multiple award contract | The Contracting Education Academy

November 20, 2013 By AMK

Air Force embraces OASIS multiple award contracting vehicle

The General Services Administration’s OASIS contracting vehicle already has changed the Air Force’s procurement operations for the better, one of the Air Force’s top acquisition officers says.

The Air Force’s participation in GSA’s $60 billion One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services multiple award contracts “has simplified the decision process,” said Maj. Gen. Wendy Masiello, the USAF director of contracting.

The Air Force has embraced OASIS in the last several months. In August, the Air Force Space and Missile Command said it wanted to use the dedicated OASIS Small Business contract instead of its own SMC Technical Support program. GSA estimated the value of the commitment, which will encompass virtually all systems engineering and technical assistance activities at Los Angeles Air Force Base, at $472 million over five years.

Keep reading this article at: http://fcw.com/articles/2013/10/31/air-force-embraces-oasis.aspx

December 26, 2012 By AMK

DHS to recompete online immigration contract

The Homeland Security Department will award contracts to multiple companies to fix a long-suffering program aimed at computerizing immigration paperwork, after a lackluster job by the current vendor, according to federal officials and internal memos.

The original five-year, $536,000 plan for “Transformation” has grown into a potentially two-decade effort that, officials told Nextgov, could cost more than $3 billion if not stopped. So far, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, a DHS agency, has created one online form with the $792.6 million it has spent since contracting with system developer IBM in 2008. It is unclear how much of that sum went directly to IBM.

Keep reading this article at http://www.nextgov.com/defense/2012/12/dhs-recompete-online-immigration-program-crisis/60144/?oref=homeland_security_nl.

August 7, 2012 By AMK

Former OFPP officials say government in state of ‘paralysis’

Convoluted oversight regulations, too many multiple-award contracts and a lack of top-down support has put the federal government in a state of paralysis when it comes to acquisitions, one former procurement official said last Thursday (8/2/2012) at the Multiple Award Government and Industry Conference.

Deidre Lee, now the executive director of compliance at the Fluor Corporation and a former head of federal and Defense acquisition, said it takes too long to get things done in today’s oversight-heavy world. The costs in time and money to redo procurement is causing agencies to move slower, not faster, as Congress intended multiple-award contracts to do when they created them 20 years ago.

Keep reading this article at http://www.federalnewsradio.com/?nid=517&sid=2966803.

July 27, 2012 By AMK

Smaller budgets may force streamlining of duplicative contract vehicles

Budget cuts will press agencies to consolidate contracts to save time and money, say contracting experts.

“The government doesn’t have the luxury anymore to have duplication,” said Tom Sisti, a former contracts attorney at the General Services Administration and Government Accountability Office. “This may be the motivation to go through and remove duplication and bring some sort of control on the process because there’s just not going to be money there and certainly industry isn’t going to have the money to chase this.”

Tighter budgets will mean federal procurement staffs have less money to negotiate new contracts and contractors will have less money to compete for so many contracts, said Sisti, now director and chief legislative counsel of SAP, and other experts on July 18, 2012. They spoke at an event for members of the Coalition for Government Procurement, an association for GSA schedule contract holders.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20120718/ACQUISITION03/307180003/Smaller-budgets-may-force-streamlining-duplicative-contract-vehicles?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE.

November 9, 2011 By AMK

New rule funnels more contracts to small businesses

Under a proposed new rule, small companies are expected to get more business through multiple-award contractors because that’s where the money has increasingly been going since the mid-1990s.

Regulators have revised the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) to match the fluctuation toward task-order contracts, such as governmentwide acquisition contracts, blanket purchase agreements and agencywide contracts. The Office of Federal Procurement Policy has pushed those types of vehicles to streamline purchasing and get lower prices.

Officials released an interim rule Nov. 2 about the FAR revisions. The rule took effect the same day.

The changes make clear that contracting officers can set aside orders for small businesses both on blanket purchase agreements under the General Services Administration’s Multiple Award Schedules and on multiple-award contracts.

The revisions add a new section in the FAR. It authorizes agencies to set aside one or more contracts for small business on a multiple-award contract, including any of the socioeconomic programs, such as the service-disabled, veteran-owned small business program.

Officials are hopeful for what the changes will bring to small businesses. at the Defense Department, GSA, and NASA expect agencies to take advantage of the set-aside revisions. They want agencies to identify possible multiple-award contracts through which they could set- aside orders for small businesses. They also want agencies to set aside more orders when using GSA’s Schedules, according to the notice.

The changes are based on law and an advisory group.

Congress included language in the Small Business Jobs Act, which became law in 2010, addressing set-asides among task and delivery orders.

Also in 2010, an interagency panel, which was created by President Barack Obama to study small-business contracting, found the issue needed some attention since multiple-award contracts have become so popular.

“There has been no attempt to create a comprehensive policy for orders placed under either general task-and-delivery-order contracts or Schedule contracts that rationalizes and appropriately balances the need for efficiency with the need to maximize opportunities for small businesses,” the Task Force on Small Business Contracting wrote in its report.

About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer covering acquisition and procurement for Washington Technology. Published Nov. 3, 2011 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2011/11/03/small-business-set-asides-multiple-award-contracts.aspx?s=wtdaily_041111

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