Past Performance | The Contracting Education Academy

August 4, 2017 By cs

Could ‘microconsulting’ disrupt government contracting?

I have never been a fan of contractor bashing.

I believe there is nothing wrong with making a profit. I do not believe that contractors typically spend their days dreaming up ways to cheat the government. Indeed, I even believe that many contractor employees and managers believe deeply in the missions of organizations they work for, and get satisfaction from helping citizens and society through their organizations’ efforts — an observation I discussed a while back in a blog based on an informal conversation at a Coalition for Government Procurement event.

Having said that, I was a strong advocate even when in government 20 years ago for bringing more suppliers who primarily sold to the commercial marketplace into government contracting. Indeed, at a strategic level one of the main thrusts of the procurement reform efforts of the 1990s was to reduce barriers to entry for commercial firms created by government procurement rules — both in terms of the complexity of the process and some government oversight requirements that were burdensome or expensive for contractors to comply with.

Keep reading this post at: https://fcw.com/blogs/lectern/2017/07/kelman-microconsulting.aspx

April 26, 2017 By cs

Changes coming to SAM.gov

The General Services Administration (GSA) is planning to test a new version of the System for Award Management (SAM.gov).

This means that plans GSA made as far back as 2001 may be realized sometime in 2018.

At present, SAM.gov is the federal database where vendors register to do business with the government. When it went live in mid-2012, SAM was introduced as portal where, over time, several different government databases would be consolidated. Federal Agency Registration (FedReg), the Online Representations and Certifications Application (ORCA), and the Excluded Parties List System (EPLS) were among the systems to be first consolidated under the SAM umbrella.

The 2012 introduction of SAM initially was delayed and, once launched, many problems were encountered by vendors and government agencies alike. Since then, SAM experienced a data breach in 2013, cost overruns, accessibility issues, and periodic interface difficulties with SBA’s small business database.

GSA now plans to resume work on the original vision for SAM: the consolidation of as many as 10 websites.

A new test site, at beta.sam.gov, reportedly is to launch between July 1 and Sept. 30, 2017.

The objective of the consolidated web site is to reduce the federal contracting burden on contractors and government officials alike by creating a single place to access a range of data, including contractor registration information, contract award data on prime contractors and subcontractors, and information about companies excluded from pursuing government work.

Eventually, the functions of 10 existing sites — including SAM.gov, the Federal Procurement Data System (fpds.gov); Federal Business Opportunities (fbo.gov), the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act Subaward Reporting System (fsrs.gov), and the Federal Awardee Performance and Integrity Information System (fapiis.gov) — will become a part of the SAM beta site. Once testing is completed, all of the added functionality will become a part of a new SAM.gov site. The sites that are merged into SAM.gov then will be retired.

Improvements, such as search features, will continue to be made to existing sites as the new site is being tested, GSA says.

March 2, 2017 By cs

Evaluation of subcontractor past performance not required for FSS procurements

For Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) procurements, agencies are not required to evaluate past performance references of subcontractors, unless the solicitation provides otherwise.

As one offeror recently discovered in Atlantic Systems Group, Inc., B-413901 (Jan. 9, 2017), unlike negotiated procurements, where agencies “should” evaluate the past performance of subcontractors that will perform major or critical aspects of the contract, offerors bidding under FSS solicitations should not assume that a subcontractor’s past performance will be considered.

Atlantic Systems involved a solicitation for technical, engineering, management, operation, logistical, and administrative support for the Department of Education’s cybersecurity risk management program. The solicitation was set aside for SDVOSB concerns that held Schedule 70 contracts.

Pursuant to the solicitation, offerors were to be evaluated for both corporate experience and past performance. In order to enable the agency to conduct the past performance/experience evaluation, each “offeror” was to provide evidence of the experience “of the organization” with similar projects or contracts.

Keep reading this article at: http://smallgovcon.com/gaobidprotests/evaluation-of-subcontractor-past-performance-not-required-for-fss-procurements/

January 20, 2017 By cs

GAO denies Alliant 2 protests, evaluations to come

The Government Accountability Office has dismissed the pre-award bid protests of several companies that took issue with solicitation language in Alliant 2, the $50 billion IT contracting vehicle the General Services Administration put out to bid in June 2016.

The protesting companies — Buchanan & Edwards, Inc., Enterprise Information Services, Inc., InfoReliance Corp. and Sevatec, Inc. — took issue with Alliant 2’s evaluation scheme and claimed the agency’s intent to award tasks orders to 60 contractors was “insufficient.”

The protests essentially put GSA’s innovative, data-driven, objective approach aimed to factor past performance on trial.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2017/01/gao-denies-alliant-2-protests-evaluations-come/134594

July 29, 2016 By cs

Army assessments of contractors’ past performance fall short

Officials at five Army components failed to fully comply with rules for evaluating contractors’ past performance when awarding those firms work, the Defense Department inspector general (IG) reported.

According to the July 25, 2016 report, the IG reviewed a sampling of contracts valued at $1.5 billion in operations support, services, information technology and ship repair at the National Guard Bureau; the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers; the Engineering Support Center in Huntsville, Ala.; and the Army Contracting Commands at Aberdeen Proving Ground, Redstone Arsenal and Warren, Mich.

Generally speaking, the IG found sloppy work on the part of Army contracting officials.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2016/07/army-assessments-contractors-past-performance-fall-short/130200

I have never been a fan of contractor bashing.

For Federal Supply Schedule (FSS) procurements, agencies are not required to evaluate past performance references of subcontractors, unless the solicitation provides otherwise.

The Government Accountability Office has dismissed the pre-award bid protests of several companies that took issue with solicitation language in Alliant 2, the $50 billion IT contracting vehicle the General Services Administration put out to bid in June 2016.

Officials at five Army components failed to fully comply with rules for evaluating contractors’ past performance when awarding those firms work, the Defense Department inspector general (IG) reported.

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