Single offeror responses to Defense Department solicitations will come under more scrutiny following the Nov. 24 release of a memo from Shay Assad, director of Defense Procurement and Acquisition Policy.
Effective immediately, Assad wrote (.pdf), if a contracting officer receives only one offeror response to a solicitation open for less than 30 days, then the officer must re-advertise the solicitation for an additional 30 days (unless a the head of the contracting shop grants a waiver).
If still just the one offeror responds–or if the original response period was for 30 days to begin with–then contracting officers are no longer allowed to make a fair and reasonable pricing finding based on a reasonable expectation that single offeror’ s price was made in the genuine belief of competition. Assad’s memo also prevents contracting officers from making a fair and reasonable pricing finding based on a comparison of the single offeror’s price to federal prices recently paid for similar items.
In technical terms, that means that Federal Acquisition Regulation Part 15.403-1(c)(1)(ii) or (iii) are inoperative for the Defense Department.
Instead, contracting officers must open negotiations with the single offeror on the basis of cost or pricing data, (whether certified or not), regardless of contract type. Contractors generally dislike allowing contracting officers to comb through their cost or pricing data, since the outcome generally means that contracting officers decide for themselves what the company’s profit rate should be.
Assad’s memo is a follow up to an earlier memo from Ashton Carter, undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology, and logistics, that first introduced the requirement for price negotiations in the case of a single offeror. Carter introduced the memo in the context of a Defense Department efficiency drive whose goal it is to find $100 billion of cost savings in overhead over the next five years.
For more:
– download the Nov. 24, 2010 memo on “Improving Competition in Defense Procurements”
— by David Perera – December 1, 2010 — Fierce Government IT
Read more: More scrutiny for one company solicitation responses at DoD – FierceGovernmentIT http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/more-scrutiny-one-company-solicitation-responses-dod/2010-12-01#ixzz1GaTelTdR
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Read more: More scrutiny for one company solicitation responses at DoD – FierceGovernmentIT: http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/more-scrutiny-one-company-solicitation-responses-dod/2010-12-01#ixzz1GaSnEIvU
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