PSC_IDIQ_Preproposal_Call_Transcript.pdf

PSC IDIQ Pre-proposal Conference Transcript June 6, 2014 9am-12pm

[Please note that some answers that were given at the conference were incorrect. These have been corrected and are noted in red below.]

Jennifer Eskandari: Thank you. Good Morning and thank you all for coming out to the PSC IDIQ Pre-proposal Conference. I am going to do some Introductions, then we will go over a history of PSC and background on the IDIQs. Our Small Business Rep will come up and talk. We will go over some areas of possible concerns that have been brought up over the last few months and then we will open the floor up to Q&A. If there is time after the questions, the room will be open for networking until noon when they kick us all out.

I am Jennifer Eskandari, the lead Contract Specialist on this acquisition. I think most of you have been in contact with me one way or another. Kristopher Brady is another Contract Specialist. He will be my back-up when I am out on maternity leave in September. Clint Druk is the Contracting Officer. Patrick Joy is not here. He is the Contracting Officer’s Representative;

the COR. Anthony Josey is our Small Business Specialist from OSDBU and Michellee Edwards and Camille Timmerman are Procurement Analysts are helping with this acquisition.

I am going to turn the floor over to Clint to tell you a little bit about PSC and the IDIQs.

Clint Druk: Good morning everyone and thanks for coming. I think we were a bit overwhelmed by the amount of interest. I think we have something like 200 people on the telephone and the same planning on participating on hand. I also want to thank everybody who took time to give input on the draft solicitation that was issued awhile back. We did spend a lot of time looking over all the comments that were received and we did try to focus our attention heavily on questions, concerns and comments that manifested themselves across the board in greater volume. And the information that is shared here today, of course we will be recording the session and we will try to summarize the material and publicize it on FedBizOps. Hopefully commensurate with the Amendment that will come from answering questions submitted by the offerors on the FedBizOps posting.

I want to talk a little bit about PSC, the organization that we work for, the Program Support Center. PSC is a shared services provider within the Federal Government. We’re not appropriated so we charge our customers a fee to conduct acquisitions on their behalf. There are other lines of business within our organization; things like grants, payments, FOIA requests, and travel services among many others. The vision of the organization is that PSC will be the leader of shared services across the Federal government. And that kind of ties up to why we are doing these contracts. I think these are roughly the third generation of these contracts, there may have been more. The current contract has approximately 56 contractors, historically these have been used primarily by the Office of the National Coordinator, the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation, which provides policy input to the secretary, and a similar organization within the Administration for Children and Families called Office of Planning and Research Evaluation.

By far they have been the heaviest users of the current group of contracts but moving forward we’re hoping to see our customers use these more broadly both in the volume and diversity of customers. Part of setting these up is to use as a marketing tool to attract customers to the Program Support Center. There’s currently a much larger emphasis from the Director of the Program Support Center to increase revenues, increase business to support the model that we have which leads to more business we can bring on so we can allocate costs across a broader group and provide more to customers. So we’re hoping that it will be attractive to a lot of the customers. We’re hoping to do business with who we currently do business with but we also believe that the awardees will provide an opportunity to indirectly bring more people to the Program Support Center for these vehicles by generally letting awardees bring who they worked with throughout the Federal Government. Traditionally the streamlining that the IDIQs allow have been very helpful to us to more effectively meet customer needs. One example would be ARRA tasks. A large number of requirements our customers had were funded with ARRA dollars were processed under the PSC contracts.

I do want to emphasize that the PSC IDIQ contracts are not for IT. We don’t have GWAC authority. There is a provision to provide for limited IT related components in support for larger work statements but the IT has to be sort of an incidental part. More pure IT requirements would be outside the scope of this requirement.

Throughout the process and as a part of the planning we have worked closely with our Office of Small Disadvantaged Business Utilization. We have looked at the amount of small business participation that we’ve seen and we’ve looked amount of awards and the subcontracting under the current contract. We have some challenges given the breadth of these contracts trying to figure out how we can improve small business participation and meet our goals with these vehicles and continue to have a streamlined process and that’s how we came up with, in part, setting the goal for prime awards of 45%.

A couple of people may have noticed that language was removed between the draft solicitation and the solicitation that formally issued on FedBizOps. I apologize for that, that was my decision to remove the language. It wasn’t that we ever had removed that goal, that [45%] has always been the case. I didn’t think that through fully, the concerns that it would raise. So we have amended that to put that back in there so it is clear that we are committed and we need to have small businesses at the prime level to ensure we meet our other goals we have agreed to with the OSDBU office and SBA. These goals are for each year and we have committed a certain percentage of dollars going to small businesses under the IDIQ contract and to the extent that we do a good job with that it impacts how quickly we can process orders against the IDIQ contract in terms of amount of oversight that OSDBU office and SBA will feel they need to provide.

Those goals, so you are aware, will be reevaluated annually but currently the first year is 10%, then it moves up to 13%, 17.5%, 20% and 25% by the fifth year and every year thereafter will be 25%. The first year goal is roughly double what we were doing under the current group of contracts.

I also want to say there has been historically a tremendous amount of subcontracting opportunities with a lot of the awards that have been issued under the task order contracts. It is very common for us to see requests for consent to subcontract under the task orders as well as subcontractors added in addition to the subcontractors that were proposed as part of the initial group under the IDIQ and we expect that to be the case moving forward. So with that I think I’ll turn it over to Anthony our small business specialist to discuss a little bit more about the small business aspects.

Oh, [sees additional slide] this is just shows some of the customers we have done business with at least through the acquisition lines within the Program Support Center. That’s an area they are trying to grow. Within HHS we have what we call mandatory customers. It simply boils down to HHS operating divisions that don’t have their own contracting offices.

Anthony Josey: Good morning. My name is Anthony Josey. I’m the Small Business Specialist assigned to the Program Support Center. I’m excited to be here and am excited that you all are here. Just by a show of hands, how many large businesses do we have here? Great. Small businesses? I’d like for you to give Clint and his staff a round of applause because I can’t begin to tell you…we heard you. The good and the bad. And it was reflected in the amount of time that we spent working with them. Not only myself because I took an extended vacation in November but there were two other small business specialists that stepped in and were part of this process. And I came in and we just kind of fixed this thing up and I want to let you know that it was mighty big of Clint to stand up here and just acknowledge that it was just a slight oversight but I believe whole heartedly that there is great intent on inclusiveness for small businesses on this particular contract. The last time that this was competed we looked at the numbers and, I came from DoD with the Army Corps of Engineers in Charleston with the small business office of South Carolina, and when we looked at how the numbers looked at this last competed cycle I just knew there was an opportunity for it to be better and I just needed the right people around the table for us to share ideas and I think the numbers that Clint just spoke of, I think it reflects that. And I want to thank you because… I pride and applaud myself on having an open air, open door policy and when that change happened boy did my phone ring and not only my phone but our SBA PCR and I want to let you know that it wasn’t nail-biting, it wasn’t pulling teeth. We just sat down and we discussed it and the end result was that action was taken.

I’m thankful for that.

Another thing, they have this room until 12 and I doubt that the process will take that long. It was not my idea, it was their idea. “Why don’t we open the room and allow the large and small businesses to get together and network?” because many of you travelled to be here and many of you don’t have all the pieces together for your team. So we want to give that opportunity to you all just to network just among yourselves and exchange business cards. Get together and see “who’s right for our team” and “who compliments what we’re doing” because as Clint stated, we definitely do need small primes on this vehicle. But that’s not to say that everyone is going to be capable of doing or providing the quality of work we’re looking for. But you all came here looking for an opportunity and we’re standing here saying that we’re here to provide that opportunity. It is incumbent upon you to put your best foot forward.

The FBO interested parties list. That is very important. If you’re not signed up there we want to encourage you to go in and to sign up there because the talking points of today and any information, you noticed we didn’t use a sign-in sheet so that’s how we’re going to disseminate that information so we really need you to make sure that you are registered there and it’s just a good practice anyway from a small business perspective. [Note/Correction: The interested parties list does not connect you to disseminated information. All information is posted in the solicitation portion of the FBO post. Interested parties list is for networking/teaming] You can find, if you didn’t travel here and you are on the phone, now you have a plethora of resources you can tap into. You can do your due diligence and find out who’s working in my NAICS code, who had great past performance, who should I reach out to and just kind of canvas, who would make a good addition to my team for this particular task order.

The other thing, particularly important to me, is subcontracting. Can’t underestimate the value of subcontracts because I’ll be honest with you, 7 out of 10 businesses who sit down across my desk are not ready for a prime contract and a majority of what I do is make referrals to PTAC.

That’s just the reality of what we do. On the other hand, some are just perfect for that subcontracting opportunity so to the primes and to everyone, we want to let you know that HHS has a 33% subcontracting goal for this year. That is very, very important. The one thing I do is review subcontracting plans that are sent to me by the COs and I have not seen the PCR sign off on one subcontracting plan that did not meet the agency’s goals. And we would like to see a clear path on how you plan to get there. It is important to us. We don’t want to underestimate the value of subcontracting especially on a vehicle this large because this particular opportunity here can give birth to other opportunities within HHS. There are some operations that the first thing they’ll say is that you can’t get an award until you can demonstrate some past performance with us and the way to get that is through subcontracting. I know NIH especially with their BPA that’s the particular truth. So again, this has been exciting for me, especially working with Clint and his team and I assure you the spirit of cooperation between my office and Clint’s team, there’s transparency from beginning to end. It isn’t anything that came from negotiations it just came out. I just truly believe in the effort or the residual value this effort will give us going forward and I welcome your questions at the end of this presentation.

Jennifer Eskandari: Ok now we are going to talk about some areas of possible concerns that all of you have brought up over the last few months.

The biggest thing is the pricing scenario. We want to make sure you guys understand that this is important and you itemize and include all applicable indirect rates and costs to these scenarios.

Remember there are two, one for unloaded rates and one for loaded rates. You need to complete both of them. It is very vague because everyone does their accounting differently so we couldn’t make a one size fits all excel spreadsheet that would work. We ask that you put your rates in from Section B and whatever you might add to your labor costs and how you do your accounting.

We included ODCs, Subcontractors, and Travel costs. You need to apply whatever rates, costs, or fees your company typically adds. You should come up with a total cost that is inclusive of all rates, costs, and fees. This is how we plan to evaluate price. So it is important.

Other concerns, “Submitting as a Prime and a team”. A lot of questions about this. It is perfectly fine to submit a proposal as a Prime but also submit a proposal as a subcontractor under another Prime or as part of a team however you want to do it. As long as you don’t stretch yourself too thin, we don’t mind.

“How many IDIQs will be awarded?” Like Clint said, there were 56 awards were awarded the previous time. We currently do not know at this time how many we plan to award. The safest assumption is about the same amount as last time but it could be more or could be less.

Responding to all areas of the scope of work. Yes, we have had lots of questions “do we have to respond to every section or can we just submit a proposal for ‘technical assistance’?” for example. Your proposal needs to cover all aspects of the SOW, whether you can do it all yourself as a company or using team members or subcontractors. All areas need to be addressed.

FAR Clauses. There were some questions about the tables in Section I. We have a big table that has Clauses incorporated by reference and then the table after that for task order clauses. The task order clauses may be used on a task order by task order basis and is not complete. They do not take precedence over the clauses incorporated by reference at the IDIQ level. It is up to the individual CO whether they put it in a task order or not.

“Major” vs. “Significant” Subs. We use both these terms and we’re going to do an amendment to take out “major” so please just use “significant” as the word. For the definition use the Merriam-Webster definition of “Significant” – Large enough to be noticed or have an effect;

very important. How do you determine if your sub is significant? That is up to your own discretion. It will be subjective. If we feel we need more information. We will let you know.

[Correction/Clarification – This language has been removed. See revised solicitation]

Including descriptions of personnel in all six classes or just Class I and II? – In the Management and Staffing Plan it mentions the description of individuals and it is not clear if it is all six classes or just one or two. Please include descriptions of personnel in all six classes.

[Correction/Clarification – This language has been removed. See revised solicitation]

Is “Letter of Intent” same as a “commitment letter”? Again, we used the two terms interchangeably. In the amendment we will get rid of “commitment letter” and just use “letter of intent”. And that should go in the Technical proposal.

[Correction/Clarification – This language has been modified. See revised solicitation]

Past Performance and PPIRS. “How do I know if I’m in PPIRS?” Someone from your organization should have been contacted to let them know there is information is in PPIRS and give you the chance to comment on it. If you cannot track down the person who was contacted you can contact the PPIRS Helpdesk to get you setup with an account and let you see everything that is in there for your company.

Now we are going to move onto Q&A session. We ask if you are in the room here you go to the microphone so people on the phone can hear.

Q&A

1. Question: Have the Socioeconomic goals for small businesses been determined yet?

Answer: There are only for small businesses, they are not broken out into socioeconomic categories.

[Correction/Clarification - Regarding the IDIQ awards, the 45% is for small businesses only, they are not broken out into socioeconomic categories. Regarding the subcontracting goals see L.2 (A)(2)(h).]

2. Question: How are you planning to actually manage small business set-asides within the PSC requirement once the prime contracts have been awarded?

Answer: So after award when it comes to awarding task orders it is of course up to the CO’s discretion to do discretionary set-asides and I mentioned earlier the goals we have for prime awards to small businesses at the task order level and I indicated that to the extent that we do a good job meeting those goals the oversight is softened and what’s really going to happen is we have a 653 form which is the small business review form and the agreement is that we’ll always produce that form so that Anthony and others can monitor how we’re doing with those goals. To the extent that we’re doing a good job with those goals they’re going to defer discretion to the COs as a broad rule and to the extent that we’re doing a poor job with those goals they’re going to go through what I characterize more like the open market process where we might have to do a sort of sources sought announcement within and more market research within the task order awardees or IDIQ awardees to defend if we should or should not set something aside for a particular group. So that was the way we tried to keep the streamlining aspect but also ensuring that it’s not a lot of lip service. That’s my concern with the current contract is that about half of the awardees are small businesses but then you look at the awards and there are not a lot of small business dollars. I think some of that is because of the customers and the type of requirements but I think some of that is also maybe is a chilling effect in terms of competing with large businesses.

[Clarification – Set-asides will be at the discretion of the task order CO. We have an agreement with SBA that includes goals for each year of the contract based on percent of total obligated dollars.]

3. Question: Will we be held as small businesses to 51% once we have won a small business set-aside will we be free to bring in larger contractors to assist in, at a higher percentage?

Answer: If the procurement is set-aside for say small businesses then you would be held to limitation on subcontracting, the 51% but if it is not set-aside then its fair opportunity for everyone then I don’t think that clause is triggered and you would be free to subcontract with whatever proportions you wish to and seems appropriate to be competitive.

Anthony: An also in addition to the 653s, my boss is being copied on that. There is an agreement that quarterly Clint and I get together and we’ll go over and look at what the performance looks like to date and what may or may not be coming down. So again there’s transparency or a level of transparency that’s fluid throughout the process and that’s another one of the things that I’m excited about.

[Confirmed – FAR 52.219-14 would flow down into task orders awarded as total or partial small business set-asides. Please read carefully the text of the clause. If 52.219-14 does not apply then there would be no restriction.]

4. Question: As the 70 page limit is quite long does PSC think it might be valuable to include a sample task order in the solicitation?

Answer: We discussed at great lengths how we wanted to go about doing the evaluation and I think that this is final and we’re not going to go down the sample task order route and we’re going to keep consistent with how we have it I realize it’s fairly long and in some extent that impacts us in the terms of the amount of work we have to evaluate but we might be able to provide a better answer I’m trying to recall the discussions and some of the basis for why we didn’t want to do a sample task order. Part of the concern was the broad scope of the IDIQ contract and having something that would be fully representative and that presented a challenge as well with the pricing scenarios. In creating those we took a large volume of actual task orders and the labor mix and level of effort from those and tried to average those. But I don’t think at this point we will be switching to a sample task order for evaluation purposes.

[Confirmed answer is correct] – We think the evaluation approach as it currently exists in the solicitation is the best approach to take.

5. Question: Just curious, are contractor team agreements being accepted for this proposal?

Answer: That is a GSA term, so no. JV we would accept and traditional prime/sub agreements [Clarification – Yes, we will accept Contractor Team Arrangements consistent with FAR Part 9.6. The offeror has to be very clear on what kind of the arrangement that is being proposed.]

6. Question: You have indicated there’s a 45% goal of awards to small businesses. The question I have is if you are a small business at the time of award, will you continue to be a small business throughout the duration of the contract with PSC. Hopefully one might grow in size and maybe later on you aren’t a small business anymore.

Answer: Yes, you would stay being considered a small business.

Clint: Obviously we will make the decision at the time of award where to draw the line and we’ll discuss it a bit more internally but our initial thoughts were to perhaps after five years require recertification at that point. We’ll post something on FBO once we discuss internally a bit to get a final answer to that.

[Clarification/Correction – Rerepresentation of size status will be done in accordance with 52.219-28. For the IDIQ, a business will retain their size status at the time of award until they are required to re-represent their size status.]

7. Question: We currently have 23 task orders under the current IDIQs. One of the challenges we found is that the scope can change and throughout the period of performance we have to bring additional subs and your limitations for us as a prime to bring additional subs from outside the teaming partners presents a problem for us. Number two is we are one of the top 10 small businesses on CI0SP3 vehicle and what happened is we had 26 teaming partners and after the contract was awarded we received task orders and we sent the task order RFQ to the teaming partners both large and small business teaming partners don’t respond. We have all these opportunities and they don’t respond or express their interest. They don’t respond or if they do they say “oh we can’t do the work”. If that is the case will the government allow us as a Prime to go with other teaming partners

Answer: We don’t see a problem with changing team members. There’s no limit.

Anthony: The socio-economic package has to be coordinated with the contracting office and my office. We would look more to see if you changed it like if what was approved was a small business and you wanted to use a large now. You would definitely need to coordinate with contracting.

Clint: We recognize that these are very broadly scoped and as I mentioned there was a lot of subcontracting under the current contracts and we expect that to be the case moving forward.

There’s nothing that is going to prohibit you from on a particular task order proposing subs you think are necessary for performing that discreet statement of work. The IDIQ contract isn’t going to have a whole list of subs, if we do it might be for consent to contract purposes to say they have already been vetted. Other than that you’re free to propose however you need to subject of course to impacting subcontracting goals. As a matter of contract it isn’t a prohibition.

[Confirmed – On task orders you can propose who you need to when bidding on it. During performance you may need to comply with the Subcontracts Consent Clause 52.244-2 and request consent. ]

8. Question: One of things you mentioned, Clint, earlier it sounded like it is a significant objective of the PSC to broaden the of business through these contracts in term of broadening the customer base as well as getting help from the community here to bring more business through the contract.

I was wondering if you have anything to say that could elaborate on that strategy in detail. Are there particular OpDivs you are targeting or a particular way you would like to see the industry here help you with achieving that goal.

Answer: Yeah that is a very good question. I don’t think we’ve thought about anything formal.

We’re undergoing a reorganization come the end of this month and part of that reorganization is building out some, a team to focus more on business development. What I was initially thinking was the natural course of doing business. I know working with the NITAAC office with the CI0SP contracts and other vehicles or having customers contacting us and hey we have this work to be done and we were talking with contractor X and they were mentioning you guys have this set up. We’re interested in doing that what we need to do. Once they’re established and awarded and as our office fills out a more formal business development group we might start to have some conversations on potentially to partner because there are obviously mutual benefits in doing that sort of a thing so I say a lot of that is to be decided and I haven’t thought of anything formal yet at this time.

[Confirmed answer is correct]

9. Question: Is the 45% a goal for prime contracts awards? For IDIQs but not total dollars

Answer: Yes, for IDIQs, correct.

10. Question: As a small non-profit should I assume we are competing against large businesses for this IDIQ

Answer: Yes

11. Question: I had a clarification. On page 105 in the Organization Experience section it says “If the Offeror uses the experience of subcontractors they should have been under a Teaming Agreement/Subcontract Agreement and the work referenced was performed by the subcontractor and/or individuals employed by the subcontractor.” I’m not sure I understand what that means to you because we’re obviously trying to put together a team for this and how do you reference work.

Answer: We want you to have worked with the sub. If you cite experience of a subcontractor we want you to have been working with that subcontractor at that time like have a teaming agreement or somehow have that relationship as opposed to “well Sub A did this work in 2012 but we got a teaming agreement in 2013 but they did that great work back in 2012, we didn’t know them but..

Follow-up: Ok so if they were doing work on another project under a teaming agreement in one area but were doing other work in another area at the same time you could still use that other area of work? Or no?

Answer: Can you say that again?

Follow-up: It’s a little confusing. So say you have been under some sort of agreement with them for the past 5 years for a certain area and they were doing work in another area. Can you use that work they were doing in another area?

Clint: After talking with the procurement analysts that are working on this with us, I think we’re going to defer a response to that. We need to talk a bit more. We have received a lot of questions that are very specific regarding the past performance evaluations and what we will or won’t count or consider to be greater or lesser relevance exedra and I think we need to have a conversation and hopefully we can clarify all that and make it more explicit.

Jennifer: A reminder everything will be put out on FBO with clarifications.

[Clarification- This information goes in the organizational experience of your technical proposal. See new language in Section L.2(B)(2).]

12. Question: Section B, B.2 (1) under the indirect costs can we use our DCAA approved provisional rates in lieu of Negotiated Indirect Rates with HHS?

Answer: Yes

13. Question: Are MOBIS contract will expire prior to the end of the performance period. Can we still bid on this as long as we have filed the paperwork for a GSA MOBIS extension renewal by the time of award or can we win a contract with less than a 5 or 10 year remaining on our MOBIS performance period

Answer: This has nothing to do with MOBIS so you do not need to worry about that expiring. It is separate from that

14. Question: This has to do with business development. Are you permitting any kind of contracting marketing materials to be developed to distribute or outreach materials to be distributed once a firm wins a contract? Highlighting capabilities and try to drum up some business from the OpDIVS

Answer: That’s certainly one of the things that may be a topic of future discussion but at the current time no. We haven’t gotten that far yet.

Clint: And I just wanted to make one correction, the question before that regarding what kind of experience can count given where individuals have worked and how long etc, talking about past performance and it should have noted that it is in respect to the technical proposal. So that’s noted.

15. Question: I’d like some clarification around the salary rate limitation, this is on page 50. I think we’ve had some mixed signals. So is it an hourly rate or is it only applicable if the individual is totally dedicated to the task order and therefore it is annual limitation.

Answer: Annual

[Confirmed answer is correct] –See FAQ #10 http://www.hhs.gov/asfr/ogapa/acquisition/salary-rate-limitation-qa.html

16. Question: You mentioned that the limitation is at the executive level II but in one of our previous contracts it is under executive level I and I’m wondering if there is any clarification on that.

Answer: Level II

17. Question (from Conference): I have a question on the past performance evaluation. We are a small company with substantial experience, however in order to get a very relevant according to page 114, the size scope and complexity of our past performance has to compare with the services. Would this be based on your average task order size or on the total size of this contract because obviously as a small business prime we would be excluded from the standpoint of scope of our past performance? You know as far as total contract value in the past performances so does this mean we really can’t get a very relevant even with excellent past performance ratings because of the scope of our past performances not being in that $20-30 million range?

Answer: The experience doesn’t have to be like you have to have say another $500 million IDIQ contract. The experience can be at the task order level. Does that…?

Follow-up: That’s very encouraging.

Answer: I don’t place a tremendous value on dollar amounts. I think it is a very rough indicator.

I tend to place more emphasis on the substantive nature of the work being performed. I think that is a more meaningful predictor of successful performance in the future than just sheer dollar amounts.

Follow-up: I agree with you completely but the word “size” is what is throwing me from the standpoint of what is written versus what you are saying. And it sounds like your goals for small business primes is admirable and we appreciate that greatly but again that word “size” in there in order to get a very relevant rating. Perhaps if some clarification could be given on that, that would be helpful.

Answer: Ok, we’ll make an effort in the Q&A to elaborate and hopefully better clarify that. And if you find that isn’t sufficient, give us a call and maybe we can discuss offline further and follow-up in an Amendment Follow-up: What you just said is very encouraging and I thank you.

[Action taken/clarification – We have removed “size” and “complexity” in relation to ‘relevancy’ of past performance]

18. Question: My question has to do with cost proposal. With the cost proportion of this, it looks like you are asking for loaded and unloaded ceiling rates per category and I assume therefore would be negotiated downward as relevant for each task order. Are you going to be looking and considering more the loaded rates? Is this really, are these task orders cost-plus, are they firm fixed unit price? What tends to be the, I’m a little confused as to how this actually proceeds from a pricing standpoint on as task order basis once it is awarded.

Answer: One overall comment, some authorities that write a lot about federal acquisitions have opined on the value of evaluating price for IDIQ contracts, especially the way a lot of IDIQ contracts are set up in the government these days and I’ve questioned whether it is of use at the IDIQ level. I’m sympathetic to some of those opinions but the FAR requires us to evaluate price.

The task orders have been for every contract type, CPFF has been heavily utilized by OPRE for http://www.hhs.gov/asfr/ogapa/acquisition/salary-rate-limitation-qa.html example. ASPE has traditionally done the majority of their work on a FFP basis although there has been in increase in CPFF contracting within their organization. I believe the Office of the National Coordinator has done a lot of fixed price as well as some T&M contracts but I don’t know what the future will hold with respect to other organizations using these contracts, other COs using the contract and what kind of determinations they will make. One of my current frustrations with the current group of contracts is that they don’t specify loaded hourly rates so we wanted to have something a bit more cleaner so depending on the contract type the rates would nicely flow down with the ceilings but I anticipate the real price competition and value with respect to evaluation of price in my judgment doesn’t really occur until you are at the task order level.

Follow-up: OK so in current cost submissions and reviews would be done then for those costs contracts, task orders rather on a task order by task order basis.

Answer: Yes, that’s not to say that we will not be evaluating the pricing scenarios, for example, the unloaded rates scenario for the purposes of awarding the IDIQ. But every task order that is issued will be some evaluation of price at the task order level. At least at a minimum to establish fairness and reasonability if not to try to further negotiate prices downward for that discreet statement of work.

[Confirmation – We anticipate that there will be additional pricing competition at the task order level and for the purposes of awarding the IDIQ contracts the total evaluated price will be the sum of both pricing scenarios. The task orders could be any of the contract types. Once awarded pricing and contract type will be negotiated on a task order by task order basis.]

19. Question/Statement: Back to that past performance discussion again. In general and when you are doing proposals the prime owns all the work that was done on the contract whether it was the subcontractor or not. If the subcontractor, this is how we’ve interpreted it, teams with somebody else in that procurement he also owns it. The reason why we team is when we do our gap analysis going through you know, where do we match up, and find a hole. That’s why we go teams so we can bring the services in the team. The definition you gave sorta says don’t bother to go team if you can’t use their past performance. So I ask that you really look at that, as to why we go team.

[Clarification – We believe the question/statement is in regards to organizational experience not past performance. It has been changed.]

20. Question: On the personnel issue; in the draft you had very extensive personnel requirements and in the final RFP you removed the whole personnel section. You refer to key personnel in about five places in there, there’s no requirement for key personnel. There’s an IDIQ point of contact now defined with no requirements just saying “he’s the guy” yet you have a reference at the bottom of the management staffing section that says give me a table with all six classes. It’s really unclear what you’re looking for. Are you looking for a staffing table? Do you want 40 names? Do you just want TBDs? Wish you would clarify what you really mean because all the real specific requirements you pulled out and the whole key personnel thing, what are you looking for? You’re saying I can use key personnel here or I can do that, but you took requirement form out of the RFP.

Answer: We took out the key personnel section because we figured it is an IDIQ and we don’t have definitive work and you don’t know if this person would be great on this. Probably at the task order level but how do you decide it at an IDIQ level.

Clint: We’ll take a look at that before we issue the amendment. As Jen was mentioning, there’s no performance at the IDIQ level so it is awkward to specify someone key on the IDIQ beyond perhaps maybe a program manager or some sort of IDIQ administrator. I normally anticipate key personnel designations would be made at the task order level by the task order contracting officer.

Does that answer the question?

Follow-up: [Speaker not at microphone] Clint: Good point and I know in preparation for this there were a lot of questions regarding resumes, staffing table and as you mentioned what labor categories level. We’ll make that a high priority topic of discussion and hopefully we can do a better job at making that clear or what our expectations are and removing anything that we don’t think we truly need for evaluation purposes.

[Action taken – See revised language]

21. Question: I have a suggestion and I have a question. I just wanted to suggest since PSC is all about expanding their clientele it’s useful when you award the vehicles to give a point of contact at PSC so when other clients of ours ask what vehicles we’re on we have a name to tell them.

Someone who can talk to them directly. My question has to do with the business proposal. It wasn’t clear to us what content the subcontractors need to submit in the business proposal.

Answer: Let me check my notes, I know that question has been submitted….We’ll have to get back to you on that.

[Clarification – Information required by the SDB participation plan.]

22. Question: Question in regards to the past performance. Like many groups here we do both grants and contracts and we have had some grants that would fit very well into the areas you are looking for. So the question is, can we include grants in the past performance or are you specifically only looking for contracts?

Answer: We’ll have to check, to look in the FAR to see what it says. If it just says acquisitions broadly then yes grants could be included but we’ll put that in the document. If we’re permitted to do it, then yes.

[Clarification – No, please include only contracts in the past performance.]

23. Question: How many contract awards are you considering?

Answer: We don’t know at this time. We assume about the same amount as last time but it could be more or less.

Clint: I just wanted to make known some of the factors that are going to be relevant to making the determination, obviously it will be contingent on the quality of the proposals get and how that all shakes out. Whether there might be natural dips if a ranking were to be developed. Generally speaking we want to make sure we have strong small business participation and that we have contractors that provide the breadth of coverage and experience to cover the anticipated needs we’re going to have for the anticipated types of work statements that will come under the purview of the task order contracts and to feel satisfied that the number of awards, types of awards, and experience within, that the entirety of the awards will be attractive to potential customers.

[Confirmed]

24. Question: My second question relates to the pricing it’s more or less a combination of several questions that have already been presented. One thing that I’ve found from a small business prospective is it is very difficult to provide max ceiling rates over a 10 year period and using a GSA schedule model if you will they allow you to go base year, four options. Here we have a five year base and five one year option periods [incorrect – it is one five year option period]. What I’m asking is to have some additional consideration on the max ceiling rates because it is very difficult to project labor costs over the service contract authorization over a ten year period. So I do ask you to consider some flexibility in that regard.

My last point and again it does speak to the subcontracting I did hear very clearly that you are going back to revisit that but it ties into something I believe Anthony said earlier about meeting business colleagues here and establishing partnerships. If we haven’t already worked with them then that negates the purposes of the discussion, the purposes meeting and also from the government evaluation perspective it also limits competition significantly. So again, and I did hear you but I just want to go back to that.

Answer: We’ll revisit that.

[Clarification – Short of limiting the contract to 5 years there is nothing we can do to provide more flexibility in the pricing.]

25. Question: A quick question on the small disadvantaged business participation plan and how that relates to a small business offer given the small size standard for this and our opportunities to have SDBs subcontract to us as a majority of our work has been through other primes is minimal and from the read of the evaluation criteria and given that we would be in the same pool as large businesses. We are concerned that our rating, that the competition for our rating would be at the same level as a Lockheed Martin who has been doing this for a very long time. So just wondering if you thought about how the SDB participation evaluation criteria would be scaled for a small business?

Answer: It does not apply to a small business. We’ll clarify that.

Clint: It wouldn’t be a rated factor for small businesses but I guess I’d liken it to past performance situations where a contractor may not have any past performance. It wouldn’t be something that would adversely impact the small business in the trade-off and award decision Follow-up: Does that mean there’s a complete blank and no points are scored? How does that not impact the overall evaluation then if you’re giving an Outstanding to someone and a pass entirely to another whole section of companies?

Clint: I guess I would characterize it, if I’m looking at two offerors and ones a small business and ones a large business, the fact that the small business doesn’t have…that wouldn’t be relevant in distinguishing who to award to. First of all these aren’t point scored but if they were point scored it’s not like I just look at the total sum of points and say well the large business has 98 and the small has 95 knowing that they have 95 because the large had maybe an additional 5 points available to them. Keep in mind also there’s an evaluation factor that sorta gives a boost to small businesses to help us meet that 45% goal.

Follow-up: If you look to clarify the language, if you look to that in the overall picture, as you said, there is a small business factor but as it’s listed in the basis of award it is a descending level of importance from the SDB participation scoring. So however you’re looking to clarify it would be helpful to help small businesses understand how that will impact their evaluation overall Clint: Yeah we’ll take a look at that and see if we can add some language to help clarify that. I recognize the awkwardness of the situation. The only other comment I would make is ratings are just that, they’re ratings. There are GAO and bid protest decisions recognizing that they’re essentially worthless what really matters is the substance behind the decision, the strengths and weaknesses and the rational for the trade-off which I think to some extent I would hope alleviate some of the concerns. A small business isn’t going to be prejudiced in an award decision simply because they’re not rated on that factor but we’ll see if we can put something in the solicitation to hopefully clarify and maybe better articulate how that will be handled to make it clear that it will not be a prejudicial situation.

[Correction – The original answer was that this does not apply to small businesses which is incorrect. The FAR requirement, and the correct answer, is that this does apply to small businesses. The evaluation criterion will not be scaled for small businesses. Please be reminded there is a small business evaluation factor.]

26. Question: I have a question about Section L.2 (B)(3), it says three performance references any major or significant subcontractors. Does that mean three each? Or three total for all your subs?

If you have four subs you can only give three? Or three for each sub?

Answer: Three for each sub but we are going to discuss the relationships and issue something more clear.

[Action taken/Clarification - We have changed the requirement to a maximum of eight (8) references. These can be 8 Subcontractor references, all eight for the Prime, or a combination. We don’t care as long as there is a maximum of eight references. ]

27. Question: I had a question specifically around other direct costs and how stringent it was and if you can put certain items into those ODCs you bid on task orders, particularly around data collection and work that would require that.

Answer: Are you talking about the pricing scenario?

Follow-up: Yeah, the pricing scenario. Would data collection for example be allowed to be placed in ODCs in some of the task orders?

Answer: At the task order level?

Follow-up: Yeah, like hours that were allotted towards data collection for example. Can it all be bundled into the ODC category?

Answer: So is the question do you have limitations to how many ODCs you can propose?

Follow-up: Yeah, what limitations are there for ODCs and what exactly can go in there? Can labor hours in certain tasks be placed in ODCs particularly around data collection?

Answer: I think we’ll have to get back to you. I don’t think anyone here is absolutely positive.

Can you email me the question?

[Clarification – This does not have to do with the IDIQ proposal. Prime contractor labor (not subcontractor labor) should be proposed as direct labor and capped at the ceiling rates in Section B. ODCs can be proposed at the task order level in accordance with your standard accounting procedures.]

28. Question: I have a question about past performance if we’re not in PPIRS and we are going to be involved in a bid as both the prime and a sub. When the past performance is submitted does that form apply to both bids?

Answer: They would have to be submitted separately.

Follow-up: We would have to have our past performance, the person whose doing would have to have them do two different ones.

Answer: One as you as a sub and one as you as a prime?

Follow-up: Right Answer: Two copies if you are going to the same person for the same contract.

[Action taken/clarification – We have changed the submittal language. Questionnaires need to be submitted with the corresponding proposals, NOT to the contract specialist separately.]

29. Question: Need to know for those of us on the phone if everything is going to be transcribed or are slides that we will be able to receive?

Answer: We’re not exactly going to transcribe but we transcribe the meat of the call and place the document on FBO. The slides are mostly bullet points and not too helpful.

[Clarification – Slides and transcript are posted on FBO]

30. Question: I had a question about getting more insight into what kind of work or areas of work might be on the contract and also I didn’t hear if there was going to be a sample task order issued.

Answer: We’re not going to do a sample task order. It would be too difficult given the breadth of the scope of work.

Clint: The scope of work of the solicitation is very similar to the scope of work of the current group of IDIQs and recognizing how broad it is we efforted in the solicitation to try to provide as much information as possible of what has actually been done under these contracts. We gave a list of titles of some of the task orders that have been issued but it has primarily been, as I mentioned before, ASPE, OPRE, ONC, a lot of health evaluations, studies in the health area, especially with ASPE it is health reforms, questions and stuff that needs to be investigated to inform the secretary for the decision purposes exedra and knowing that has been historically the overwhelming body of work. I anticipate that will remain the same. I will be overseeing procurements for three of those offices and will be very strongly lobbying these organizations to be going to these vehicles. The difficult part is knowing what else might come through these.