DoD acquisition heroes during Iraq, Afghanistan? Small biz, universities and DARPA
November 15, 2013 by cs
You didn’t hear much about them during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but DARPA, small businesses, and universities were the people who most impressed retired Gen. Hoss Cartwright when he was vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as he and the services scrambled to find weapons to give American troops a combat edge.
“DARPA was incredible to our ability to gain advantage. Small businesses and universities were hotbeds of innovation for us,” Cartwright said during a panel at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on lessons learned from the last dozen years of war. He made no mention of Lockheed Martin, Boeing, or BAE Systems — or any of the other large defense companies.
What made them special? “Their willingness to take risks… made a huge difference and saved countless lives on the battlefield,” Cartwright said. And he said that in Afghanistan and (previously) Iraq, “[the] battlefield is not driven by platforms” — tanks, ships, planes — which take so long to design, build, and deploy.
Another avenue of innovation at the Pentagon sprang from the acquisition processes of Special Operations Command (SOCOM), which has the right to just buy things in small quantities if it really needs them.
Keep reading this article at: http://breakingdefense.com/2013/11/dod-acquisition-heroes-during-iraq-afghanistan-small-biz-and-darpa/
VA Awards health IT contract at triple the price of lower bids
November 14, 2013 by cs
The Veterans Affairs Department awarded ASM Research a $162.5 million contract to improve the user experience for VA’s electronic health record system, a price more than triple two competitive bids, Nextgov has learned. The Sept. 30 contract award is for improvements to the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture, known as VistA.
HP Enterprise Services and Triple-I of Overland Park, Kansas, each submitted bids under $50 million on the contract won by ASM, two independent sources told Nextgov. The companies competed for the VistA work through task orders issued under a $12 billion IT umbrella contract known as Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology, or T4. The T4 contract, awarded to 16 companies in June 2011, is an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract that gives the department considerable flexibility in awarding technology deals.
The VistA enhancement contract calls for a new graphical user interface that will display a wide range of patient information. It also calls for other tasks one source described as so general it would allow the department to use ASM for a wide range of work without further competition.
On Oct. 28, a month after VA awarded the contract to ASM, David Waltman, a senior program officer within the Veterans Health Administration’s Office of Information and Analytics who had done preliminary work on that contract, sent an email to colleagues at VA and the Defense Department telling them he would leave government service Nov. 2 to take a job as chief strategy officer for ASM.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.nextgov.com/health/2013/11/va-awards-asm-research-health-it-contract-triple-price-competitors-bids/73223/
Radar deal tops DoD’s October contract awards of $17 billion, analysis shows
November 12, 2013 by cs
Raytheon Co., the world’s largest missile maker, won the U.S. Defense Department’s biggest contract last month, a potential $1.6 billion deal to build advanced radar for new naval destroyers.
The Waltham, Mass.-based company received a Navy contract to develop the air and missile defense radar for Arleigh Burke-class destroyers beginning in 2016, according to the Oct. 10 announcement.
Raytheon beat out Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin Corp. and Falls Church, Va.-based Northrop Grumman Corp. for the work, most of which will be performed at the company’s Sudbury, Mass., site.
The award topped a list of more than 180 contracts announced in October, with a combined value of more than $17 billion, according to a Military.com analysis of the Pentagon’s daily contract announcements. That figure doesn’t reflect what is actually spent, or obligated, because many deals are only partially funded at first.
The total is less than a third of the value of agreements announced in September, which is typically the busiest time of year for federal contracting as employees rush to ink deals before the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year. The trend was likely exacerbated this year by the federal government shutdown.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2013/11/05/radar-deal-tops-17-billion-in-october-contracts/
House panel kicks off Pentagon acquisition reform drive
November 7, 2013 by cs
The House Armed Services Committee last week kicked off a fresh drive to fix the way the Pentagon buys weapons and services, vowing to “look past Band-Aid fixes and parochial interests” and implement meaningful reforms.
The committee’s chairman, U.S. Representative Buck McKeon, said some successful efforts were already under way, but the U.S. military acquisition system still faced significant challenges including cost overruns and schedule delays, and those would get worse due to mounting pressure on U.S. budgets.
“The Congress, together with the Department of Defense and industry, must be willing to do the hard work to find root causes, look past Band-Aid fixes and parochial interests, and have the courage to implement meaningful, lasting reform,” McKeon said at the start of a hearing on the issue.
McKeon said he had asked Representative Mac Thornberry, a Texas Republican, to lead the long-term effort, aided by Representative Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the committee.
The latest Government Accountability Office report calculates that the Pentagon is slated to spend $1.5 trillion to acquire 85 separate weapons programs in coming years. Those programs are projected to experience $411 billion in cost growth and average scheduled delays of 27 months, the GAO estimates.
Paul Francis, managing director of acquisition and sourcing management for the GAO, told the committee that previous reform efforts had started to slow cost growth, but 39 percent of the weapons programs on the books in fiscal 2012 had experienced cost growth of 25 percent or more.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/29/us-pentagon-weapons-congress-idUSBRE99S16E20131029
GSA issues recommendation for ‘green’ building certification
November 5, 2013 by cs
U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) has issued a recommendation on the federal government’s use of third-party green building certification systems. GSA is required by law to issue a recommendation to the Department of Energy (DOE) on how the federal government can best use certification systems to measure the design and performance of the federal government’s construction and major renovation projects.
“GSA has opened this review to an extensive public process, and we’ve made this recommendation using input from the public, industry stakeholders, and sustainability experts,” said Kevin Kampschroer, Director of GSA’s Office of Federal High-Performance Green Buildings, on Oct. 25, 2013. “We’ve found two tools that allow us to measure how federal buildings of all kinds can best save energy, improve overall performance, and cut down utility costs.”
In its recommendation to DOE, GSA recommended the Green Building Initiative’s Green Globes 2010 and the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) 2009 as the third-party certification systems that the federal government can use to gauge performance in its construction and renovation projects. Other certification systems were not selected because they did not align with the government’s requirements. Additionally, under today’s recommendation, GSA will conduct more regular reviews in order to keep up with the latest green building tools that the market has to offer.
Third party certification systems like LEED and Green Globes help in measuring reduction targets for water, energy, and greenhouse gas emissions against industry standards. Agencies can use one of the two certification systems that best meet their building portfolios, which range from office buildings, to laboratories, to hospitals, to airplane hangars.
Federal construction and modernization projects must adhere to the government’s own green building requirements by law and executive orders. No one certification system meets all of the federal government’s green building requirements. Green building certification systems are just one tool that GSA uses to cut costs and meet sustainability and economic performance goals.
GSA has worked to make federal buildings more efficient by reducing water and energy use, which saves taxpayer dollars and reduces the impact on the environment. GSA’s efforts to increase sustainability are a central part of its mission to deliver the best value in real estate to the government and the American people.
Contractors say shutdown forced them to reprioritize
November 4, 2013 by cs
As feared, the 16-day government shutdown forced contractors to scramble for cash, revise their schedules, and reconnect with their agency liaisons, according to trade association officials.
“The good news is that most companies are putting folks back to work, which they should have been doing all along had there not been a shutdown,” said Alan Chvotkin, executive vice president and counsel at the Professional Services Council. “Our member survey shows that a large percentage of member companies did receive one or more stop-work orders. And though most, but not all, of those have now been reversed, large numbers of those contracts were unnecessarily and inappropriately stopped.”
Chvotkin said many agencies sent out blanket notices to all their contractors, even though a reading of the law says the notices would not apply to contracts fully funded in fiscal 2013 and contracts that don’t require access to government facilities or significant agency supervision. “So companies are now trying to redo those actions and restart work, which takes significant administrative work and deadlines such as something that was due in 30 days have to be rescheduled.”
Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/management/2013/10/contractors-say-shutdown-forced-them-reprioritize/72587/?oref=govexec_today_nl
Analyst: Pentagon budget could drop to $415 billion
November 1, 2013 by cs
The Pentagon’s baseline budget could dip to $415 billion in coming years, with as little as $62 billion in annual authorized procurement, while the active military force shrinks to about 1 million uniformed personnel, according to analyst Todd Harrison of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA).
Harrison provided Washington reporters an outlook Oct. 24 on the effects of the 2011 Budget Control Act (BCA) and its annual threat of automatic, widespread sequestration cuts in fiscal 2014 and beyond. While he did not necessarily see each of the outcomes as probable, when looking at historical trends and accounting for how the 2011 law is written, Harrison said the nadirs in defense spending and capability were nonetheless plausible.
Indeed, one of the unintended consequences of the law and sequestrations is the turnabout that will occur in the ratio of Defense Department procurement to research, development, testing and evaluation (RDT&E), according to Harrison’s report, “Chaos and Uncertainty: the Fiscal 2014 Defense Budget and Beyond.” Since fiscal 1955 the ratio has averaged 2.1, meaning the Pentagon was spending more than $2 in procurement for every $1 of RDT&E. While the actual figure has vacillated and dropped over the decades, it never got below a fiscal 2006 nadir of 1.1. But under decade-long spending caps mandated by the BCA, that ratio will drop below 1.0.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.aviationweek.com/Article.aspx?id=/article-xml/asd_10_25_2013_p01-02-630363.xml&p=1
Fort Gordon post exchange construction begins next week
October 31, 2013 by cs
The Fort Gordon Post Exchange made possibly its strongest commitment Friday to its slogan, “You save. We give back.”
Using earnings from purchases made by a consumer base that includes 100,000 on- and off-post soldiers and retirees, the shopping complex broke ground on a $21 million project to renovate its nearly 20-year-old facility into a more spacious and modern retail center.
“Today is the realization of a plan that was initiated years ago, and we are finally seeing it come to fruition,” Maj. Gen. LaWarren V. Patterson, Fort Gordon’s commanding officer, said after digging the project’s ceremonial first clump of dirt.
Patterson said the project shows the faith and confidence that both the Department of Defense and the Army and Air Force Exchange Service have in the patronage of Fort Gordon’s Post Exchange.
At a time when U.S. military bases are using early retirement, natural attrition and hiring freezes to battle federal budget cuts and avoid layoffs at its trading posts and strip malls, Fort Gordon has been authorized to nearly double its facility in size from 98,000 to 177,000 square feet.
Keep reading this article at: http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2013-10-25/fort-gordon-post-exchange-construction-begin-next-week?v=1382733456#
Contractor costs in whistle-blower cases no longer reimbursable
October 29, 2013 by cs
Contractors and subcontractors can no longer receive reimbursement from the government for the costs of defending themselves against whistle-blower lawsuits deemed legitimate.
The fiscal 2013 National Defense Authorization Act (P.L.112-239) called for the change. On Oct. 22, the Defense Department, the General Services Administration and NASA published an interim rule, which was effective Sept. 30, to implement the law.
The Federal Acquisition Regulation previously only forbade contractor reimbursement for legal costs incurred in proceedings brought by a government–federal, state, local or foreign. The new rule amends the FAR to include legal costs from proceedings brought by a contractor or subcontractor employee “submitting a whistleblower complaint of reprisal.”
The rule also broadens the scenarios that render the whistle-blower complaint legitimate. Previously, the FAR said the contractor would have to be found liable or fined in a civil proceeding in order to disqualify it from reimbursement. In the case of a criminal proceeding, it would have to be convicted.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.fiercegovernment.com/story/contractor-costs-whistle-blower-cases-no-longer-reimbursable/2013-10-22
The interim rule can be found in the Federal Register at: https://www.federalregister.gov/articles/2013/09/30/2013-23702/federal-acquisition-regulation-allowability-of-legal-costs-for-whistleblower-proceedings. Comments are due by Nov. 29, 2013.