certification | The Contracting Education Academy

August 15, 2016 By AMK

Certification process for CORs falls short within GSA

Two years after it offered recommendations to strengthen the workforce charged with overseeing technical aspects of contracts, the General Services Administration’s Inspector General (IG) said the agency has still not fully complied.

As part of its recommendations to correct the problem, the OIG said that GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS) should put in controls to ensure contracting officer representatives (CORs) were registered in the Federal Acquisition Institute (FAI) Tracking Application System and develop guidance to ensure the certification was consistently tracked.

The Aug. 3, 2016 report said that FAS had yet to require its regional offices complete spreadsheets detailing certification information.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/story/government/acquisition/contracts/2016/08/04/fas-still-hasnt-applied-contract-officer-improvements-oig-says/88067424/

Read the OIG’s report here: https://www.gsaig.gov/sites/default/files/audit-reports/A160081_1.pdf

May 13, 2016 By AMK

Academy’s program manager appointed to national academic panel

The National Contract Management Association (NCMA) has invited Donna Bertrand, program manager for The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech, to become an inaugural member of the Association’s Academic Advisory Council, spearheaded by NCMA’s Professional Education Committee.

Donna G. Bertrand, The Academy’s program manager, has been appointed a member of the National Contract Management Association’s Academic Advisory Council. — **Donna G. Bertrand, the Academy’s program manager, has been appointed a member of the National Contract Management Association’s Academic Advisory Council.**

NCMA is the world’s leading professional resource for those in the field of contract management. The organization, which has over 20,000 members, is dedicated to the professional growth and educational advancement of procurement and acquisition personnel worldwide. NCMA serves and informs the acquisition profession and offers opportunities for the open exchange of ideas in neutral forums. NCMA provides a robust certification program and sponsors training through two major conferences each year. NCMA’s next educational event is its annual World Congress, to be held in July of this year, which is expected to bring together over 1,800 contract management professionals for three days of education and networking, including keynote speakers who are government and industry leaders in contracting and acquisition, over 100 customized training sessions, and various networking opportunities.

Contract management professionals are well-paid and highly educated, earning an average salary of $103,600 with 46 percent possessing a master’s degree (Source: 2015 NCMA Annual Salary Survey). Typical entry-level personnel have a bachelor’s degree and a minimum of 24 hours of business credit. The almost 40,000 government personnel alone who occupy the contract specialist position are required to achieve and maintain three levels of certification throughout their career and oftentimes satisfy the Office of Management and Budget (OMB)-mandated requirement to earn 80 continuous learning points every two years through higher education. Industry employees seek certification through NCMA as well.

In accepting NCMA’s nomination to join NCMA’s newly formed Academic Advisory Council (AAC), Bertrand will join other representatives from academia interested in the professional growth and education of the contracting community. The AAC will interact with and advise NCMA’s Professional Education Committee as it supports programs and initiatives aimed at the contract management workforce.

AAC’s first meeting is scheduled for July 25, 2016 at NCMA’s World Congress event in Orlando, Florida.

March 25, 2016 By AMK

COs told to check with SBA on WOSB certifications

On Wednesday, March 23, 2016, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) announced on its website that for the next “several weeks” federal Contracting Officers (COs) will need to check with the SBA to verify self-certifications submitted by women-owned small businesses (WOSBs) competing for contract set-asides.

The reason for this temporary change is a planned migration of WOSB records from SBA’s General Login System (GLS) repository to a new portal to be located at https://certify.sba.gov.

SBA says that the on-line repository where WOSBs have been uploading ownership and control documentation has been inactivated. SBA’s notice indicates that the WOSB repository will be replaced within “several weeks” by a new portal that will support the WOSB program.

The new portal is located at https://certify.sba.gov however, as of March 25, the website is marked: “This site is a work in progress.”

SBA’s existing rules stipulate that small businesses interested in responding to a solicitation set aside for WOSBs must first submit a checklist of certification documentation. Once certification uploads are submitted, Contracting Officers are responsible for checking the repository to ensure all required documents have been submitted.

During the period where the new portal is not fully functional, it is unclear how WOSBs that have not previously uploaded their certification documentation will satisfy the 13 CFR 127.300(e) certification requirements.

Until SBA’s new portal is fully functional, the SBA is directing Contracting Officers to contact the SBA to request verification of self-certification compliance by specific WOSBs.

The instructions SBA has issued are as follows:

SBA will review the Repository on behalf of a CO. A CO may request that SBA review the Repository on their behalf by sending an email to wosb@sba.gov(link sends e-mail) with the following in the subject line:

“PENDING AWARD UNDER FAR 19.505(e) VERIFICATION REQUEST- SOLICITATION NUMBER [insert solicitation number].”

In the body of the email, the CO should provide the following: provide the apparent successful offeror’s DUNS, EIN, FIRM NAME, OWNER NAME; indicate whether the pending award is a WOSB or EDWOSB set-aside or sole source award; specify the NAICS code assigned to the procurement; and identify the State where the CO is located. Within 2 business days, SBA will perform the necessary check to determine whether the apparently successful offeror has filed all the required eligibility documents and provide the CO with an email response which either: (a) notifies the CO that all required documents have been provided or (b) identifies which documents are missing in order to allow the CO to file a status protest in accordance with SBA regulations and the FAR.

Emails for this information will be processed only for Contracting Officers.

More information on the WOSB program and the features of the new portal can be found at: https://www.sba.gov/content/women-owned-small-business-program.

May 18, 2015 By AMK

IG finds both agency implementation and SBA oversight of WOSB program to be flawed

Federal agencies’ contracting officers are awarding set-aside contracts without meeting the set-aside requirements associated with the Small Business Administration’s Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB) program.

This finding, among others, appears in a report issued on May 14, 2015 by the SBA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG).

The OIG report states that as much as $7.1 million worth of contracts received by WOSBs in fiscal year (FY) 2014 may be improper. For example, 10 of 34 WOSB set-aside awards were for ineligible work, and 9 of these 34 were awarded to firms that did not provide required documentation to prove they were eligible WOSBs.

In addition to the 9 WOSB awards that did not have any ownership or control documentation in the SBA’s WOSB Repository, the OIG identified 13 of 25 firms in their audit sample that uploaded only some — but not all — of the required documentation to the Repository, thus also bringing their program eligibility into question.

Additionally, 12 businesses did not provide sufficient documentation to prove that a woman or women controlled the day-to-day operations of their firms. These firms, which received $8 million in contracts, also may be ineligible for their WOSB set-aside awards.

The OIG report is critical not only of agencies’ implementation of the federal WOSB program but also of SBA’s lax oversight. Accordingly, OIG made five recommendations to the SBA’s Associate Administrator for Government Contracting and Business Development calling for improvements in how SBA manages and administers the WOSB program.

It should be noted that even before the OIG’s report, the SBA’s WOSB program already was slated to undergo some major programmatic changes based on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for both FY 2013 and 2015. The NDAAs stipulated considerable increases SBA’s oversight responsibilities. Specifically, the FY 2015 Act will: 1) grant contracting officers the authority to award sole-source awards to WOSB firms, 2) remove firms’ ability to self-certify, and 3) require firms to be certified. The SBA is still determining how it will implement these mandated changes.

The OIG’s full report can be downloaded here: Improvements_Needed_in_SBAs_Management_of_WOSB_Program-OIG_Report_15-10

April 21, 2015 By AMK

Some DOT contracting officers not certified for high-dollar contracts

Nearly a quarter of Transportation Department contracting officers didn’t comply with certification specifications when working on certain high dollar acquisitions, says an April 9, 2015 DOT inspector general report.

In fiscal 2014, DOT obligated $2 billion on contracts.

To help ensure those contracts meet federal and departmental requirements, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) requires that contracting officers be certified at the appropriate level to correspond with the dollar value of contracts, the report says.

OFPP also directed each agency’s chief acquisition officer to establish agency-specific certification and warrant requirements.

But of the 63 contracting officers GAO reviewed, 15, or about 24 percent, did not fully comply with those requirements.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/some-dot-contracting-officers-not-certified-high-dollar-contracts/2015-04-15

Read the DOT IG’s report here: https://www.oig.dot.gov/sites/default/files/DOT%20Contracting%20Officer%20Certification%20and%20Warrant%20Requirements%20Final%20Report%5E4-9-15.pdf

Two years after it offered recommendations to strengthen the workforce charged with overseeing technical aspects of contracts, the General Services Administration’s Inspector General (IG) said the agency has still not fully complied.

The National Contract Management Association (NCMA) has invited Donna Bertrand, program manager for The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech, to become an inaugural member of the Association’s Academic Advisory Council, spearheaded by NCMA’s Professional Education Committee.

Federal agencies’ contracting officers are awarding set-aside contracts without meeting the set-aside requirements associated with the Small Business Administration’s Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB) program.

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