Scope Of Work | The Contracting Education Academy

May 17, 2018 By cs

Officials mishandled trans-Africa airlift contract, Pentagon watchdog finds

Just days after the Pentagon released a post-mortem on a fatal ambush of U.S. combat troops in Niger last year, the department’s watchdog criticized U.S. Africa Command for mishandling a contract for conducting emergency evacuation services and airlifting cargo across the continent.

Defense Department rules required the command to conduct what is called a Service Requirements Review Board to analyze and verify its requirements before U.S. Transportation Command awarded a $900 million contract for trans-Africa airlift support.

The command’s contracting staff “did not take responsibility as the requiring activity” for the contract, with Transportation Command officials assuming that as long as they received funding and a performance work statement, “the requiring activity had validated the requirements,” said the report dated May 8.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.govexec.com/defense/2018/05/officials-mishandled-trans-africa-airlift-contract-pentagon-watchdog-finds/148229

March 12, 2018 By cs

ICE broke contracting rules in establishing its largest detention facility

The nation’s largest immigrant detention facility was procured improperly, according to a watchdog report, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2014 using an existing agreement with a town in Arizona as a vehicle to establish the center 900 miles away in Texas.

Since 2014, ICE has spent $438,000 annually for Eloy, Ariz., to serve solely as a middleman for a 2,400-bed detention facility in Dilley, Texas, according to the Homeland Security Department’s inspector general. The agency first contracted with the city of Eloy in 2006 to establish the Eloy Detention Center, which the city subcontracted to a company called CCA. ICE reached the agreement with Eloy through a process known as an intergovernmental service agreement, or IGSA.

After an influx of unaccompanied minors and families illegally crossed the border in 2014, ICE looked to boost its detention capacity in south Texas. The agency asked CCA and another contractor to submit proposals for a facility, but only CCA responded. The contractor negotiated directly with ICE on the provisions of the agreement. Rather than create a new contract, ICE went to the city of Eloy and requested that it modify its IGSA to enable CCA to run the South Texas Family Residential Center. The Eloy City Council gave its consent, and the agreement was altered. The provision was set to expire in October 2016, but ICE extended it until 2021.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/oversight/2018/02/ice-broke-contracting-rules-establishing-its-largest-detention-facility/146278

October 24, 2016 By cs

Sticks and stones: How words and terms of art can hurt the contracting profession

Contracting professional need precision in words and terms, as contract interpretation turns on minute differences in terminology and definitions.

mastery-of-words-oct-2016 Misuse of terms of art in the contracting profession leads to confusion, misunderstanding, and pernicious misconceptions. Clarity in contracting language improves professionalism and avoids inefficient or wasteful procedures.

Words, terms of art, and definitions do not get the respect they deserve. People calling themselves contracting professionals blithely misuse them. Seasoned practitioners — who should know better — stay silent and allow bad habits to persist.

This article turns the spotlight on several frequently misused and abused terms of art, but it is not an exhaustive list.

Read on to explore several flagrantly abused terms of art regarding justifications and scope of the contract: http://www.wifcon.com/analy/Sticks_and_Stones.pdf

December 17, 2014 By cs

Patent & Trademark Office lacks oversight of time-and-materials contracts, says IG

The Patent and Trademark Office didn’t follow best practices when monitoring its time-and-materials contracts for the amount of work done by a contractor, says a Dec. 3 Commerce Department inspector general report.

The IG reviewed 103 contracts worth $35.4 million and found that $24.6 million in contracts lacked the proper oversight to determine whether payments made to the contractors were warranted.

In a time and materials contract, the government agrees to be billed by a contractor for the work performed as well as the materials used.

Contracting officers often did not prepare service level agreements, which define the scope of the service, and the managers didn’t maintain documentation of contractor performance, the report says.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/ig-uspto-lacks-oversight-time-and-materials-contracts/2014-12-09

July 12, 2013 By cs

GAO bid protest on CIA cloud hinges greatly on solicitation ambiguity

The Government Accountability Office’s protest decision directing the CIA to reopen a competition for a private cloud infrastructure after awarding a contract worth up to $600 million over 4 years with options for up to 5 more years hinges in great measure on ambiguity within the initial solicitation.

The GAO released earlier this month a June 6 bid protest decision filed by IBM after it lost the best value competition to Amazon Web Services.

As part of the 2012 solicitation, the CIA required proposers to price out a scenario under which they would provide a hosting environment for a large number of orders – 30 such orders in the first year of the contract – each consisting of 100 terabytes of data.

IBM interpreted the scenario to mean that it should price a first-year solution capable of processing 30 single runs of 100 TB, whereas the CIA thought it was asking for what the protest decision calls “continual processing” for each order. IBM told the GAO the latter interpretation amounted to an unstated requirement, an objection that bid protest attorneys say is in fact moot, since IBM failed to raise it with the GAO before proposals were due.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernmentit.com/story/gao-bid-protest-cia-cloud-hinges-greatly-solicitation-ambiguity/2013-06-19

The GAO’s bid protest decision can be found at: http://www.gao.gov/assets/660/655241.pdf

Just days after the Pentagon released a post-mortem on a fatal ambush of U.S. combat troops in Niger last year, the department’s watchdog criticized U.S. Africa Command for mishandling a contract for conducting emergency evacuation services and airlifting cargo across the continent.

The nation’s largest immigrant detention facility was procured improperly, according to a watchdog report, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2014 using an existing agreement with a town in Arizona as a vehicle to establish the center 900 miles away in Texas.

Contracting professional need precision in words and terms, as contract interpretation turns on minute differences in terminology and definitions.

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