OASIS Plus Questions and Answers - Group Four.pdf

OASIS+ MAC

QUESTION AND RESPONSE DOCUMENT #4

Thank you for your interest in OASIS+.

In addressing questions, it is the Government’s opinion that if the solicitation’s position is self-evident, the response to a question may simply be that the solicitation already addresses the matter in the manner the Government intended for the subject of the question to be addressed. While the Government may include one or more specific solicitation passages in a response to a question, interested parties are reminded that section L.3 of the solicitation states, “Offerors are instructed to read the entire solicitation document, including all attachments in Section J, prior to submitting questions and/or preparing an offer. Omission of any information from the proposal submission requirements may result in rejection of the offer.”

Questions were not extensively edited for grammar, punctuation or spelling. Not every question is shown. Due to the significant interest in OASIS+, many duplicate or similar questions were submitted. Only those questions, or portions of questions, that were frequently asked and/or those that were deemed to benefit the procurement process are shown.

Questions and responses are organized into topic areas shown below. Interested parties stand to benefit from reviewing all statements, questions, and responses.

● General

● Qualifying Project Experience

● Past Performance

● Responsibility

● Section J - Provisional Attachments

● Section K - Representations, Certifications, and Other Statements of Offerors

● OASIS+ Submission Portal/Symphony

This is the fourth Question and Response document. It is the responsibility of the Offerors to periodically check the solicitation on SAM.gov for more information.

Q&R

Question Answer

Our concern is such: we are 98% completed with our proposal submission and Amendment 3 SF30 stated that they added this line to the RFP - “When submitting verification documents, the entire document must be submitted.” In previous questions and webinars when asked what was needed for verification the answer was to only provide the sections required to prove your point and that there was no need to include excessive pages making documents very large. That is what we have been doing specifically with award docs, that were a hundred plus pages. This change would require us to go back and redo every document let alone retag everything with the chance of these documents ending up over the allowable file size.

Is it possible for you to retract that statement given that we are close to the submission date?

Yes, the language in Section L.5.1.7 was updated with Amendment 0004 to state: “When submitting verification documents, all pertinent sections of the document necessary to demonstrate and validate the minimum criteria, experience, or qualifications claimed must be submitted."

In Section L.3.2 of the RFP (Mergers, Acquisitions, Novations, and Change-of-Name Agreements, as Applicable) is states: “By the date of offer submission, if a company has acquired part or all of another company, the transferee company (the company acquiring the other company) may claim evaluation credit for Qualifying Projects (QPs) in Section L.5.2, Federal Experience Projects (FEPs) in Section L.5.3, and the past performance of those projects so long as a government-approved novation of a U.S.

Federal contract from one Contractor to another has been made.

Submission of the signed novation agreement must be included in the proposal for verification purposes. The company (transferor) who sold part or all of its company that performed the project may not claim the novated project(s) in an OASIS+ proposal.”

Question: I do not believe it was the government’s intent to restrict the use of acquired company projects like this given the lack of control contractors have over the novation process, which could take months, years, or may not happen at all, depending on the contracting office. Since elsewhere in the proposal, it appears that the government means to allow use of these projects via a meaningful relationship commitment letter, we request the following change to the solicitation language to provide clarity on this topic:

“the transferee company (the company acquiring the other company) may claim evaluation credit for Qualifying Projects (QPs) in Section L.5.2, Federal Experience Projects (FEPs) in Section L.5.3, and the past performance of those projects so long as a government-approved novation of a U.S. Federal contract from one Contractor to another has been made or a Meaningful Relationship Commitment has been proven in accordance with Section L.5.1.4.

At this time, there are no changes to the requirements in Section L.3.2.

MRCLs are for identifying the utilization of specific resources from Parent Company, Affiliate, Division, and/or Subsidiary existing within a corporate structure, by the offeror.

The acquisition and merger process is distinctly different from the MRCL process, but the Government recognizes the overlap identified. It is correct that if a company acquired another, and now the newly purchased company is added to the corporate structure, the acquiring company (transferee) may use the past performance and/or experience of the procured organization provided it is clearly demonstrated through the submitted MRCL as outlined in Section L.5.1.4.

It is also understood that the Government does not always approve novations, or may not approve the novation timely. In order to claim experience of an acquired company, it may be claimed either via a completed government-approved novation (Section L.3.2), or through a MRCL where the offeror will demonstrate that there is agreement for the offeror to utilize the resources of an entity within their shared corporate structure as demonstrated by a completed MRCL (Section L.5.1.4).

The answer to Question 6 on Amendment 0003/Round 3 Q&A still leaves ambiguity around an important point. In the subcontracting plan, does the GSA require one table for each of the base and option years (meaning a total of 17 tables), or one table showing all summarized amounts for the life of the contract (meaning one table)?

The small business subcontracting goals are an aggregate of potential subcontracted dollars for all task order(s) combined that a Contractor plans to receive under OASIS+ for the life of the contract. The table provided that shows all summarized amounts was provided as an example.

Will the Government provide rounding guidance in a case where the calculated annual value is $2.458M? Does this round up to $2.5M?

No, average annual values cannot be rounded up.

I am trying to use a QP that is completed, but has a duration of less than 6 months. However, I am getting a period of performance error message in the OSP. Per L.5.2.1 Qualifying Project Experience #4 from the RFP, a project must “Be ongoing (with at least six months of completed performance from the RFP closing date) or completed within five years from June 15, 2023. There is no minimum period of performance for completed projects.” The system is not allowing me to claim this project as relevant for any of the domains.

The project's period of performance end date must be within five years before June 15, 2023 for it to be deemed complete, and therefore not subject to a minimum duration requirement. Projects with less than six months of completed performance and not completed before June 15, 2023 are not considered relevant QPs.

General

Qualifying Project Experience

Question Answer

It is clear that an offeror can use a single QP in multiple solicitations, e.g.

for T&E WOSB and T&E UNR. It is also clear that the offeror can use a single QP for multiple domains in one solicitation, e.g. T&E and R&D

WOSB.

The confusion relates to how to treat the contract value when using a QP in multiple places

The J.P-3 form requests “Average annual value of relevant work” for each domain. This would seem to imply that a contract with $4M AAV would be allocated some fraction of the AAV for each domain (e.g. $2M for T&E and $2M for R&D) – thus possibly dropping the AAV below the threshold to receive points for scale or even below the minimum AAV threshold to serve as a QP.

Since the J.P-3 form does not apply across solicitations, this would mean that using a QP in multiple domains within one solicitation creates a disadvantage for the offeror, while there is no such disadvantage to using the same QP in multiple solicitations (that sample QP would retain an AAV of $4M for T&E WOSB and T&E UNR).

There is no instruction in the RFP that requires the dollar value to be divided among domains. L.5.2.1 requires the RELEVANT value be provided. In many cases the total value is relevant to each domain, particularly for DOD contracts where work can comprise engineering, research, intelligence and logistics in a single SOW paragraph.

Please confirm that as long as the work is relevant to multiple domains, there is no requirement to artificially divide the contract value / AAV across those domains (e.g. the same contract would retain a $4M AAV for T&E and also a 4M AAV for R&D.

Reference RFP Section L.5.2.3.1.2 Standard Relevance Verification:

"Relevant work does not need to be the primary purpose of the project, but the Offeror must clearly demonstrate (e.g., via a distinct CLIN or section within a PWS) that the relevant portion of the work meets the minimum QP criteria for the proposed Domain (e.g., ≥ $500K average annual value for Technical and Engineering Domain). The average annual value of relevant work is not entered into the OSP, but the offeror shall identify within the submitted documentation that the relevant work meets or exceeds the average annual value for the proposed domain." Based on the specific situation provided, if the value of the relevant work is applicable to the proposed domains, there is not an additional requirement for the offeror to divide the contract value across domains. However, as outlined herein, the offeror must clearly identify the relevant portion of the work meets the minimum QP criteria for all of the proposed domains (in your example, both T&E and R&D).

The work performance for this project is divided between the following two CLINs:

CLINS 0001 for $352,586.87 with a POP of 05 Mar 2018 to 04 Mar 2019

CLIN 0002 for $216,109.24 with a POP of 19 Mar 2018 to 18 Mar 2019 Total Contract Value of $568,696.11.

Delivery order POP is 5 Mar 2018 to 18 Mar 2019. The performance is based on each CLIN POP (CLIN 0001 start date and CLIN 0002 end date).

Problem:

There were several modifications to the start and end dates for both CLINs resulting in the revised CLINs POP.

CLIN 0001 POP changed to 5 Mar 2018 to 19 Apr 2019 CLIN 0002 changed to 14 May 2018 to 13 May 2019 Because of the POP changing in the CLINs the delivery order had to change to 05 Mar 2018 to 13 May 2019. With the increase in POP for the delivery order the Average Annual Value is $479,591.65 which disqualifies the project’s qualification for OASIS+.

However, the POP of each CLIN, the work performance and the contract value required by each CLIN is within the qualification factor for a qualifying project as detailed below:

Actual Average Annual CLIN value after changes:

CLIN 0001

5 Mar 2018 to 19 Apr 2019. Period of performance is 411-days for an average annual value of $313,982.47(($352,586.87/411)x366).

CLIN 0003

14 May 2018 to 13 May 2019. Period of performance less than a year average annual value is $216,109.24.

Actual CLIN POP results in an Average Annual Value of $313,982.47 + $216,109.24. = $530,091.71.

Is there a way to save this project as a qualified project for OASIS+ since the work performance is based on the CLINs, CLIN funded value remained the same, and the POP of the delivery order only changed to cover the POP of the CLINs?

Reference RFP Sections L.5.2.1 "The Average Annual Value for QPs is determined based on the following criteria:" and L.5.3 "Note: FEP value will be determined based on the same criteria as QP value, detailed in Section L.5.2.1." Project values are not determined at the CLIN level. Projects values are determined by the total funded dollars for completed projects and total estimated value for ongoing projects. QPs/FEPs with a period of performance greater than 12 months will be annualized. Average annual value will be calculated by dividing the total project value by the total number of days of period of performance, and multiplying by 366. The POP for the order (per the given information) appears to be: 05 March 2018 to 13 May 2019, which is 434 days. The value appears to be: $568,696. The annualized calculation, based on the given information in the question, is:

($568,696/434)*366=$479,591.56.

Question Answer

We are planning to submit Attachment J.P-6 Past Performance Rating Form to support our work on a design build project, for which the CPARS evaluation is available only for the general contractor. Previously, this Federal agency client has requested to submit any completed performance evaluation forms directly to the government.

Should this customer once again request to submit the completed performance evaluation for this project directly to the government; please confirm that this is acceptable and also that the completed Attachment J.P- 6 may be submitted via OASISplus@gsa.gov.

GSA understands that completed PPQs are typically sent directly to the requesting CO. However, the OASIS+ RFP at Section L.5.6.2 states, "The Offeror must instruct each rater to send a completed form directly back to the Offeror. The Offeror must submit all Past Performance Rating Forms, as applicable, with their proposal submission." We ask that raters complete and return the form back to the contractor who requested it so it can be uploaded into the OASIS+ Submission Portal as part of the Offeror's proposal submission.

If an Offeror is unable to obtain a record of past performance, the Offeror must submit a document stating the inability to obtain a record of past performance along with contact information for the appropriate CO, COR, Corporate Officer/Official or other employee of the customer with cognizance over the submitted project.

What can I submit if I don't have a finalized CPARS or no CPARS in order to claim credit for Small Business Utilization?

Amendment 0004 of all six OASIS+ RFPs revises the term "CPARS" to "past performance assessment" in Section M.6.6 to clarify the Offeror can use CPARS, Attachment J.P-6, or a form in a format of the Offeror's own choosing which addresses all of the evaluation areas outlined in Attachment J.P-6. For Small Business Utilization credit for the UR RFP, the OSP only shows options for CPARS ratings assigned for Small Business Utilization (e.g., “Performed as a OTSB with CPARS SB subcontracting rating of Very Good”). However, Offerors who performed as an OTSB may submit any of the past performance assessment forms in the OSP in accordance with Sections L.5.6.1 and L.5.6.2 to substantiate the claim of Small Business Utilization past performance credit (for federal projects only).

Staff are used to pull down task orders, and Program Manager to post reports, but neither can be permitted to view financial statements. As Open Market Proposal Manager (and VP) after I upload my company's financial statements, will all other users (Staff, Program Manager) be able to view the data either under Company Info or in the submission area? If so, how do I block it? If I cannot block it, will the financial data need to remain on the site until contracts are awarded at which time it could be deleted?

Password-protected financial information is only allowable for Contractor Teaming Arrangements per the RFP. Currently, the OSP does not have a separate role or ability to limit access to certain users. The only difference in roles is that the SAM POC and Proposal Manager are the only users who can submit proposals.

Attachment J.P-3 doesn't have a specific place to input the name of other entities for projects performed by other entities that are claimed by way of an MRCL. How would GSA like the J.P-3 to be completed for these projects?

Attachment J.P-3 Project Verification Form is updated in Amendment 0004.

This form is also editable as needed. For projects claimed by way of a MRCL, Offerors should include the other entity name/UEID that performed the project under the Joint Venture Name and Joint Venture UEID area of Attachment J.P-3, Part I: Offeror Information, which has been updated to show Joint Venture (or MRCL Other Entity) Name/UEID.

With Amendment 003’s revisions to Attachment J.P-3, will the government confirm that Amendment 002’s guidance of previous versions of the form being acceptable still applies for those that were already signed and returned by our customers? Having followed the instructions of the previous form and received signatures, we cannot edit the forms to change “MM/YYYY - Present” in our Total Period of Performance without impacting the signature validity. Please confirm that offerors may show “MM/YYYY - Present” in our period of performance for forms that have already been released to the customer and signed prior to Amendment 003.

Yes, all previous versions of Attachment J.P-3 are acceptable. The full dates are manually entered into the OSP and are used for more accurate calculations.

Our company is submitting information as part of a Joint Venture. As part of that submission, we are to include our indirect data in Attachment J.P-9.

We are concerned that other JV members will have access to our indirect data unless the J.P-9 is sent password protected.

Please confirm that it is permissible to upload a password protected Attachment J.P-9 in Symphony.

Attachment J.P-9, Cost/Price Template shall not be password-protected.

The OSP must be able to scan the data. Password-protected document submissions are limited to offerors consisting of established CTAs for documentation submitted under Section L.5.8.3, Financial Resources, only.

Section J - Provisional Attachments

Past Performance

Responsibility

Question Answer

We have projects included in our proposed submittal (OASIS+ HUBZone) where clients have completed thorough Past Performance Questionnaires (PPQs) which are in a widely approved Gov’t agency format. These completed PPQs contain the same rating system presented in Attachment J.P-6 (Past Performance Rating Form).

Question: Will GSA allow upload of PPQ forms completed by clients in lieu of requesting the clients to complete J.P-6 (which had identical data and rating system)?

When CPARS information does not exist, alternate formats may be accepted as documentation as clarified in Amendment 0003. L.5.6.2 was updated to state that, "If the Government has not finalized (either interim or final) past performance ratings in the CPARS database; or, if the project(s) is non-Federal, the Offeror shall submit a past performance assessment using Attachment J.P-6 Past Performance Rating Form, or address all of the evaluation areas outlined in Attachment J.P-6 in a format of their own choosing. For example, past performance ratings provided to first-tier subcontractors in accordance with 13 § CFR 125.11 are acceptable as they are required to utilize the five-scale ratings system found in FAR 42.1503 and rate on the same evaluation factors found in Attachment J.P-6.

However, please refer to both Sections L.5.6.1 and L.5.6.2 as they apply to your specific situation.

In the Amendment 0003, there is an inconsistency between the OASIS+ labor category title for Maintenance and Repair Workers The J.P-8 which now includes ", General" but the updated J.P-9 omits it (as did prior versions). Will the government release an amended J.P-9 with the corrected labor category title?

The Labor SOC Number appears on both the J.P-8 and J.P-9 for all OASIS+ Labor Categories, which corresponds to the 6-digit Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) code per the BLS SOC system. For the referenced labor category/occupation, the SOC ID is 49-9071, which is for the SOC Detailed Occupation Title "Maintenance and Repair Workers, General" in the BLS SOC system. There is no SOC Detailed Occupation Title with Maintenance and Repair Workers absent the word General.

Does an offeror only need to submit the completed and signed SF33 or both the SF33 and SF30s for Amendments 0001 to 0003?

Only the completed and signed SF-33 is required to be uploaded. The offeror will certify acknowledgement of all amendments in the OSP prior to submission of the proposal.

For my proposal, I would like to submit projects for a Mentor Protégé Joint Venture (MPJV). However, these projects were performed by a previous MPJV. While these MPJVS have different names, UEIs, and CAGEs, they have identical Mentor and Protégé.

It was confirmed that a Joint Venture offeror (e.g., JV2) is allowed to claim credit for projects performed under a different Joint Venture name/UEI (e.g., JV1), since both JV1 and JV2 are composed of the same two members.

How would GSA like these projects uploaded into Symphony? Should we upload these previous Joint Venture projects under the offering Joint Venture’s UEI/NAME/CAGE, as long as we include the previous mentor protégé and JV agreements in that file location?

Yes, this is acceptable as long as we can verify from the JV agreements that the JV members in the official legal offering entity are exactly the same as the JV members that performed the project. This is clarified in Amendment 0004 within the RFP and Attachment J.P-3.

In the RFP – federal experience factors L.5.3.1 and L.5.3.2 are independent. You need not demonstrate work at three or more federal agencies (L.5.3.2) in order to claim competitive credit for up to four awards in MA-IDIQ or similar vehicles (L.5.3.1). This is the case for our offer under SB and WOSB. We have multiple task orders within the past five years, at the appropriate value, with CPARS and the appropriate notation within FPDS to claim this multiple award federal experience credit. However, I can’t get the system to recognize and tally this information.

Below is the information I submitted as a ticket in OASIS + L.5.3.1 of OASIS+ for SB and WOSB submissions allow to claim up to four

(4) points for federal experience gained in a competitive setting (such as a MA-IDIQ etc.). The contract must be within the past 5 years and >$250,000 a year to qualify and the FPDS must show appropriate notation of a competitive TO award. However, I can't get the system to recognize this.

Federal experience (L.5.3.2) and Federal experience competitive (L.5.3.1) are independent factors and yet the system appears to require both in order to gain points. The RFP indicates these are independent factors. Am I missing something - how do I get credit for L.5.3.1 within the OASIS + portal?

Within the OSP, there is a check box to identify a project is a "Federal Experience Project" IAW RFP Section L.5.3, and a separate check box to identify a project was awarded competitively ("Federal Experience Project - Competitive"), IAW RFP Section L.5.3.1. There is no separate check box for the Federal Experience Project - Federal Agencies capability, IAW RFP Section L.5.3.2. Within the OSP, an Offeror selects the Funding Agency ID along with the Agency Name when entering its project information to claim the Federal Agencies capability. Within the OSP, an Offeror must identify the project as either a Qualifying Project or a Federal Experience Project along with Federal Experience Project - Competitive, along with uploading/selecting applicable supporting documentation, in order to receive credit for FEP - Competition in Multiple Award Environments.

Section K - Representations, Certifications, and Other Statements of Offerors

OASIS+ Submission Portal / Symphony

Question Answer

When tagging a field using the highlighting feature, Adobe only allows one comment per highlighted area. So, is it acceptable to highlight the desired area and then enter multiple tags into that one corresponding comment box?

For example, you could highlight the “contract value” area and then enter the following “tags” into the one comment box associated with “contract value”: “QP_TCV, T&E_RELEVANCE, T&E_>$500K, T&E_SCALE, T&E_>$1M, and T&E_>$4M.”

Or are we required to enter only one tag per comment? If so, that would preclude us from using the highlighting feature since it only allows one comment to be associated with the highlighted text. Therefore, we would have to use the “sticky notes” approach. Please clarify.

You are allowed to make numerous tags within your supporting documents.

As you enter your tag within the location field of a performance factor/project asset, evaluators will match the text entered in the location field to your comment ("tag") within your supporting document; thus, evaluators will know where to look in your supporting documents. If there is a text match, they will see the matching tag as soon as they open the corresponding file reference. If there are multiple text tags in ONE comment/tag, the match might fail. You are allowed to use either the highlight feature or sticky note function. This will also help for future tag questions:

https://industrysupport.apexlogic.com/support/solutions/articles/350002255 76-tagging-faq

How do we tag documents that are signed and can't be edited in a PDF?

Do we use the file name to give the tag description somehow?

Use the Post-It Note feature in Symphony to tag files that are signed and cannot be edited. Alternatively, if not protected, the PDF may be "Printed to PDF" which should convert it to an editable version of the document.

If we have a Federal contract and agency/agency code that is not listed in the Symphony drop down, and the program/agency does not do FPDS reports, how do we get it added to Symphony to receive credit? We submitted a Symphony help desk ticket, with tagged award documentation, but they are unable to add our agencies due to there being no FPDS reports.

If an FPDS report is not available, Offerors may reach out to the cognizant Contracting Office to verify the funding agency ID on the contract and submit the email response to the OSP Help Desk. If there is an official contract action report equivalent to an FPDS report, that should be submitted.