performance | The Contracting Education Academy

June 19, 2020 By cs

Feds spend billions on COVID-19 contracts, often without fully competitive bidding

When nurses and doctors across the country were struggling to treat coronavirus patients without enough protective gear, and the federal government was scrambling to find those supplies, Quedon Baul saw an opportunity.

His three-person company in McKinney, Texas, distributes medical supplies but didn’t have much experience with face shields. Still, he landed two government contracts worth up to $20 million to deliver the personal protective equipment. He couldn’t meet the first deadline, so he found subcontractors to do the job.

“You get an opportunity, you take it,” Baul says. “It wasn’t my first rodeo, but it’s certainly my first big rodeo.”

The U.S. government has granted contracts worth as much as $25 billion as it races to address the COVID-19 public health crisis. NPR reviewed a database of thousands of contracting actions and found more than 250 companies that got contracts worth more than $1 million without going through a fully competitive bidding process.

Some of the companies, such as Baul’s, had little or no experience with personal protective equipment. Others had never worked in the medical field at all. Contractors also included a company that imported vodka and a school security consultant.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.npr.org/2020/06/09/869052415/feds-spend-billions-on-covid-19-contracts-often-without-fully-competitive-biddin

The Contracting Education Academy at Georgia Tech has established a webpage where all contract-related developments related to the coronavirus (COVID-19) are summarized. Find the page at: https://contractingacademy.gatech.edu/coronavirus-information-for-contracting-officers-and-contractors/

May 19, 2020 By cs

Project management and COVID-19 recovery: Lessons from previous disasters

The rapid outbreak of COVID-19 has prompted an unprecedented response from all levels of government, across the country and around the world. As part of this response, local, state, and federal agencies sprang into action to help protect citizens from this potentially catastrophic biological threat while continuing to deliver services in communities nationwide.

As the initial public health threat hopefully subsides in the days and weeks ahead, many federal projects and programs will be launched to support longer-term COVID-19 economic recovery. These recovery efforts will affect people whose housing, utilities, and other life necessities are at risk, as well as entire industries whose existence has been disrupted by the COVID-19 threat.

While these efforts may be unparalleled in many ways, there are some lessons learned from previous disaster recovery efforts that can inform policy makers, federal project and program managers, and their executive sponsors in their work to help the nation recover from the effects of this extraordinary event.

The Project Management Institute’s 2020 Pulse of the Profession® research reveals that 11.4% of each dollar invested on projects is wasted due to poor performance — that’s $114 million for every $1 billion. There is a great deal at stake to ensure that pandemic response projects and programs are delivered as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/management/2020/05/project-management-and-covid-19-recovery/165298/

October 8, 2019 By cs

R.I.P. PPIRS

First things first: sorry about the title of this article.

**How contractor past performance information used to flow from CPARS through PPIRS and into FAPIIS.**

The longer, alternate title would have been “Rest In Peace – the Past Performance Information Retrieval System Sleeps with the Fishes.” But that doesn’t have the same kind of obscure, punchy, epitaph-type quality that I’m aiming for. So instead, we give you get a garbled mess of an acronym to remind us that the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) – the system once used by the U.S. Government to house the final performance assessments for government contractors – is no more. As far as epitaphs go, most of us would agree that “R.I.P.” is just about what an acronym deserves.

There are various “past performance” reporting and accountability systems for contractors, including the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) (dating back to around 2007), PPIRS (first introduced around 2009), and the Federal Performance and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) (finalized in early-2010). There is a neat little picture to help demonstrate how data flowed through the various governmental systems.

These systems continue to evolve, and PPIRS is officially no more – formally rolling into CPARS. And, in time, CPARS will be no more, eventually rolling into the multi-functional, highly integrated, federal System for Award Management (SAM), available at SAM.gov (and currently available in a semi-upgraded fashion at beta.SAM.gov).

Keep reading this article at: https://www.natlawreview.com/article/rip-ppirs

December 13, 2018 By AMK

How to build high performing teams

The growing role of teamwork in the modern world raises a question: What factors contribute to team performance?

A new study investigating the dynamics of teamwork suggests a major factor that predicts performance is connectedness.

Several studies have explored this issue, often focusing on individual personality traits that promote team performance. But team members’ proficiencies only establish the potential for their output. They constrain, rather than define, the actual performance.

Researchers decided to delve further into the dynamics of a successful team. What’s more, they’ve developed theories about how team managers might be able to leverage these factors to improve productivity and overall experience. Their findings appear in the journal PLOS ONE.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/excellence/management-matters/2018/12/how-build-high-performing-teams/153113

August 24, 2018 By AMK

GAO: National Nuclear Security Administration needs better contract oversight

Some of the field offices of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) aren’t using a key Energy Department IT system to track important management and operations contracts, an oversight the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns could potentially cost NNSA millions.

The NNSA, the semi-autonomous agency within the Energy Department, should officially advise its field offices to use a DOE’s Strategic Integrated Procurement Enterprise System (STRIPES) system to manage billions in management and operating (M&O) contracts, GAO said.

Those field offices, said the report, are using the web-based STRIPES for contract writing and modification, but not tapping its document management capabilities.

For the audit, GAO monitored contracts from NNSA’s Office of Acquisition and Project Management (OAPM), which is in charge of managing the M&O contracts for field offices. NNSA spent $11 billion through such contracts in fiscal 2016, GAO noted.

Keep reading this article at: https://fcw.com/articles/2018/08/06/gao-nnsa-rockwell.aspx

When nurses and doctors across the country were struggling to treat coronavirus patients without enough protective gear, and the federal government was scrambling to find those supplies, Quedon Baul saw an opportunity.

First things first: sorry about the title of this article.

The growing role of teamwork in the modern world raises a question: What factors contribute to team performance?

Some of the field offices of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) aren’t using a key Energy Department IT system to track important management and operations contracts, an oversight the Government Accountability Office (GAO) warns could potentially cost NNSA millions.

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