GWAC | The Contracting Education Academy

September 26, 2019 By cs

Watchdog warns on GSA’s contracting data trial

The General Services Administration’s watchdog again raised concerns over plans to move ahead with a three-year Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) pilot program, at the expense of two other contract provisions it says helps federal buyers save money.

This is the case that GSA made for Transactional Data Reporting when it issued a proposed rule in 2015 to capture transactional data on procurements across all of its government-wide acquisition vehicles.

In comments on the GSA’s strategy to extend its TDR pilot for another year after its planned conclusion this December, the GSA Office of Inspector General said it remains concerned TDR could cripple the agency’s buying schedules, which include IT Schedule 70, because it has yet to produce useable pricing data. The comments were dated July 26 but publicly released this week.

GSA’s TDR pilot collects pricing data from vendor volunteers, including prices paid by government customers, for products and services sold under agency contracts. It hopes the data gathered could level out pricing for federal buyers. When it was launched, the GSA OIG characterized the pilot as “the most significant change to GSA’s Multiple Award Schedules Program in over 20 years.” However, it warned at the beginning of the pilot and again in recent comments that the effort had produced no significant measurable pricing data federal agencies could use.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2019/08/28/watchdog-warns-pricing-trial-rockwell.aspx

August 1, 2019 By AMK

CBCA rules contractor under GWAC task orders properly submitted claims to agency’s Ordering Contracting Officer instead of the Procuring Contracting Officer

In a case of first impression, the Civilian Board of Contract Appeals (“CBCA”) ruled that a contractor performing task orders issued against a government-wide acquisition contract (“GWAC”) properly submitted its claims to the Agency Ordering Contracting Officer (“OCO”) instead of the Procuring Contracting Officer (“PCO”).

The case – Sotera Defense Solutions, Inc. v. Department of Agriculture, CBCA 6029, 6030, 2019 WL 1977388 (Apr. 25, 2019) – involved two task orders issued by the Department of Agriculture (“USDA”) to Sotera Defense Solutions, Inc. (“Sotera”) for the provision of information technology (“IT”) support services at agency locations throughout the country. The USDA issued the task orders against a GWAC awarded by the National Institutes of Health (“NIH”). A GWAC, as explained by the CBCA in its decision, is defined by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (“FAR”) as a “task-order or delivery order contract for [IT] established by one agency for Governmentwide use.”

The GWAC awarded by the NIH delineated roles for both the PCO and the OCO, stating they were the exclusive government officials with authority to take actions that may bind the Government under the contract and task orders, respectively. In awarding the GWAC, the PCO made a determination that the positions under the contract were exempt from the Service Contract Act (“SCA”). However, the GWAC also advised that an OCO would have to determine whether the SCA applied to any positions requested under a task order. Accordingly, when the USDA OCO subsequently amended the two task orders issued to Sotera to add SCA coverage, Sotera submitted claims to the OCO requesting equitable adjustments for the added costs of complying with the SCA. After deemed denials of its claims, Sotera appealed to the CBCA.

On appeal, the CBCA requested the parties brief the issue of the Board’s jurisdiction, prompting the USDA to file a motion to dismiss on the ground that Sotera submitted its claims to the wrong Contracting Officer. In deciding whether Sotera should have submitted its claims to the PCO instead of the OCO, the CBCA noted that under FAR Part 8, disputes pertaining to the terms and conditions of an underlying schedule contract administered by the General Services Administration (“GSA”) must be brought to the GSA Contracting Officer rather than the OCO. The CBCA recognized, however, that “[a] GWAC is different from a schedule contract administered by the GSA,” and that under FAR Subpart 16.5’s ordering requirements for GWACs, there were “no similar provisions bifurcating responsibility for the resolution of disputes.” Thus, considering there were no cases in which this issue had been resolved, the CBCA was “left to decide this issue as one of first impression.”

Keep reading article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=814550

July 18, 2019 By AMK

2019 NDAA analysis: Enhancing IDIQs and other provisions

Over the past several months, this blog has analyzed several key provisions of the Fiscal Year 2019 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that impact government contractors. This post briefly summarizes a variety of other government contracts-related provisions of the FY 2019 NDAA that we have not yet discussed, including several that reflect a congressional intent to enhance the use of multiple-award, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contracts and encourage commercial item contracting, several that concern subcontracting and supply-chain considerations, and assorted other issues.

Awarding IDIQ Contracts Without Considering Price to Increase Order-Level Competition.

Section 876 provides a limited exception to the general requirement in 41 U.S.C. § 3306 that agencies must include cost or price to the government as an evaluation factor in evaluating proposals. The exception applies to task-order contracts (i.e., IDIQ contracts) for services that are priced on the basis of hourly rates. Specifically, agencies need not consider price as an evaluation factor for such contracts if:

the agency will award a base contract to every “qualifying offeror”—meaning a responsible source whose proposal conforms to solicitation requirements, meets all technical requirements, and is otherwise eligible for award; and
the agency will consider cost or price to the government in competitions for individual task orders.

This provision applies to non-defense agencies. Defense agencies had previously been granted a similar exception in the FY 2017 NDAA. See 10 U.S.C. § 2305(a)(3)(C).

Congress’s goal, as evidenced by the title to section 876, is “Increasing Competition at the Task Order Level.” By awarding base IDIQ contracts to all compliant proposals, without discriminating between them based on price, agencies are likely to have more contract-holders available to compete for specific work at the task-order level. Use of this mechanism should reduce an important barrier to entry to many potential competitors—not holding the necessary IDIQ contract to compete for work solicited under task order solicitations—and, by increasing competition, could result in lower pricing and better technical offerings at the task order level.

Keep reading article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=810088

March 5, 2019 By AMK

Should ICE use GSA Schedules for agile development — or go its own way?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say the agency has been doing well adopting agile development practices and wants to keep that going once its current suite of contracts expire.

The big question: Should ICE follow Homeland Security Department headquarters in looking to pre-established contracts through the General Services Administration or build its own vehicle?

ICE has been contracting for its agile development needs with vendors off of Homeland Security’s Enterprise Acquisition Gateway for Leading-Edge Solutions, or EAGLE II. When that vehicle expires in 2020, ICE will need a new pool of vendors.

In December, DHS Chief Procurement Officer Soraya Correa announced the third iteration of EAGLE, dubbed EAGLE Next Gen, will be more of a strategy than a contract. Correa told Homeland Security components once EAGLE II expires, the agency will push offices toward using six governmentwide acquisition contracts, or GWACS: GSA’s Alliant 2 and Alliant 2 Small Business, 8(a) STARS II and VETS 2, and the National Institutes of Health’s CIO-SP3 and CIO-SP3 Small Business.

However, Correa also left additional options open, including specific contracts for unique mission areas.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/02/should-ice-use-gsa-schedules-agile-development-or-go-its-own-way/155145/

February 13, 2019 By AMK

HHS’ new emerging tech contract could one day compete with other GWACs

A shared services acquisition office at Health and Human Services Department is building a contract vehicle for emerging technologies that it hopes one day will be able to compete with other massive contracts in the governmentwide acquisition contract, or GWAC, space.

The department’s Program Support Center is in the process of soliciting bids for its new Intelligence Automation/Artificial Intelligence, or IAAI, contract, a vehicle the agency expects will generate up to $49 million over five years.

Initially, the contract will be available to HHS components looking for cutting-edge technologies. But program officials have much bigger designs for the vehicle.

“We’re hoping to get a very large number of vendors who can provide that catalog of services, not just for me at Buy Smarter, but the contract is designed so we can buy and scale across HHS and, potentially, across the government space,” Lori Ruderman, who leads the HHS Buy Smarter initiative and is a senior adviser at the Program Support Center, said Tuesday during a panel discussion at the AFCEA Bethesda Health IT Summit.

“This is a foundational contract,” she continued. “Ultimately, they want to establish a GWAC, a much larger vehicle. This is just a jumping off point.”

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/emerging-tech/2019/01/hhs-new-emerging-tech-contract-could-one-day-compete-other-gwacs/154557/

The General Services Administration’s watchdog again raised concerns over plans to move ahead with a three-year Transactional Data Reporting (TDR) pilot program, at the expense of two other contract provisions it says helps federal buyers save money.

Awarding IDIQ Contracts Without Considering Price to Increase Order-Level Competition.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials say the agency has been doing well adopting agile development practices and wants to keep that going once its current suite of contracts expire.

A shared services acquisition office at Health and Human Services Department is building a contract vehicle for emerging technologies that it hopes one day will be able to compete with other massive contracts in the governmentwide acquisition contract, or GWAC, space.

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