Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center

2020 Robins Air Force Base requirements symposium to be held March 26, 2020

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Please mark your calendar for the 2020 Robins Air Force Base Requirements Symposium scheduled for Thursday, March 26, 2020.  The Robins Chamber of Commerce Aerospace Industry Committee (AIC) and Robins AFB plan to co-host the event.

The beta.sam.gov posting for the event is here.  The event registration page is here.

The Primary Point of Contact for the event is:

LaToya Q. Lanier
latoya.lanier@us.af.mil
Phone Number:  478-926-2226

The Event registration link can be found here:  https://chamber.robinsregion.com/events/details/7-00-am-robins-afb-and-aic-requirements-symposium-7972

Federal contractor guidance on prohibiting LGBT discrimination arrives amid heated Congressional debate

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EO 11246The Labor Department yesterday (June 15, 2016) published detailed guidance to help federal contractors comply with an executive order that prohibits companies from discriminating against LGBT employees.

The final rule updates existing anti-discriminatory guidelines already on the books to include sexual orientation and gender identity and explains contractors’ obligations and potential costs related to implementing the amended Executive Order 11246, which President Obama issued in July 2014. The original E.O., issued by President Lyndon B. Johnson in the 1960s, prohibited federal contractors from discriminating against any employee or applicant for employment because of race, color, religion, sex or national origin. Obama updated it to include the language related to LGBT employees and applicants, and added protections against retaliation for employees who openly discuss or disclose compensation.

The E.O. applies to federal contractors and subcontractors who do more than $10,000 in business with the government in one year.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2016/06/federal-contractor-guidance-prohibiting-lgbt-discrimination-arrives-amid-heated-congressional-debate/129070

Commandant plays hardball with industry on buying gear

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Marine CorpsThe top officer of the Marine Corps has a message to industry: Gear delivered to the Marine Corps must arrive faster, in working order, and with adequate parts.

Speaking at a panel of sea service chiefs Monday morning at the Navy League’s Sea Air Space expo near Washington, D.C., Gen. Robert Neller didn’t mince words, telling a crowd dense with industry leaders that a trend of contract award protests was costing the Corps time it couldn’t afford.

“There is the tension: How do you go faster in this world when you’ve got rules that are designed to allow everybody here to compete, and even if you don’t win the bid, you get to protest,” he said. “OK, I understand that; that’s business, that’s money, that’s what you need to do …  But we’ve got an obligation to men and women in our service to give them new gear as soon as we can.”

Keep reading this article at: http://www.dodbuzz.com/2016/05/16/marine-commandant-plays-hardball-with-industry-on-buying-gear

Public contracting requirements: Not just for ‘traditional’ government contractors

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Laws That Impose Requirements on Public Works ContractsFederal and state laws contain many construction-related requirements that are routine for traditional government contracts and contractors. Not routine, however, are applications of these requirements outside the realm of traditional “public works” projects. Private developers, contractors and quasi-governmental entities often are surprised to learn that these public contracting requirements invade projects not thought to be typical government contract projects.

This happens most often where private development projects contain one or more public incentives. Examples include tax credits, special development districts, tax exemptions, tax abatement, and development bonds. Additionally, governments often condition land use approvals of private development projects on the developer’s agreement to make public improvements (often in the nature of traffic-related improvements such as road widening, turn-lane construction, and signalization). Depending on the structure of the incentive or the improvement, the law may impose one or more of the following requirements.

Keep reading this article at: http://www.mondaq.com/article.asp?articleid=485218

Robins AFB holds annual requirements symposium in Perry on Nov 7-8, 2012

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Warner Robins Air Force Base is holding its 10th annual symposium for contractors and other professionals involved in acquiring products and services to fulfill Air Force needs.

The 10th annual Requirements Symposium will be held November 7 and 8, 2012 at the Georgia National Fairgrounds & Agricenter in Perry, GA.

The Requirements Symposium is a unique 2-day event where senior leaders and managers at Robins Air Force Base share their current and future requirements and organizational vision of the future. This insight into requirements at Robins AFB and the Warner Robins Air Logistics Complex allows aerospace industries and businesses to appropriately plan for capabilities to meet the needs at Robins AFB and the Warfighters they service, today and tomorrow.

Click here to see the preliminary agenda: http://www.wrcoc-aic.org/RS/Agenda.aspx

Click here for registration information: http://www.wrcoc-aic.org/RS/Register.asp

Visit the Requirements Symposium web site for updates: http://www.wrcoc-aic.org/Page8.aspx

 

 

 

 

 

VA pushes relationship repair with industry suppliers

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When Maurice Stewart arrived at the Veterans Affairs Department a few years ago, he joined a procurement office that was in extreme distress.

VA faced the prospect of running 20 percent over its budget for commodities and IT services in fiscal 2010 due to costly redundancies and other chronic dysfunctions.

The odds that procurement officials and industry leaders could join forces to tackle any of the problems seemed slim given the dwindling interaction — and trust — between the two sides.

The department’s contracting officers were notorious for not returning phone calls. Contracts routinely went out the door late. And vendors had no insight into a contract’s requirements until the official request for proposals hit the street, which limited their ability to propose alternative or more creative solutions.

All that chaos had a direct impact on the agency’s mission. “If we can’t put good requirements out on the street, we can’t serve the veteran,” said Stewart, VA’s associate deputy assistant secretary for logistics policy and supply chain management.

VA officials now believe they have begun to put those problems behind them, thanks to a three-year-old initiative that Stewart leads called the Supplier Relationship Transformation (SRT) program. It is based on the premise that, as Stewart said, “improving dialogue is essential to the health of government procurement.”

VA officials began by surveying vendors and holding industry forums around the country last year. Armed with the feedback they received — much of it brutally honest — they are now developing targeted, multipronged plans to address the biggest problems.

VA is hardly alone in this battle. Procurement offices across government struggle with strained relationships and poor communication with suppliers. Government procurement and industry executives say the problem, at least in part, is an unintended consequence of President Barack Obama’s efforts to tighten ethics rules in contracting.

The message that many procurement officials heard was that they could only stay out of trouble by playing it safe, and that meant avoiding contact with vendors unless absolutely necessary.

Now, officials are trying to reverse that trend through efforts such as VA’s SRT program, the General Services Administration’s supplier relationship management initiative and the Office of Federal Procurement Policy’s myth-busters campaign.

Getting feedback from industry and internal agency customers is an important first step. Translating that knowledge into policy and managerial guidance that can change attitudes and behaviors is a bit trickier, but it’s a challenge that officials say they must embrace.

No pain, no gain

VA procurement officials realized that if they wanted to improve, they would need to understand where they were falling short, and that meant listening to some harsh criticism.

SRT is VA’s first enterprisewide effort to gather quantitative data and qualitative insight into what’s wrong with the agency’s acquisition processes. The program includes semi-annual supplier perception surveys, quarterly internal customer perception surveys, annual webinars and supplier outreach forums. This year, officials have already held forums in Denver and Atlanta, with plans to do the same in Boston, Seattle, Chicago and Washington, D.C.

The feedback gathered so far has been frank — often painfully so. “Suppliers gave them an earful,” said Doug Black, a director at the Ambit Group, which has worked with VA on the SRT program since the beginning.

Several key problem areas have been identified, including:

  • Inadequate communications. Transparency in the acquisition process needs to be improved and should include ways for vendors to offer feedback on requirements for specific contracts and the overall process.
  • Poor customer service. Contractors would like to see improvements in the level and quality of acquisition support they receive, such as having phone calls returned and contract modifications addressed in a timely manner.
  • Unclear roles. Companies struggle to understand the differing roles and responsibilities of contracting officers, contracting officer’s representatives and program managers.
  • A closed contracting process. Companies would like to provide input on the contract type and definition of requirements early in the process so they can offer VA the best prices and delivery timelines in their proposals.

In general, company leaders told VA officials they didn’t think the department cared about their profitability or adequately shared the risks that come with contracting. Therefore, contractors had no choice but to reflect that risk in the form of higher prices.

On the road to recovery

The grievances were no surprise to Jaime Gracia, president and CEO of Seville Government Consulting, an acquisition and program management consulting firm. For example, he said that many companies in the service-disabled veteran-owned small-business community, of which his firm is a part, are frustrated with VA’s certification process. VA officials say it should take three months for the agency to certify a company as eligible to compete for special contracts set aside for that community.

“I’ve not met anyone who got through it in three months,” Gracia said. “It may happen, but I’ve never heard of it.”

He said some companies are choosing to avoid that bureaucratic process and are looking elsewhere for business. He sees the SRT program as a positive sign.

“The VA is far from stellar, but they recognize it and are going in the right direction,” he said.

The feedback has been hard for some VA managers to take. “Initially, some folks were reluctant to read what was reported on the surveys,” Stewart said.

But only by identifying and understanding the problems can officials begin to craft plans to solve them. Fortunately, those efforts are already under way.

For example, last year the VA acquisition office formed an industry advisory group of 24 companies of varying sizes. The group meets quarterly to share best practices and provide targeted suggestions to help VA improve relationships with vendors.

VA also established a governance council of acquisition leaders, which is led by the chief acquisition officer and the senior procurement executive and includes policy experts and the small-business procurement director. The council’s purpose is to develop specific action plans for improvement.

That group came up with the idea of having VA’s Technology Acquisition Center conduct advanced planning briefings for industry. Contracting officers and program managers can now bring companies in to talk about upcoming procurements so they have an opportunity to provide feedback and suggestions early in the process.

Such programs are still fairly new, but as more suppliers are getting involved and seeing that VA officials are committed to improvement, negative attitudes are beginning to change, Stewart said.

Based on the responses to the supplier perception surveys, VA is making measurable progress. Vendors are asked to use a five-point scale to rate VA’s performance in specific areas. When the first survey was conducted in October 2010, the agency scored 3.5 or higher in only two areas. In the second and third semi-annual follow-up surveys, companies gave VA a rating of 3.5 or higher in four areas.

In addition, 17 areas received ratings below 3.0 in the first survey. In the second survey, 12 areas scored below 3.0, and VA only had five areas rated below 3.0 in the third survey.

Turning the tide

The need to strengthen relationships with industry is pervasive throughout government. An independent survey of contractors released in February reported a worsening relationship between government contracting officers and industry representatives.

Ten percent of respondents in Grant Thornton’s 17th annual Government Contractor Industry Survey said the relationship with contracting officers was “fair or poor,” double the percentage who gave that rating in the previous year’s survey. Moreover, only 22 percent of the more than 100 companies surveyed said they believe the government resolves contract issues efficiently, a drop from 26 percent in the previous year.

The Obama administration has been trying to improve relationships with industry suppliers. For example, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy released its myth-busters memo in February 2011 to encourage agency officials to increase their communication with industry. The memo emphasized that it is not against the rules to discuss upcoming contracts and procurements before bid proposals are formally solicited. In fact, those discussions are necessary.

“If OFPP had to issue that memo, it indicates there’s a serious problem,” said Robert Burton, former deputy administrator at OFPP and now a partner at Venable law firm.

Only after Burton left government for the private sector did he realize how closed off most of the government acquisition workforce is from industry, he said. Stewart said he had a similar reaction during his time in the private sector.

The General Services Administration, which handles $50 billion in business volume annually, is also working on ways to improve relationships and communication with vendors, said Steve Kempf, commissioner of GSA’s Federal Acquisition Service (FAS).

GSA officials are planning to launch a supplier relationship management initiative, and like their counterparts at VA, they are starting with an assessment of the current state of relationships.

The agency recently surveyed 50,000 contractors to see how they perceived FAS as a business partner. Officials planned to share the results among GSA procurement managers in April. Kemp said the results will contribute to the development of specific action plans.

In addition, GSA has been making an effort to incorporate companies’ input earlier in the contract development process. For example, GSA’s Interact website hosts a community for industry members who are interested in providing input as GSA develops a new professional services contract called One Acquisition Solution for Integrated Services (formerly Integrations).

Keeping the momentum going

The key to all those efforts is follow-through and continuing engagement, Stewart and other executives say.

As part of VA’s SRT program, Stewart hosts an end-of-year webinar for vendors, a sort of State of the Union address for VA’s acquisition community.

At the third such update, held last month, all of VA’s senior acquisition leaders shared the improvements their offices have made in the past year based on vendors’ feedback.

“What we try to do is show them we’ve made changes and show them improvements,” Stewart said. “If you don’t keep them engaged, they’re going to feel, ‘Why should I invest my time and resources?’ Without their investment, you have nothing.”

Tips for better conversations

Agencies can build a more competitive pool of bidders by reaching out to the vendor community early in the procurement process and asking company leaders to share their ideas and expertise. But participants on both sides fear running afoul of acquisition regulations and jeopardizing contracts, which has kept many of them from pursuing greater engagement.

Last year, the Office of Federal Procurement Policy launched a campaign to dispel common misconceptions about such interactions and encourage responsible and constructive exchanges.

Among other guidance, the myth-busters campaign advises government procurement employees to:

  • Communicate with vendors early, frequently and constructively.
  • Talk to various categories of small businesses.
  • Talk to vendors you have not worked with in the past.
  • Protect private information, including vendors’ confidential information and details on the agency’s source-selection process.

[Source: Office of Federal Procurement Policy]

Soliciting honest feedback

Officials might have to suffer some bruising criticism if they want to improve their procurement performance and relationships with industry.

To see what their contractors think of the job they are doing, Veterans Affairs Department officials conduct semi-annual surveys that ask contractors to assess the agency’s performance.

Topics include:

  • The company’s commitment to VA for a long-term business relationship.
  • VA’s effectiveness in sharing risk and reducing the company’s need to build risk into its pricing.
  • The extent to which VA makes it easy for companies to succeed and effectively provide goods and services.
  • The overall quality of the working relationship between VA and the company.

— by Matthew Weigelt – Federal Computer Week – Apr. 16, 2012 at http://fcw.com/articles/2012/04/30/feat-government-industry-relations.aspx.

Inside the critical bid/no bid decision

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Ask business development professionals what’s the key to determining whether or not to bid on a federal contract, and the one word answer you’ll hear most often is “knowledge.”

As Bob Lohfeld, CEO of the Lohfeld Consulting Group and a Washington Technology contributor, puts it, “the best informed win.”

“The single-most important factor in making a bid decision is how well we understand the customer, the customer’s requirements and objectives,” Lohfeld said. “The better we understand the customer, the more likely we are to win.”

Jerry Hogge, senior vice president of business development at QinetiQ North America, said, “To me, the most controlling factor in making business development pursuit decisions is how well we know the customer, how well we understand their requirements, both expressed and intangibles, and what kind of credibility or experience we’ve had with that customer.”

Equally important, you need to know the competition and its capabilities, Lohfeld said.

In other words, “You have to fight in your own weight class,” said Tony Crescenzo, COO at IntelliDyne LLC, a mid-size government consulting company. “Certainly if I get in a fistfight with Northrop Grumman or Lockheed [Martin] or SRA, I’m going to be picking up my teeth with broken fingers.”

“Playing the law of large numbers does not work for small and mid-size companies,” he said. “If you shoot at everything that moves, first of all you’re not going to hit a lot. And second of all, there’ll be a negative perception of you with the contracting shops that clearly you’re not well positioned.”

But small businesses especially might be tempted to use the scattergun approach as a way to join the industry. That was the thinking of Sandra Corbett, CEO of InCadence Strategic Solutions, a government consulting company she founded almost three years ago.

In this tight budget climate, she said new small businesses like hers should invest in a solid infrastructure and bid on as many contracts as they believe they could possibly win.

“The biggest pitfall is to make the mistake of not going after opportunities,” she said. “I feel we can’t afford not to.”

Corbett uses three key indicators in deciding whether to put her company’s time and resources into a bid effort. They all involve knowledge.

“No. 1, do we understand this work?” she said. “Do we have the current talent on staff to understand this technology? No. 2 is do we know this customer? Have we worked with this customer before? Do we understand what their mission is and the direction in which they are going?”

The third crucial determinant is bandwidth. “Is this a small proposal effort that we can accomplish with our internal team? Or is this a massive IDIQ set-aside for small business? If so, do we have the team in place to provide a compliant, compelling proposal?” Corbett said.

“If we don’t have those, it’s a pretty easy decision that we won’t go after it as a prime,” Corbett said, adding that she might however pursue the award as a subcontractor as part of another prime’s team.

“For me, bid decisions are made not as a single decision but as a series of decisions,” Lohfeld said. To help companies make rational decisions, he has created a scorecard, or check list.

“First, the opportunity has to fit our company strategically in the sense that there are certain things that we want to accomplish as a company,” he said. “Indeed, the opportunities that we pursue should be building blocks to help us accomplish our strategic objectives – not procurements that are one-offs and take our company in a different direction.”

Other check-off factors include: Do we understanding the client’s requirements? Can we create the right solution to meet the client’s objectives? Do we have the right teaming partners? Do we have the right management and technical teams in-house to carry out the work? How does the customer feel about us as a bidder? Do we know the competition and can we beat them? Will pursuing this contract help us achieve our financial objectives as a company?

If the bid process moves along successfully, “when the RFP is released it’s really a perfunctory exercise to make the bid decision,” Lohfeld said.

But contractors must be ready to shut down the process if the capture team is not making technical progress toward a viable bid and never take on a project that appears to be risky. The biggest warning sign of trouble is when “you just can’t get inside and understand what this customer wants. You’re unable to get insight,” he said.

So Lohfeld advises contractors to be “risk averse” by being sure you have the right solution and that you’re well acquainted with the client and its needs.

Uncertainties also must be factored in, such as changes in mission or budget or customer leadership, said Dale Luddeke, senior vice president and chief growth officer at systems engineering firm TASC Inc.

“In each instance you should be able to identify how you’re going to answer that uncertainty and mitigate that risk,” Luddeke said. “To the degree that you can answer the uncertainties and mitigate the risks, then you’re at a point where you can say, ‘Okay, this is something worth going after or not.’ ”

Gary Loyd, CEO of Centurion Research Solutions, said his consulting company has created an analytics model based on Davenport and Harris’s 2007 book, Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning, that factors in tight federal budgets and other changes such as lowest price-technically acceptable awards to help make an objective bid-no bid decision early in the procurement process because of the intense competition in the federal market.

Loyd said contractors should be especially careful not to be lured into bidding on the basis of a high dollar value or the opportunity of moving into a new market. “That’s a risky strategy if that’s where you’re putting all your eggs,” he said.

When there are several bid opportunities to consider, Loyd said an objective approach is essential to quickly eliminate the two or three that offer the least chance of winning.

“To make a subjective qualitative decision isn’t going to help move the ball forward in winning more deals,” Loyd said. “To be objective, you have to have relevant business intelligence; you have to have facts and a disciplined approach.”

Speaking of pitfalls, QinetiQ’s Hogge warns not to fall prey to the trap of “incumbentitis,” which can lull incumbent contractors into thinking they have perfect information that also “perfectly informs the capture or pursuit of a new piece of work.”

For new work, Hogge said pitfalls include misjudging the actual requirements of the contract and your strengths and those of the competition.

“Trying to put an objective measure on those things so that you get the proper insight into what is the real probability of success on an opportunity generally are the pitfalls that trip teams up,” he said.

A final bid decision involves the entire QinetiQ senior management team and comes at the intersection of requirements and capabilities, Hogge said.

“At each stopping point along the way, where we make a review, reassess our decisions and decide is this a business decision that is prudent to continue to invest in the opportunity, a pattern of understanding emerges that’s either favorable or unfavorable that ultimately weighs into the judgment call,” he said.

An overall bid strategy facilitates recognizing opportunities and what the company needs to pursue them, Luddeke said. “Do I need to partner with somebody, team with somebody? Maybe there’s a particular individual with a skill set I need in order to qualify myself and make myself viable for this kind of opportunity.”

“You have to be intellectually honest around what are your parameters around the bid process, what are the go-no go guidelines you’re setting and stick to them,” Luddeke said.

If you don’t, you’ve got to change your expectations of the expected outcome, he said. “Every time you change that, you have to reset your client’s expectations,” he said. “I think a lot of times people forget that.”

Luddeke warned that by making changes the client isn’t on board with, “you may be creating for yourself more risk and uncertainty down the road.”

“Do not walk away from risks and uncertainties without first understanding how you’re going to address them,” he said. “The second thing is don’t assume anything. When you assume something, that introduces an unnecessary risk.”

If something unforeseen and critical happens, don’t be afraid to change your bid status, he said. “Don’t be afraid to say, ‘I can’t prime this, I should go sub it. Or, it’s not worth me going after this job because even if I win it, I won’t be able to work it.”

Luddeke adds, “It’s okay to get through a bid cycle and say, ‘You know what? This is just a bridge too far. I can do much better for my client by going after a different opportunity.'”

About the Author: David Hubler is senior editor of Washington Technology.  This article appeared on Apr. 4, 2012 at http://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2012/03/12/business-bid-no-bid-feature.aspx?s=wtdaily_050412.

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