RFP_Q A.pdf

R1. How will the Price Analysis be conducted? Please explain.

A1. Price analysis is conducted by comparing the offerors TEP and CLIN prices to other offerors and the IGE.

R2. Will the government please consider conducting Cost Realism on offerors’ prices?

A2. Cost Realism is not allowed on a mostly FFP proposal or LPTA. More consideration cannot be made on technical issues to any offeror on an LPTA source selection.

R3. Will an Independent Government Estimate (IGE) be used during Price Analysis or Cost

Realism?

A3. See answer to question #1

R4. Would the government please release the IGE for this solicitation?

A4. The independent government estimate is for official use only.

R5 What is the IGE amount for this solicitation?

A5. See Answer to question #4.

R6. Will a competitive range, based on offerors’ prices, be established?

A6. A competitive range may be established, depending on the prices and number of offerors.

That is a question that cannot be answered prior to the proposals being received and reviewed.

See section M-1, paragraph 2(b).

R7. Will offerors be eliminated from consideration if they price this contract too low? How will that be determined?

A7. This is also a question that cannot be answered until proposals are reviewed. Normally, if prices appear low, an Evaluation Notice is sent to the offeror for explanation or substantiation.

R8. If an IGE isn’t used, or is out-of-date, or for some other reason is not fully valid, how will offerors prices be determined to be reasonable?

A8. Whether or not the IGE is used, it is anticipated that reasonableness will be based on adequate price competition normally.

R9. If an IGE is not used, how will the Price Analysis be conducted?

A9. See Answer to question #8.

R10. There is a substantial amount of materials, services, vendors and other types of Other

Direct Costs (ODCs) required for this effort. Many of the ODCs are high-cost items, a great amount which were previously reimbursed to the service provider, but are now part of the monthly Firm Fixed Price (FFP). The government has no visibility in the current structure of offerors’ proposal submissions as to what, if any, of these ODCs are included as part of the offer.

This is because there is no requirement to submit this information in either the Technical

Proposal or the Price Proposal. Maybe a list of ODCs for Technical Proposals is a good idea so offerors’ technically acceptability may be determined, in part, on the ODCs. Or maybe offerors’ should submit their cost buildups so the government could see what ODCs are included.

Will the government please consider adding a requirement for offerors to submit a list of

ODCs in their technical proposals? If so, will this list be evaluated and used to determine technical acceptability?

A10. LPTA does not allow for any cost elements to be provided, only a bottom line CLIN price. The Reasonableness and Balance analyses will be enough to guarantee all items are included as per the PWS. If anything is out of the ordinary, questions will be asked by EN.

R11. Will the government please consider adding a requirement for offerors to submit full price disclosure so the evaluators could see if offerors have properly priced this effort, including the many high-priced ODCs?

A11. This is also not allowed in a LPTA source selection.

R12. Would the government consider the following method or information to be a part of the

Price Analysis? In our opinion, this would prevent the government from being overcharged and also prevent the contract from being awarded to a company whose price is so low that performance will be severely affected. We believe a reasonable way to establish an IGE is to take the most recent Wage Adjustment data from the incumbent contract which shows all of the non-management/non-supervisory labor hours and labor classes used and can be utilized to establish a baseline for the staffing. Then add the non-management/non-supervisory positions/hours and maybe add a reasonable variance. After that, add costs for all of the materials and vendors (ODCs), many of which were previously reimbursed by the government (so the government has this data in their possession) but are now part of the monthly FFP. That would hopefully give the government a reasonable and realistic baseline for price analysis.

A12. The LPTA process is being used and as completed, shall alleviate problems mentioned above. It does not serve purpose to have a Government Estimate that is more complex than the required proposal. Without the offerors’ information, a comparison would be meaningless. Also, the new PWSs are not written the same as the existing contracts.

R13. Will the government please provide the historical or forecasted QUANTITIES to be used for the hourly labor classes (SCA, DBA and O&A) in Attachment 12, Pricing Matrix?

Absent this data, the RFP is not being conducted based on the government’s minimum requirements. Neither the Solicitation nor the pricing matrix spreadsheet contain the

“predetermined amount of estimated hours” for any of the job classifications in the pricing matrix. Therefore offerors do not know how many hours for evaluations purposes will be used for any of the labor rates proposed. Because this work has been paid for historically on the same or similar hourly CLINs, the Government actually has in its possession accurate historical data on the number of labor hours expended in each job classification. The

Solicitation, however, contains no historical workload data relevant to this work.

Accordingly, the Government could easily disclose to offerors its historical hours for each category. The rates being proposed are not simply mechanical application of the wages and fringe benefits from the SCA/DBA wage determinations, but also include allocations of both overhead and profit. It is a basic principle of competitive pricing that where the quantity of a particular unit of effort is higher, the offeror can makes its proposal more competitive by lowering the per-unit-allocation of overhead, profit or other price factors. This benefits both buyer and seller as the buyer obtains services for a lower price, and the seller is able to make its price more competitive while still intelligently allocating its cost and profit. Absent this data, offerors have no information whatsoever upon which to intelligently allocate overhead and profit to these labor categories. Offerors must arbitrarily guess and hope that their guesses match in some respect, the estimates already prepared by the Government. Agencies have an obligation to furnish available information that is necessary for offerors to prepare the offers, including their price in an intelligent, non-arbitrary manner. See University

Research Corp., 64 Comp. Gen. 273 (1985), 85-1 CPD P 210. Herman Miller, Inc., B–

407028, Oct. 19, 2012, 2012 CPD ¶296 at 3; Sea–Land Serv., Inc., B–246784.2, Aug. 24, 1992, 92 –2 CPD ¶122 at 10–11 Offerors cannot compete on the same basis if each offeror is has to speculate as to how many hours may actually be ordered of the different types of work.

See Sea-Land, supra. Furthermore, agencies have an obligation to conduct price evaluations in a manner that is non-arbitrary and actually reflects the reasonably expected cost to the

Government. See Bristol–Myers Squibb Co., B–294944.2, Jan. 18, 2005, 2005 CPD ¶16 at 4;

AirTrakTravel et al., B–292101 et al., June 30, 2003, 2003 CPD ¶117 at 22.

A13. Each offeror's rates will be multiplied by the same number of hours included in the source selection plan. Each offeror will be evaluated using the same evaluation method and evaluation criteria; therefore, each offeror will be competing on the same basis. The government expects all rates and CLINs to be fair and reasonably priced to both the contractor and the government.