ATTACHMENT_B_--_QASP.pdf

ATTACHMENT B

U.S. Department of Education Office of Career, Technical, and Adult Education (OCTAE)

Advancing Equity in Career and Technical Education

QUALITY ASSURANCE SURVEILLANCE PLAN

Introduction

This Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP) sets forth procedures and guidelines that the

Department of Education will use to monitor performance of the Contractor under this contract.

A copy of this plan will be furnished to the contractor so that the contractor shall be aware of the methods that the Government will employ in monitoring performance on this project and address any concerns that the contractor may have prior to initiating work.

Purpose of the QASP

The QASP is intended to accomplish the following:

Define the roles and responsibilities of participating Government officials and outside experts; and

Describe the process of quality assurance surveillance.

Each of these purposes is discussed in detail below.

Roles and Responsibilities of Participating Government Officials

The following Government Officials will participate in assessing the quality of the contractor’s performance. Their roles and responsibilities are described as follows:

Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR). The COR will be responsible for monitoring, assessing, recording, and reporting on the technical performance of the contractor on a day-to-day basis. The COR will also be responsible for inspecting all deliverables submitted under this contract and providing a recommendation regarding the acceptability of the deliverable to the

Contracting Officer.

It is essential that the COR establish and maintain a team-oriented line of communication with the Contractor’s Project Director (PD) in order to perform monitoring functions. The COR, CO, and PD must work together as a team to ensure that required work is accomplished in an efficient and proper manner. Meetings should be held on a regular basis in order to resolve serious problems. Less serious problems should be discussed and resolved on an impromptu basis.

The Contracting Officer (CO) will have overall responsibility for overseeing the contractor’s performance. The Contract Specialist will be responsible for the day-to-day monitoring of the contractor’s performance in the areas of compliance, administration, cost control and property control; reviewing the COR’s assessment of the contractor’s performance; and resolving all differences between the COR’s version and the contractor’s version. The CO may call upon the expertise of other Government individuals as required.

ATTACHMENT B

Quality Assurance Surveillance Process

Even though the Government, through the COR, will be monitoring the contractor’s performance on a continuing basis, the volume of tasks performed by the contractor makes technical inspections of every task and step impractical. Accordingly, the Department of Education will use a quality-assurance review process to monitor the contractor’s performance under this contract through the contract deliverables, specifically through a review of the timeliness of submission and the acceptability of the content of each deliverable.

The COR will inspect each deliverable and recommend acceptance of the deliverable to the

Contracting Officer. In the event the COR has a concern regarding the timeliness or quality of the content of a deliverable, the contractor shall be notified as well as the Contracting Officer shall be notified.

The Contractor’s performance shall be documented and measured through the annual past performance evaluation through the Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System

(CPARS). Performance will be evaluated in the areas of:

Quality of Product or Service

Schedule

Cost Control (if applicable)

Business Relations

Management of Key Personnel

Utilization of Small Business

The following rating elements will be used to evaluate each area:

Rating Definition

Exceptional Performance meets all contractual requirements and exceeds many. The contractual performance of the element or sub-element being assessed was accomplished with few minor problems for which corrective actions taken by the Contractor were highly effective.

Very Good

Performance meets contractual requirements and exceeds some. The contractual performance of the element or sub-element being assessed was accomplished with some minor problems for which corrective actions taken by the Contractor were effective.

Satisfactory

Performance meets contractual requirements. The contractual performance of the element or sub-element contains some minor problems for which corrective actions taken by the Contractor appear or were satisfactory.

Marginal

Performance does not meet some contractual requirements. The contractual performance of the element or sub-element being assessed reflects a serious problem for which the Contractor has not yet identified corrective actions or the Contractor’s proposed actions appear only marginally effective or were not fully implemented.

Unsatisfactory

Performance does not meet most contractual requirements and recovery is not likely in a timely manner. The contractual performance of the element or sub-element contains a serious problem(s) for which the Contractor’s corrective actions appear or were ineffective.