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Lax oversight of VA project caused $17.7M overrun, construction collapse

The Office of Inspector General for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs issued a report that found both a contractor and VA hospital officials demonstrated “shoddy planning” and poor oversight of an $8.7 million generator project that is $17.5 million over budget.

The VA in June 2014 hired Florida-based BCI Construction for $8.7 million to install a generator system and accompanying structure to house the unit at the Jack C. Montgomery VA Medical Center in Muskogee, Oklahoma. According to the inspector general, the VA did not submit an excavation plan for approval before beginning work. Subsequently, a hillside and parking lot collapsed, and the damage will cost $17.5 million to fix.

Photos show noticeable deterioration of parking lot before collapse. (photos by VA Medical Center employee)

In addition to supervisory and procedural errors, the inspector general also found that BCI’s worksite to be unsafe. Safety inspections were sporadic, and 49 safety violations were never reported to the government contracting officer, which is a violation of VA policy.

The inspector general recommended requiring contracting officer representatives are qualified and follow VA regulations and mandating that employees follow safety inspection guidelines. The current Muskogee hospital director, hired after the collapse, said the facility has implemented the recommendations.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.constructiondive.com/news/report-lax-oversight-of-va-project-caused-177m-overrun-construction-col/520242/

Read the article in The Oklahoman newspaper on this subject at: http://newsok.com/article/5588662/construction-collapse-at-muskogee-va-hospital-will-cost-17.5-million-to-repair-and-was-the-result-of-poor-planning-federal-report-finds

Read the VA’s full OIG report at: https://www.oversight.gov/sites/default/files/oig-reports/VAOIG-15-04678-114.pdf

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Agencies increasingly need help with complex professional services contracts

General Services Administration contracting officers are seeing a shift in big, complicated procurements as more agencies come to the shop looking for professional services rather than IT.

Overall, the Office of Assisted Acquisition Services — which helps other agencies that either don’t have a procurement shop or don’t have the expertise to manage large, complex buys — has seen double-digit growth over that last two years and is expecting to do so again over the next two years, Tom Howder, assistant commissioner for Assisted Acquisition Services, said at ACT-IAC’s Federal Insights Exchange on Feb. 22.

Part of that growth has been due to the addition of professional services as an area of expertise. That area is now outpacing IT in growth.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2018/02/agencies-increasingly-need-help-complex-professional-services-contracts/146209/

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How Homeland Security spent millions on a nonexistent service: No QASP

The Homeland Security Department did such a poor job of monitoring a contractor’s implementation of new performance management software the DHS inspector general found that the “failure literally meets [the Government Accountability Office]’s textbook definition of ‘waste.’”

The Performance and Learning Management System, intended to manage employee training and performance and for which the Human Capital Office spent $24.7 million since 2013, still doesn’t meet the department’s needs, Inspector General John Roth wrote in a report released on Wednesday.

Though PALMS was projected to achieve cost savings of more than $52 million over five years, delays in operations resulted in pointless expenses, such as subscription fees totaling $5.7 million for a nonexistent service.

One big problem, according to the IG: “Despite concerns raised by several internal stakeholders, DHS accepted PALMS as operational in January 2015 without verifying that it worked as it was supposed to.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2017/07/how-homeland-security-spent-millions-nonexistent-service/139276/

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Commentary: Contract management’s new certainty of uncertainty

As anyone involved in contracting with the federal government is already well aware, this is the age of complete uncertainty.

What are the government’s requirements? What are its priorities? What is its budget? When will it receive its funding? When will solicitations be issued? When will contract awards be made? Once contract awards are completed, will they last? Will the program survive? What will be the effect on existing contracts of changes in budget priorities, funding reallocations, funding stoppages, funding shortages, government shutdowns, stop-gap funding, the administration’s changing or still unknown goals and intent, etc.?

The only sure “knowns” in contracting today are the multitudinous “unknowns.” The once weakly supported notion of wider use of multi-year funding — to provide increased program stability, efficiencies and contract savings — is a distant memory. Such uncertainty was the subject of a recent message to Congress by the Secretary of Defense.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/articles/contract-managements-new-certainty-of-uncertainty-commentary

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The path to better management of government’s huge programs

With the enactment of the Program Management Improvement and Accountability Act late last year, the federal government has the opportunity and mandate to address two long-standing challenges: delivering successfully on large-scale change initiatives and addressing the dearth of well-qualified program managers across executive branch agencies.

For a government that operates through the execution of programs — many of them large and complex — such gaps represent enormous risk.

Even in a modular, agile world, the role of program managers remains essential, because change initiatives are more likely to cross multiple organizations. After all, the federal government manages more than $3 trillion in annual budgets and hundreds of huge programs critical to the nation and its citizens.

But the federal landscape remains littered with what Peat-Marwick once dubbed “runaway systems” — projects that are over budget, behind schedule and failing to deliver promised benefits and functionality. Thanks to the PMIAA, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) now has the responsibility to implement a set of policies to improve program management in government. As the Trump administration takes shape, OMB should leverage this opportunity to increase the probability of successfully delivering on its initiatives.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2017/04/path-better-management-governments-huge-programs/136848

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