notice published Feb. 20, DHS is looking to accelerate the tempo of construction projects in targeted sections of the planned border wall through a broad waiver or requirements of the use of open competition, pricing data, wage determination and other aspects of the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

In a Feb. 18 appearance on Fox and Friends, Chad Wolf said a section of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996, gives DHS the authority to waive the rules to expedite contracting for the wall.  Wolf said the agency has used the same authority to waive environmental rules.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2020/02/18/dhs-waives-border-wall-wolf.aspx

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Army Corps of Engineers, border wall, cost and pricing data, DHS, environment, FAR, full and open competition, Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, other than full and open competition, wage rates, waiver

May 9, 2019 By AMK

FEMA showed weak mastery of contracts during hurricane response and recovery

Four agencies providing disaster relief following the triple hurricanes and California wildfires of 2017 failed to keep proper records of contracts with suppliers, rendering it impractical for the Government Accountability Office to fully track $5 billion in spending.

GAO’s report released on Wednesday examined 23 sample contracts let after the disasters by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Army Corps of Engineers, the Coast Guard and the Defense Logistics Agency. Its conclusion: the full extent of contracting related to the 2017 disasters is unknown due to Homeland Security Department’s irregular schedule for closing contracts and inconsistent use of standard contracting codes.

Disaster relief contracts for everything from ready-made meals to tarpaulins can be awarded prospectively—before anyone knows the date of a coming act of God—or after the storm or fire has rendered thousands homeless or living in damaged property.

But among the contracts studied as of June 30, 2018—following a record-setting displacement of 15 percent of the U.S. population from several natural events—GAO reviewed the three-fourths of the obligations that were let by FEMA and the Army engineers and found that the Homeland Security Department violated procedure with early closures of what are called national interest action codes. Those numbered codes, administered by the General Services Administration, allow agencies to track data on contract actions related to national emergencies, and are available on the Federal Procurement Data System-Next Generation to provide governmentwide insight into response and recovery efforts.

Keep reading article at: https://www.govexec.com/contracting/2019/04/fema-showed-weak-mastery-contracts-during-hurricane-response-and-recovery/156541/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: Army Corps of Engineers, Coast Guard, Defense Logistics Agency, disaster recovery, disaster relief, FEMA, GAO, national interest action code, specifications

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