It is impossible to overstate the role of relationships in GovCon.
They are needed with customers and prospects, primes and subs, OEMs to channel, media, internal relationships within your company, and more.
Read Mark Amtower’s Washington Technology column here where he reminds himself that it is relationships that drive the government contracting marketplace: https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2018/12/21/insights-amtower-power-of-r.aspx
In a proposed rule issued last month, the Department of Defense (DoD) seeks to incorporate into the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations Supplement (DFARS) restrictions on the use of the lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) source selection method from the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Years 2017 and 2018. This proposed rule makes clear that these NDAA-imposed restrictions are not going away any time soon, and that DoD contracting officers need to engage in a thorough and reasoned analysis before conducting an LPTA procurement.
Just as its name suggests, the LPTA source selection process prioritizes cost or price over technical capability — the agency will make award to the lowest-priced offeror that presents a technically acceptable proposal. Typically, agencies use the LPTA process to procure straightforward goods and services such as routine maintenance work or office equipment. In recent years, however, contractors have complained that agencies employ LPTA selection processes in inappropriate circumstances where qualitative differences really matter and technical superiority is worth a price premium.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.insidegovernmentcontracts.com/2018/12/lowest-price-technically-acceptable-solicitations-no-longer-acceptable-reviewing-department-defenses-proposed-changes-dfars/
The Department of Defense (DoD) and its component services and agencies are taking several independent steps to assess and enhance their cyber and supply chain security that will directly or indirectly affect DoD contractors and subcontractors.
Other federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Commerce, and General Services Administration (GSA), are also considering or implementing measures to enhance cyber and supply chain security that will directly or indirectly affect government contractors and their supply chains.
These initiatives will intensify scrutiny of government contractors and subcontractors, increase their cyber and supply chain security compliance requirements, and affect their ability to compete for, and win, government contracts. This article summarizes these initiatives and states our view that, despite the proposal and likely adoption of a comprehensive new Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) cybersecurity clause next year, federal government contractors and subcontractors are likely to face multiple, overlapping, and possibly conflicting cybersecurity and supply chain requirements for some time to come.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=767144
See GTPAC’s video, template and other resources designed to help contractors comply with the DoD/NIST cybersecurity rules at: http://gtpac.org/cybersecurity-training-video/
Federal agencies receive funding through a series of appropriations bills. A number of these bills — including those that fund the Department of Defense, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Education — have been approved for the federal fiscal year that began October 1st. As a result, those agencies are not being affected by the partial shutdown of the federal government.
However, appropriations bills that support other agencies — including the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Transportation, the Department of Commerce, the State Department, the Interior Department, the Commerce Department, and the Department of Housing & Urban Development — have expired. These nine departments are directly affected by the shutdown, although some units within these departments remain open because they are funded by money that is not subject to congressional appropriations, or their services are deemed “essential,” or because they can operate with what is known as “carryover funding.”
The shutdown has special implications for federal contractors, including vendors competing for federal contracts. The contracting offices of the agencies affected by the shutdown may be closed. In some cases, these agencies have issued stop-work orders to their contractors. Listed below are details.
“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door” is the old saying, but the federal government seldom beats a path to the door of a contractor. Nevertheless, companies can win contracts by adding value to their proposals with technical discriminators.
Assuming a contractor is responsible, contract awards by federal agencies are generally determined by three sets of factors: price, past performance, and technical approach. Where contracts are awarded based on the government’s assessment of best value, distinctions among technical proposals are critical to determining the contract award. In best value acquisitions, technical discriminators, which serve to differentiate one proposal from another, are often what determine success or failure.
To increase the value of their technical proposals, contractors must make maximum use of technical discriminators. Yet, not all technical discriminators that could lend a competitive advantage to a proposal may be readily apparent. For that reason, it can be useful to look at best value assessments in other procurements. Many such evaluations are reviewed in bid protest decisions. These decisions frequently discuss the technical discriminators that agencies find significant.
Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=760726
The Situation: The Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently held that a bid need not contain all of the information listed in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR clause 52.225-9) to qualify for the “unreasonable cost” exception to the Buy American Act (BAA).
The Result: The decision requires agencies to analyze the contents of a bid, rather than mechanically rejecting it on a technicality.
Looking Ahead: A company can protest a rejected bid so long as the missing information would not allow the bidder to later alter its price or relative standing.
The GAO recently sustained a protest finding that it was unreasonable for the Department of Energy (DOE) to reject a bid simply because it failed to strictly comply with all of the requirements for an exception to the BAA. In Addison Constr. Co., B-416525 (Sept. 4, 2018), Addison Construction Company submitted a bid to construct a capacitor bank for DOE in Arizona. Addison’s bid informed DOE that a portion of the construction materials used would be foreign, not domestic. Addison’s bid requested an exception to the BAA pursuant to FAR clause 52.225-9, available when the cost of domestic construction material is “unreasonable” (i.e., it exceeds the cost of foreign material by more than six percent).
Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=760680
Contractors generally understand that suspension and debarment carry serious consequences, most significantly, the ineligibility to receive federal contracts.
Nevertheless, several misconceptions about suspension and debarment persist in the contractor community.
See the ten most frequently encountered misconceptions, along with insight to help contractors successfully navigate this treacherous landscape here: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=760670
Folks often contact the Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC) to obtain help in formulating a business plan or a financial plan for their business. It’s important to know that GTPAC does not provide counseling on those topics. But help is available elsewhere!
We’ll identify business and financial planning resources in a moment, but first we’d like to explain why we don’t provide assistance in those areas:
So, there are plenty of resources you can tap. There are SBDC offices in 17 cities across the State of Georgia. You can identify the SBDC nearest you here: https://www.georgiasbdc.org/locations/
In addition, the SBDC program’s federal sponsor, the Small Business Administration (SBA), has a free webinar entitled “How to Write a Business Plan.” You can access that webinar here: https://www.sba.gov/course/how-write-business-plan/
In addition, here are several SBA documents that you can download right here:
The U.S. defense industrial supply chain is vast, complex and vulnerable. Organic components, large-scale integrators, myriad commercial service providers, and tens of thousands of private companies sustain the Defense Department. According to the SANS Institute, the percentage of cyber breaches that originate in the supply chain could be as high as 80 percent.
Some progress has undoubtedly been made with regard to securing the supply chain. The Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS) NIST SP 800-171 supply chain program, for instance, introduced 109 stringent requirements for Defense Department suppliers dealing with sensitive government data—53 related to technology and 56 related to security policy.
But while DFARS applies to all contractors and suppliers regardless of size, it has not yet been fully implemented and it is not bulletproof. Still, it is a big step toward securing the supply chain at all levels.
Keep reading this article at: https://www.afcea.org/content/contractors-are-bulls-eye-hackers
See GTPAC’s video, template and other resources designed to help contractors comply with the DoD/NIST cybersecurity rules at: http://gtpac.org/cybersecurity-training-video/
The GAO recently sustained a protest finding that it was unreasonable for the Department of Energy (DOE) to reject a bid simply because it failed to strictly comply with all of the requirements for an exception to the BAA.
In Addison Constr. Co., B-416525, Addison Construction Company submitted a bid to construct a capacitor bank for DOE in Arizona. Addison’s bid informed DOE that a portion of the construction materials used would be foreign, not domestic. Addison’s bid requested an exception to the BAA pursuant to FAR clause 52.225-9, available when the cost of domestic construction material is “unreasonable” (i.e., it exceeds the cost of foreign material by more than six percent).
Under FAR clause 52.225-9, a contractor seeking an exception to the BAA construction materials requirement on the basis of unreasonable cost must include the following with its bid: price, quantity, unit of measure, and a description of the foreign and domestic materials at issue, along with a detailed justification for the use of foreign construction materials, a “reasonable survey of the market,” and a completed price comparison table in the format provided in FAR clause 52.225-9(d). In addition, the clause requires the contractor to provide the time of delivery or availability of the materials, the location of the construction project, specific supplier information (including the name, address, and telephone number for the supplier, and a copy of the supplier’s response or a summary thereof), and “other applicable supporting information.”
Keep reading this article at: https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=5c1472f9-6d91-4b8e-8983-ca1b544bf880
