MAC | The Contracting Education Academy

May 25, 2016 By AMK

Governmentwide contracts offer agencies newer technologies at a faster pace

Since the middle of President Obama’s first term, the Office of Management and Budget has sought to simplify procurement; more specifically, the types of procurement vehicles agencies use.

As anyone who has read the Federal Acquisition Regulation knows, federal procurement can be incredibly complicated, with a long list of rules, systems and procedures that at times add unneeded complexity.

In recent years, OMB has fought to simplify those processes, pushing agencies away from creating new contracts, instead relying on what’s already in place.

Dan Gordon, administrator of the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP) during Obama’s first term, asked agencies to create a business case for standing up new multiple award contracts, also known as MACs. Gordon’s goal was simple: Cut out duplicate MACs and other multiple-award contracts that sold the same products or services and, instead, use established contracting methods.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fedtechmagazine.com/article/2016/04/governmentwide-contracts-offer-agencies-newer-technologies-faster-pace

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

February 15, 2016 By AMK

OFPP says it’s time to take a bite out of contract duplication

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy’s solution to stop the proliferation of duplicative multiple award contracts has been far from successful.

Agencies may be putting business cases on the OMB Max platform so others can review and comment, but few, if any, actually have been stopped.

So Anne Rung, OFPP administrator, is doing something about it.

Rung said she plans to modify that 2011 guidance from her predecessor Dan Gordon, requiring a business case for any multiple award contract worth more than $50 million.

Keep reading this article at: http://federalnewsradio.com/reporters-notebook-jason-miller/2016/02/time-right-finally-take-bite-contract-duplication-ofpp-thinks/

July 27, 2015 By AMK

‘Tis the season for multiple award contracts

Call it what you want — the “budget flush,” “federal Black Friday,” or the “federal holiday spending season” — but the government’s unofficial spending deluge is underway.

For more than four decades, federal agencies have been federally mandated to spend all of their allotted budget or face having it taken away. From August through the end of September have traditionally seen the heaviest spending by federal agencies.

“There are 55 shopping days left this year,” Bill Gormley, president and managing partner at the Gormley Group, said in a conference panel at a Bloomberg Government conference in McLean, Va. The next three months will see the heaviest spending of the year for federal agencies, he said.

Keep reading this article at: http://fcw.com/articles/2015/07/15/multiple-award-contracts.aspx

October 3, 2014 By AMK

DoD selects Tech as one of 12 contract award winners

he Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is one of 12 companies awarded access to the new Defense Systems Technical Area Tasks (DS TATs) contract vehicle.

Having established its reputation as a world leader in sensors, radar and electronic systems, information management and security, and robotics, GTRI leveraged its position within the Georgia Institute of Technology and its collaboration with other academic institutions to win the contract. The contract was awarded by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC), a part of the Department of Defense (DoD).

“Contract vehicles are very important for military contractors in general and GTRI in particular,” said Rod Beard, GTRI researcher and director of the DS TATs. “We could have the greatest ideas in the world for a government office, but if we don’t have a way for them to reach us through a contract vehicle, it could be too time-consuming for the complete procurement process.”

GTRI leadership made the decision to pursue DS TATs in 2011, realizing that the Sensing Information Analysis Center (SENSIAC) vehicle would expire in 2014. DTIC’s prior responsibility for SENSIAC under its mandate was to provide science and technical information to U.S. government customers. Because of GTRI’s and Georgia Tech’s specialty in sensors and radar, SENSIAC was located in and managed by GTRI. Researchers and scientists managed these basic core operations of SENSIAC.

DTIC divided the 10 existing information analysis centers — grouping subject matter based on research similarities — into three. The technical area tasks (TATs) or contract vehicles were separated among the new branches. Now, the DS-TATs scope is the same as that of the Defense Systems Information Analysis Center. The other two are the Cyber Security and Information Analysis Center (CSIAC) and the Homeland Defense & Security Information Analysis Center (HDIAC).

DTIC, which reports to the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (ASDRE), established DS TATs in June 2014. The vehicle has a $3 billion ceiling and is established as a 5-year, indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ), multiple-award contract for research and analysis services.

According to Beard, it should take about six or seven months to begin procuring contract awards through the vehicle. He currently is in the process of informing GTRI’s researchers of the new vehicle, and then will meet with customers who funded GTRI through SENSIAC, informing them of the new process with DS TATs.

Contractors awarded use of this vehicle will compete to perform various customer-funded task orders (TATs) for studies and complex analyses, as well as engineering and technical services that generate scientific and technical information within the Defense Systems scope areas.

Focus areas for this contract vehicle include the following:

survivability/vulnerability
reliability, maintainability, quality, supportability and interoperability
military sensing
advanced materials
weapon systems
energetics
autonomous systems
directed energy
non-lethal weapons and information operations

Through its relationship to Georgia Tech and collaboration with academic partners from across the nation, GTRI will be able to not only utilize its specialties—sensors, autonomous systems, sustainability of legacy aircraft and research on protecting our warfighters — but also allow the consortium of academic partners to demonstrate their strengths.

Collaborators include the University of Southern California, California Technical Institute, New Mexico Tech, Utah State University, Purdue University, University of Illinois, University of Michigan, Notre Dame, Pennsylvania State University, Vanderbilt University, University of North Carolina Charlotte and Florida International University. In addition, GTRI recruited several industry and small business partners, as 9 percent of the work done in the first year must be designated to small businesses.

“In addition to providing access to a contract vehicle, the partnerships will give us an opportunity to diversify,” Beard said. “To assist with this, we have secured several academic partners, which will open the door to projects that neither GTRI nor some of our partners would have contemplated before.”

For example, GTRI conducts legacy aircraft sustainment. “We take legacy technology in military aircraft, and update the avionic systems with current generation processors and memory to enable replacement of this out-of-date equipment,” Beard said. “Purdue is prominent in the automotive industry, which is something we don’t do. We could possibly move into tank and truck sustainment through our partnerships.”

A few of these institutions already were partners through SENSIAC, Beard said. Utah State’s Space Dynamic Lab, for example, can simulate the environment of space, which aids in the testing of sensors and other items bound for the skies.

“I’m pleased that we have been awarded this opportunity,” said Robert T. McGrath, senior vice president of the Georgia Institute of Technology and director of GTRI. “I am confident that the comprehensive capabilities represented across the impressive team assembled will very ably serve the future needs of our Department of Defense sponsors.”

The multiple-award contracts were competitively procured by full and open competition along with a partial small business set-aside via the Federal Business Opportunities website. The Air Force Installation Contracting Agency, Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska, is the contracting agency.

Since the middle of President Obama’s first term, the Office of Management and Budget has sought to simplify procurement; more specifically, the types of procurement vehicles agencies use.

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.

The Office of Federal Procurement Policy’s solution to stop the proliferation of duplicative multiple award contracts has been far from successful.

Call it what you want — the “budget flush,” “federal Black Friday,” or the “federal holiday spending season” — but the government’s unofficial spending deluge is underway.

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