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The top 10 government contracting compliance headaches in 2017

April 10, 2017 By Andrew Smith

In the government contracting industry, compliance related issues tend to take place.  With administration and party changes, 2017 promises to offer additional complexities.

Confusion amongst government contracting professionals includes: compliance with the Service Contract Labor Standards, DoD source selection procedures and cybersecurity requirements. In addition to keeping your company in line and compliant with the expanding rights of government contractors, budget uncertainty, provisions of the NDAA and bid protests should also be addressed.  Although more compliance issues may arise, it is essential to give attention to the policies that influence government contracting.

See full article published in Contract Management magazine here: http://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/the-top-10-government-contracting-13317/

Filed Under: Contracting Tips Tagged With: budget, compliance, contract administration, contract management, cybersecurity, NDAA, Service Contract Labor Standards, service contracts, source selection

How to stop making costly IT contract mistakes

August 5, 2016 By Andrew Smith

Poor IT contract management can cost your business time, money and legal fees. Here’s how to minimize risk by focusing on restructuring contract management and training employees around compliance.

Managing IT contracts is sensitive business. Typically, corporate relationships and large sums of money are on the line. One Western Australian public servant recently learned the pitfalls of poor contract management the hard way. The employee overspent $40 million dollars on an IT contract in the healthcare industry. Similarly, Serco, a private security firm, found itself on the receiving end of over $68 million dollars in fines as a result of contract errors. And NHS Partners, a clinical services provider, found themselves out $1.2 billion dollars due to poor contract management.

As those examples reinforce, the effects of mismanaged contracts adds up from legal fees and costing businesses large sums of money that they don’t need to lose.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.cio.com/article/3099169/it-industry/how-to-stop-making-costly-it-contract-mistakes.html

Filed Under: Contracting Tips Tagged With: compliance, contract administration, contract management, IT

Here’s why the management consulting business model is broken

January 13, 2016 By Andrew Smith

Disruption is coming to the world of management consulting. Recently, I documented the many disruptive forces at work on the consulting business model. Cracks in the façade are showing, revealing a business model more fragile than agile.

management consultingMany federal management consulting firms do, if fact, have a track record for responding to change — when things are good. But even with sequestration and budget cuts in recent years, things have still been pretty good. But change is coming.

Our business model is fragile. Two factors contribute to its fragility. First, there is a subtle but important disconnect today between what consultants are selling and what clients are buying. Second, as consultants gain experience, they aspire to spend less time with their federal clients—not more.

Keep reading this article at: http://about.bgov.com/blog/these-two-factors-explain-why-the-management-consulting-business-model-is-broken/

Filed Under: Contracting Tips Tagged With: agile services, contract management, disruption, program management

10 tips for better contracting: Relationship advice for contract managers

July 18, 2011 By ei2admin

It all starts with better communication.

Companies wait in suspense for months to hear who wins a contract that’s vital to their portfolios. They’ve invested a lot of money and time into getting each piece of the bid correct. In the end, for one company, it’s good news. The press releases go out and work gets started.

But the work, in fact, can begin too soon, former program managers and experts say. Any miscommunication between the contractor and the program manager from the start of a contract can cause problems to brew.

The world of procurement hinges on how the two interact. It’s so important because too often, the two sides don’t know what each other wants or expects. They may not even know what success really is, particularly on cutting-edge projects.

“There’s got to be a meeting of the minds,” said Jaime Gracia, president and CEO of Seville Government Consulting, who works frequently with companies in the early stages of contracts.

The contract may have just started, but the manager and the contractor might have already taken different paths to get to the goal. And it’s happening more often.

“I’m seeing an ugly trend,” despite the administration’s efforts to stop it through contract management, Garcia said. Busy managers hand things off to companies to take care of. There are too many contractors and managers who don’t sit down with each other in the beginning.

Starting at the award, the contractor and the program manager have close ties. Audits are soon to follow from the inspector general’s office, and possibly the Government Accountability Office or even congressional staff. Even more, transparency is a factor as more data is going online for the public to see. The contractor and managers need to be on the same page.

“Like it or not, once the contract is awarded, they are partners with industry,” said Elaine Duke, former undersecretary for management at the Homeland Security Department and now president of Elaine Duke and Associates LLC.

Contractors in charge of the program and the government managers need a kick-off meeting, experts said. In that meeting, the future of success is laid out.

“Just because you won the contract you still may not understand the performance goals,” said Fred Schobert, former Networx program manager at the General Services Administration and now owner of Acquisition Advantage LLC.

Employees these days complain of too much work and so little time to work. They don’t have time for another meeting. It’s not an excuse though.

“It’s a valid reason, but sorry, I don’t buy it,” Gracia said. He believes a successful contract is worth more than the time for an extra meeting.

The meetings don’t have to be formal, and they don’t have to be long. It depends on the contract. Oftentimes, a firm-fixed price contract won’t have a long, drawn-out meeting. The project is generally clear. More in-depth discussions are needed for a cost-reimbursement contract, which holds a lot of risk for both sides.

The meeting also allows both sides to talk about and prepare for what’s ahead.

“You’re thinking out all of the many scenarios that may arise during the life of the contract,” said Ray Bjorklund, senior vice president and chief knowledge office at Deltek’s FedSources business unit. He managed several Air Force development and production programs for command, control, and communications systems at the USAF Electronic Systems Center.

These experts had more suggestions for a good running start on a contract and ways to avoid litigation for bad work.

1. Learn about the program manager’s expectations and goals. Contractor and customer need to figure out milestones that point out progress. Schobert said contractors should be thorough and careful in doing so.

“Your clients may not really understand them themselves,” he said.

2. Establish goals for the program that deal with cost, schedule, and performance with top management based on the contract’s requirements.

3. Get agreements in writing to be clear on issues.

4. Build a solid team in order to meet all parts of a contract. Schobert said look for disciplined coworkers who can deliver their tasks on schedule. More specifically, have a strong financial manager and strong contract specialist. He said that’s often overlooked.

5. Arrange a schedule for meeting regularly, whether in person or otherwise, whichever fits the circumstance.

6. Meet the points of contact in the program manager’s office. Contractors need to develop more than arm’s length relationships. It’s also important to know the chain of command in the program office. Duke recommended getting to know the lower-level employees, who often work on day-to-day operations. They may be able to take care of smaller concerns. The boss doesn’t need to bothered.

7. Realize that bad news doesn’t get any better with age, Bjorklund said. Delaying bad news doesn’t help relationships. A program manager—or anyone, for that matter—doesn’t want to be blindsided with problems.

“Small problems, if you wait too long, become big problems,” Duke said.

8. Grow tough skin. Contractors need to learn patience, and when people get upset, they should take the high road, Duke said. In other words, act like an adult in tense situations and don’t retaliate for what is said.

9. Don’t take comments personally.

“Zone out for a few minutes and let them vent,” Duke said. Once they’re done, “then begin to engage to accomplish things.”

10. Finally, learn from the mistake that were made. Deconstruct the steps that led to the collapse in the contract after it’s happened.

“We don’t need a crystal ball,” Gracia said. “We know it’s happened; now we need to know how to fix it.”

— About the Author: Matthew Weigelt is a senior writer at Washington Technology covering acquisition and procurement. Published 7/6/2011 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2011/07/05/procurement-contractor-program-manager-relationships.aspx?s=wtdaily_070711

Filed Under: Contracting Tips Tagged With: communication, contract management, kick-off meeting, marketing

Federal workers overwhelmed by contracts

September 21, 2010 By ei2admin

President Obama proposed a new set of programs and plans to stimulate the economy — but there aren’t enough federal employees to oversee the money and programs from the previous stimulus. American Public Media’s Marketplace reporter John Dimsdale takes a look at the hold up.

TEXT OF STORY

Kai Ryssdal: The White House is studiously not calling its latest economic package a new stimulus plan. Might be just as well: Getting money from earlier federal programs out into the economy has run into a bottleneck. There aren’t enough federal workers to award and manage all those government contracts.

Our Washington bureau chief John Dimsdale reports.


John Dimsdale: The problem, says Allison Stanger, the author of “One Nation Under Contract,” is the number of federal employees today is the same as it was in 1963.

Allison Stanger: Yet the federal budget in real terms in that the same period of time has more than tripled. And that enormous gap is filled by contractors.

The government was short of people to oversee contracts from nuclear waste disposal to the space program, even before the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which rely heavily on contractors. Now, add another $275 billion in stimulus contracts and monitoring all of them for waste and fraud is almost impossible, says Don Kettl, dean of the school of public policy at the University of Maryland.

Don Kettl: We’ve so vastly increased the amount of spending in such a short time, government employees are really struggling to keep up with the oversight burdens that have come along with the recovery program.

In some cases, government agencies have had to contract out oversight of their own contracts.

Richard Skinner: Matter of fact, we’ve experienced that here in DHS.

Richard Skinner, the inspector general at the Department of Homeland Security, says that’s fraught with potential conflicts of interest.

Skinner: These contractors may not have the government’s best interest in play here. I do not believe it’s healthy to have contractors managing other contractors.

Skinner says the government needs more skilled managers. And in fact, President Obama wants to boost the government’s contract work force by 5 percent. Author Alison Stanger has another suggestion.

Stanger: My solution is what I call “radical transparency.”

She means let the public track all governments contracts right on the Internet.

In Washington, I’m John Dimsdale for Marketplace.

— Thursday, September 9, 2010 – American Public Media – http://marketplace.publicradio.org/display/web/2010/09/09/pm-federal-workers-overwhelmed-by-contracts/?refid=0#

Filed Under: Contracting News Tagged With: ARRA, contract management, contractor performance, federal contracting, government contracting, government trends, procurement reform, recovery

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