Questions and Answers Solicitation 19MJ1924Q0008 - part 2.pdf

SBU - CONTRACTING AND ACQUISITIONS

Questions and Answers

Part 2

Solicitation 19MJ1924Q0008

Lodging and conference services and other related services

1. At the beginning you said that this is a little bit different than the previous RFQ. RFQ's and the text that you sent and that for instance, for one event, you will send this to three agencies. So, this is not going to be a signed contract between American Embassy and one agency but is going to be between American Embassy and other agency and then we will have to and then the best offer will win at the end, right.

With an IDIQ contract, the US Embassy can issue multiple IDIQ contracts to different vendors from the same services. So, if we signed multiple agencies that submit offers that we find valuable, we may issue 1-2 or maybe even three of these IDIQ contracts and then we would rotate the task orders amongst those. Once you have signed an IDIQ, you will not need to submit a proposal as you have been doing now every time. We may contact you and ask you for a proposal. We will already know what your pricing is and I as the contracting officer will simply decide which agency should receive the task order.

It is also possible that we only issue one IDIQ contract if we don't find more than one to have good value for the government. The task order is like a purchase order, and we will issue one task order per event.

2. For the pricing table, we can offer more than one hotel in each city. How do I present it technically? D o I make 3 tables and how do I put the prices for different hotels?

Yes, you should create a table for each hotel, and it should be clearly marked. You could cut and paste the table multiple times and fill it in for each different hotel. The city should be clearly marked.

3. Regard invoicing, as we have an issue here because our invoices need to have VAT. We are not VAT exempted like you and all our invoices needs to be issued with the VAT. We talked to our finance department, and they told us that we could issue invoice without VAT but you would need to provide tax exemption which you receive from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or whichever ministry has the authority to issue it. Is it possible to get that tax exemption from your side?

Yes, if you are issued a contract from the US government, we can provide you a document from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs saying that the embassy is tax exempt.

4. Do you have any ideas in terms of when the first event is scheduled to take place?

We have a frequency currently about once per month, occasionally twice per month. We are trying to finalize the schedule for this period, as we are working a local organization here, the Center for Training in Judiciary and State Prosecution, to try to plan out is as much in advance as possible. We might have some additional activities that currently have not been added to the plan. We would share this information with the vendor as soon as we have it, as soon as possible, at least two weeks prior to event. Our hope with this new type of contract is that once we know who our vendors are and we have a list from INL, to get the information to our vendors sooner than we have been because we know that you're busy and have other clients and hotels get booked especially in the summer. This new type of contract will allow us to plan better.

5. Additional meeting room is required, please tell us which size? For how many people?

Is it for 10 people or more? Would be connected to any overnights?

This meeting room would not be connected to any overnights stays in a hotel. Typically, it would be just for meetings for 10 people.

6. What kind of room is needed?

24 sqm is a minimum required for standard hotel room. We do not book premium rooms.

7. If parking is needed, we could not offer hotel which doesn’t have parking.

You should look for hotels with some parking available, but it doesn’t necessarily have to

be. Please state what kind of parking arrangements are possible.

8. The only available hotel in Kolasin, hotel Bianca is 4-star hotel, but the conference room does not meet the requirement mentioned in the solicitation.

Please submit pricing for that what is available.

9. What kind of moderator you need for your events? Can you suggest budget?

We have looked through all our different scopes of work and found, for example, that for just one or two events we wanted somebody with successive knowledge of the topic who can contribute to the events by providing additional information by steering the discussion.

We are unable to suggest any pricing. If you don't feel it's a service that you can offer, you don't have to provide a price for it.

10. Is it possible the same interpreter to apply with the different agencies at the same time?

There's no exclusivity as long as you're providing a list of interpreters who are certified by the Ministry of Justice and can be the same list as another agency.

11. Are you able to provide a percentage of parking that you would require for a based on the number of rooms that's being booked?

10% of 50 for example. Minimum 5 spots per event.

12. One of the things that the one of the other vendors asked was about the moderator and I wanted to get an idea at, although this is somewhat still being discussed or decided upon, would the moderator need to be someone that's local?

Yes, the moderator would need to have some idea of what's happening in Montenegro, of the government context here and some of the issues that we deal with. This is the rule of law section, so most of their events are with judges, prosecutors, but sometimes police and defense attorneys.

13. Is there any other thing that's outside of scope in terms of sort of the facility management part of just securing the space? So, like the moderators would be a little bit outside of scope for, just like hotel booking and interpreters. Is there any other additional sort of out of scope?

All the requirements are listed in this solicitation document.