Interior Dept. | The Contracting Education Academy

June 22, 2020 By cs

What should vendors expect from Q4 2020?

The fourth quarter sprint to the finish line of the 2020 fiscal year starts in about a week. So what can federal contractors expect?

According to Cameron Leuthy, a senior analyst at Bloomberg Government, professional services will be big, the coronavirus pandemic will present both complications and opportunities, and small businesses should already be getting ready.

To project what’s coming, analysts usually look to the previous year as a template. In 2019, Q4 included 30% of all obligations for the entire fiscal year. The Defense Department alone spent just shy of $120 billion. The departments of Housing and Urban Development, Interior and State each had more than 50% of their total obligations for 2019 in the fourth quarter. September was particularly lucrative, with $94.3B spent that month alone, 66% of which came from DoD.

There are a number of reasons for that, Leuthy said. Sometimes those reasons include policy, or maximizing potential leverage with foreign governments, in the case of the State Department. Sometimes funds are just deliberately held back from obligations, though there can be legal ramifications for that.

“Civilian agencies did hold back in some cases, because of the difference between the amount the administration asked for and the amount that Congress eventually ended up appropriating,” Leuthy said. “There’s also an incentive, and a prudent one, to hold back obligations during CRs and not get ahead of yourself.”

Keep reading this article at: https://federalnewsnetwork.com/contracting/2020/06/what-should-vendors-expect-from-q4-2020/

April 3, 2020 By cs

Simplified acquisition procedures afford agencies a lot of latitude, GAO decision reminds us

Not being included, or being purposely excluded, may remind some of adolescence, and may remind others of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) simplified acquisition procedures.

The recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) decision in Phoenix Environmental Design, Inc. (Phoenix), B-418304 (March 2, 2020) deals with facing the latter form of disappointment.

The underlying purchase order in this matter was issued by the Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, to address the Southeast Idaho National Wildlife Refuge Complex’s (NWRC’s) urgent need for herbicide. The Southeast Idaho NWRC’s need was compounded by an unplanned wildfire, which provided soil conditions that would facilitate the elimination of “cheatgrass,” an invasive species in the area. The Southeast Idaho NWRC expressed its need for fifteen gallons of herbicide to the agency on October 10, 2019, stating that it needed the herbicide by October 25 because of concerns that a freezing event would occur and eliminate the efficacy of the herbicide.

To respond to the pressing request, the agency solicited quotations as a small business set-aside pursuant to FAR §§ 13.003 and 13.104, which provide for simplified acquisition procedures in lieu of full and open competition. The agency solicited quotations from three vendors – one was a local vendor and the other two vendors were businesses that had submitted the lowest prices in response to a prior solicitation for herbicides. Phoenix had also submitted a bid for this prior solicitation, though it had quoted the second highest price. While Phoenix had, throughout the years, repeatedly notified the agency that it was interested in all of the agency’s herbicide requirements, the agency did not solicit a quotation from Phoenix.

The formal purchase order was issued to Wilbur-Ellis Co. on October 17 and on October 18 the Southeast Idaho NWRC picked up the herbicide from the vendor’s facilities. On October 22, Phoenix requested that the contracting officer cancel the award, and after being informed that such would not occur, on October 25, Phoenix filed a protest at the agency level. Following the denial of that protest, Phoenix filed the instant protest with the GAO.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/simplified-acquisition-procedures-93132/

A helpful explanation of what simplified acquisition is appears at: http://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/?p=2851

May 3, 2019 By AMK

GAO: Agencies must consider information gathered by reverse auction providers

What are federal contractors supposed to do when FedBid (now Unison) requests additional information related to a proposal and the awarding agency ignores that information in its awarding decision?

GAO recently held that the agency must consider all information gathered by reverse auction providers.

In BCW Group, LLC, B-417209, 2019 WL 1398813 (Comp. Gen. Mar. 27, 2019), BCW protested the Department of Interior, Bureau of Indian Affairs’ award to another offeror. The award was the result of a reverse auction conducted by FedBid, on behalf of the agency.

The reverse auction was for work related to procurement, installation, and maintenance of Promethean ActivPanels, or other similar products. BCW’s bid included a general verification that it complied with “all terms listed by the Buyer[,]” but the bid did not specifically state that it included the required one-year maintenance. At the close of the reverse auction, a representative of FedBid reached out to BCW asking the following:

Is your bid price correct, complete (meaning all items requested are included in your bid) and inclusive of all costs the Buyer would incur if your bid is selected?

In response, BCW confirmed that the price included, among other things, “once a year maintenance for 3 years on the panels I install.”

The agency subsequently reviewed the five submitted bids and chose a different offeror because BCW’s offer, although lower priced, did not specifically mention the required maintenance. The agency did not review the exchange between FedBid and BCW, where BCW confirmed that maintenance was included in its offer, because the contracting officer was “not aware that FedBid” had the post-bid exchange with BCW regarding the maintenance issue. BCW protested that its lower priced bid should have been accepted because it met the procurement requirements.

Keep reading article at: www.smallgovcon.com/gaobidprotests/gao-agencies-must-consider-information-gathered-by-reverse-auction-providers

March 6, 2017 By AMK

Federal agencies sometimes struggle with creating postings on FedBizOpps

The Ides of March came early — at least for one employee of the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command contracting office.

While March 15 is known as a rather notorious day in history, March 1, 2017 may now take on special significance as well (at least among federal employees) as the day that a contracting official in Seattle apparently couldn’t figure out how to delete a posting from FedBizOpps (FBO), the website where virtually all federal contracts valued at $25,000 or more are posted daily.

Unable to delete a contract posting, the contracting official simply titled it, in all caps: “DON’T KNOW HOW TO DELETE THESE.”

**This is a screenshot of the FedBizOpps posting created on Mar. 1, 2017 by the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command.**

The words “DON’T KNOW HOW TO DELETE THESE” appear in the place where the title of a solicitation or contract award normally appears. In this case, the posting indicates that the contract was awarded on December 2, 2013, and it was a sole source award.

The FBO notice also indicates that the contract was for architectural and engineering services, and that the contract number is HSCG50-14-R-PKUGH1.

In fairness, the contracting office at the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command isn’t the only contracting office that sometimes struggles with FBO postings. Last August, the Denver-based National Park Service contracts office of the U.S. Department of Interior advertised a contract opportunity for “ASSES & DEVELOP LEADERSHIP TRAINING RDI.”

***Presumably, the National Park Service wanted an assessment of their leadership training program performed when they created this FedBizOpps posting on Aug, 29, 2016.***

The Coast Guard’s FBO posting can be seen at: https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=97fab27175e8c6b4216141611cbfce48&tab=core&_cview=0.

The National Park Service’s FBO posting is at: https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=5fbc373ae5c98756189e3c2277541fbb&tab=core&_cview=1.

May 2, 2016 By AMK

An excess of multiple-award contracts is creating new problems for government

For the better part of the past decade, procurement shops throughout the federal government couldn’t seem to stop themselves from creating new contract vehicles.

There’s something alluring about seeding and cultivating a multiple-award contract (MAC), with dozens of companies clamoring to participate and the promise of hundreds of millions of dollars blooming under a vehicle of your creation. Since 2005, thousands of multiple-award indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) programs have sprung up, many with multi-billion-dollar ordering ceilings.

The contract vehicle garden is now overgrown. Supply clearly exceeds demand.

Just look at IT services. The 10 largest contract vehicles have $17 billion in annualized ordering capacity. But those vehicles hosted under $12 billion in actual orders last year, leaving 37 percent excess capacity. Examples of underutilized contracts abound. The Interior Department’s cloud computing IDIQ has a $1 billion annualized ceiling. It attracted just $27 million in spending in fiscal 2015, according to federal procurement data.

The excessive excess capacity won’t last.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/excellence/promising-practices/2016/04/excess-multiple-award-contracts-creating-new-problems-government/127645

The fourth quarter sprint to the finish line of the 2020 fiscal year starts in about a week. So what can federal contractors expect?

Not being included, or being purposely excluded, may remind some of adolescence, and may remind others of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) simplified acquisition procedures.

What are federal contractors supposed to do when FedBid (now Unison) requests additional information related to a proposal and the awarding agency ignores that information in its awarding decision?

The Ides of March came early — at least for one employee of the Coast Guard’s Shore Maintenance Command contracting office.

For the better part of the past decade, procurement shops throughout the federal government couldn’t seem to stop themselves from creating new contract vehicles.

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