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June 11, 2013 By AMK

Secret ‘man caves’ found in EPA warehouse

A warehouse maintained by contractors for the Environmental Protection Agency contained secret rooms full of exercise equipment, televisions and couches, according to an internal audit.

EPA’s inspector general found contractors used partitions, screens and piled up boxes to hide the rooms from security cameras in the 70,000 square-foot building located in Landover, Md. The warehouse — used for inventory storage — is owned by the General Services Administration and leased to the EPA for about $750,000 per year.

The EPA has issued a stop work order to Apex Logistics LLC, the responsible contractor, ensuring the company’s workers no longer have access to the site — EPA security officials escorted contractor personnel off the premises on May 17 — and ending all payments on the contract.

Since awarding the contract in May 2007, EPA has paid Apex Logistics about $5.3 million, most of which went to labor costs. Conditions at the facility “raise questions about time charges made by warehouse employees under the contract,” the report said.

“The warehouse contained multiple unauthorized and hidden personal spaces created by and for the workers that included televisions, refrigerators, radios, microwaves, chairs and couches,” the IG report said. “These spaces contained personal items, including photos, pin ups, calendars, clothing, books, magazines and videos.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2013/06/secret-man-caves-found-epa-warehouse/64202/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: abuse, contract management, contractor performance, EPA, fraud, IG, management support service, oversight, responsibility, surplus, waste

December 11, 2012 By AMK

OMB touts ‘historic’ $20 billion in contracting savings

Agency spending on goods and services contracts fell by $20 billion during the past year, the Office of Management and Budget announced Thursday.

Office of Federal Procurement Policy Administrator Joe Jordan ascribed this “historic” savings level to “a concerted and collaborative effort by all federal agencies.”

The downward trend in contracting — a $35 billion drop-off or 16 percent decrease within three years — surpasses the goal President Obama set in 2009, Jordan told reporters in a conference call. Its decline represents a “dramatic reversal of the unsustainable 12 percent contract spending growth rate experienced from 2000 through 2008,” he said.

Jordan added contract spending on management support services, such as information technology systems development, was cut by $7 billion during the past two years by “buying smarter and buying less,” another administration goal.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2012/12/omb-touts-historic-20-billion-contracting-savings/60010/?oref=govexec_today_nl.

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: cost reduction, GSA Schedules, IT, management support service, multi-agency contracting, OFPP, OMB, spending, strategic sourcing, technology

October 8, 2012 By AMK

Agencies should file better reports on their service contracts, GAO says

The Obama administration’s effort to better calibrate which functions are inherently governmental and which are better contracted out will require improvements in agency inventories of service contracts, according to a new Government Accountability Office report.

Forty eight of the 49 agencies that GAO reviewed had filed the required lists of their contracts for such services as professional management support, information technology support and medical support, which together totaled $126 billion in fiscal 2011. But due to differing methodologies among agencies, the Office of Management and Budget and Congress could not “meaningfully use these service contract inventories to compare service contract obligations among agencies or develop spending trends,” the report said, adding, “agencies did not have a complete universe of service contracts to consider for review.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2012/09/agencies-should-file-better-reports-their-service-contracts-gao-says/58451/?oref=govexec_today_nl 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: DHS, GAO, GSA, HHS, information technology, inherently governmental functions, IT, management support service, medical support, NASA, OFPP, reporting requirements, service contracts

July 27, 2011 By AMK

OMB lists contract categories vulnerable to overspending

When the Office of Management and Budget on July 7 announced a new directive for agencies to cut spending on contract management services by 15 percent, officials mentioned 15 product service codes that were considered most at risk of overspending because they have a high proportion of time-and-materials contracts.

Since that briefing, OMB released a list of the codes, noting that they are the same as those that appeared last November in guidance on service inventories. The 15 codes affected by the management support services directive are:

Description of Function Product & Service Code
Professional & Management Services
Cost Benefit Analyses B505
Policy Review/Development Services R406
Program Evaluation Services R407
Program Management/Support Services R408
Program Review/Development Services R409
Specifications Development Service R413
Management Services/Contract & Procurement Support R707
Intelligence Services R423
Engineering and Technical Services R425
Systems Engineering Services R414
Personal Services Contracts R497
Information Technology Support Services
ADP Systems Development Services D302
Automated Information Systems Services D307
ADP System Acquisition Support Services D314
ADP Backup and Security Services D310

Focusing on these product codes, according to Stan Soloway, president and chief executive officer of the Professional Services Council, a contractor trade group, may have limited utility. Use of all but one or two already is going down, he said, “so why add this rule now?”

— by Charles S. Clark – GovExec.com – July 14, 2011 – at http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=48250&printerfriendlyvers=1 

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: contract management services, information technology, IT, management support service, OMB, overspending

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