07-18-2016_Virtual_Pre-proposal_Conference.pdf

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION

FEDERAL ACQUISITION SERVICE

ALLIANT 2 SMALL BUSINESS PRE-PROPOSAL CONFERENCE

Washington, D.C.

Monday, July 18, 2016

1 PARTICIPANTS:

2 Introduction:

3 DEAN COLE

Business Management Specialist, ITS

GWAC Success and Overview:

MICHAEL McFARLAND

6 Director of Acquisition Operations, ITS

7 GWAC Program:

8 CASEY KELLEY

Acting GWAC Program Director & A2/A2SB Project

9 Manager, ITS

10 GREG BYRD

Alliant 2 Small Business Procuring Contracting

11 Officer

13 * * * * *

1 P R O C E E D I N G S

2 (1:00 p.m.)

3 OPERATOR: Thank you for standing by.

4 All participants will be on listen only for the

5 duration of today's conference. This call is

6 being recorded. If you have any objections, you

7 may disconnect at this time.

8 I would like to now turn the call over

9 to Mr. Dean Cole. Sir, you may begin.

10 MR. COLE: Thanks, Jennifer. Hello, and

11 welcome to the Alliant 2 Small Business GWAC

12 Virtual Pre-proposal Teleconference. I'm Dean

13 Cole, Business Manager and Specialist in the Small

14 Business GWAC Division located in hot and humid

15 Kansas City, Missouri. Joining me just a little

16 bit later on will be the Procuring Contracting

17 Officer for Alliant 2 Small Business, Greg Byrd.

18 But before we begin, I'd like to make a

19 few administrative announcements. I'm sure you

20 were told this, but if you require technical

21 assistance during a call, press Star 0, and the

22 operator will help you out.

1 There will not be a question and answer

2 session during this call. However, please feel

3 free to email your questions to A2SB@gsa.gov.

4 That's A2SB@gsa.gov.

5 Also, please be advised that we have a

6 certified court reporter transcribing today's

7 event, and the transcript will be posted to

8 FedBizOpps in the days following this call.

9 Transcripts from the live sessions that we held

10 last week in D.C. for both A2SB and Alliant 2

11 Unrestricted will also be posted to FedBizOpps at

12 that time.

13 And now without further ado, I'm going

14 to turn you over to Greg Berg, the Procuring

15 Contractor for Alliant 2 Small Business. Thank

16 you.

17 Take it away, Greg.

18 MR. BYRD:: All right, thank you, Dean.

19 As Dean said, I'm Greg Byrd. I'm the Alliant 2

20 Small Business GWAC Procuring Contracting Officer.

21 Today in response to questions, I will be speaking

22 extemporaneously about the A2SB RFP. If there is

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1 a difference between what is said today and the

2 written language of the RFP, the written language

3 of the RFP governs. Only an RFP amendment posted

4 on FedBizopps can change the RFP.

5 I am very pleased to be visiting with

6 you today at this virtual pre-proposal conference.

7 GSA has been successfully and thoughtfully

8 partnering with industry on GWACs, and A2SB is

9 leading the way into the future for federal

10 information technology acquisition.

11 As the procuring contracting officer for

12 A2SB, what I want to accomplish today is to share

13 an overview of the RFP structure to reply to some

14 of the questions asked to date that were sent to

15 A2SB@gsa.gov. Regarding questions and responses, 16 please recall that GSA reserves the right to

17 publicly discuss and publish, or simply consider

18 questions and comments regarding the RFP.

19 That said, in the time available today, 20 it is not possible to address every question that

21 has been received. But I will touch on some that

22 have been asked frequently or stand out.

1 You can expect one or more rounds of

2 questions and responses to be published on FBO, 3 including those that are covered today.

4 As Dean said earlier, a transcript of

5 the two live sessions of the pre-proposal

6 conference conducted last week in Washington, D.C.

7 will be posted on FedBizOpps when they are

8 available.

9 Please remember the A2SB procuring

10 contracting officer is the sole point of contact

11 for this procurement, and can be reached at

12 A2SB@gsa.gov.

13 In today's presentation, I'm going to be

14 focusing primarily in Section L of the

15 solicitation. What I'm going to be doing as I go

16 through it is I'm not going to actually be saying

17 questions and giving then you answers to those

18 questions, but I'm going to be weaving them

19 throughout my presentation and just answer them

20 conversationally as I go through this.

21 First off, the Alliant 2 Small Business

22 GWAC is a multiple award, indefinite delivery, 1 indefinite quantity contract for IT services and

2 IT services-based solutions. It is a total small

3 business set aside. The NAICS Code is 541512, and

4 the associated small business size standard is

5 27.5 million.

6 The key to this is that, also is that, 7 as we'll get into later in the presentation, if

8 you're a prime with a team of subcontractors and

9 joint venturers, each one of the members, whether

10 it be a subcontractor or a member to a joint

11 venture, all have to meet this size threshold, and

12 it has to be the NAICS Code 541512. They can't

13 use another NAICS Code that uses, for instance, a

14 employee, number of employees, or such as that.

15 It has to be 541512, and the corresponding 27.5

16 million.

17 It is a base period of five years with

18 one five-year option period that may extend the

19 cumulative term of the contract to ten years. It

20 is for worldwide geographic coverage. It allows

21 for fixed price, cost-reimbursement, time and

22 materials, labor hour type task orders and all the

1 incentives that adhere to those.

2 And there will be an option to hold open

3 seasons. And the beauty of the evaluation

4 methodology that we're using is that it makes

5 these open seasons easier and more likely to

6 (inaudible), for instance, at the option period.

7 Now, as I said earlier, I think of most interest

8 to all those that are potential offerors is the

9 proposal format and in Section L. And that's what

10 I'm going to be focusing on today, and it is what

11 I focused on in the live pre-proposal conferences

12 that we held last week.

13 So, for instance, we're going to be

14 going through Volume 1, general, Volume 2, 15 relevant experience, Volume 3, past performance, 16 Volume 4, system certifications and clearances, 17 Volume 5, organizational risk assessment, Volume

18 6, cost price, and Volume 7, responsibility.

19 Before I get started, I would like to

20 note that we have been getting a lot of questions

21 on the A2SB@gsa.gov, and we are well aware of

22 numerous typos or sections of the RFP that are not

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1 cited correctly, and we've already accumulated

2 those in preparing for an amendment that will be

3 coming out soon that will take care of those

4 issues.

5 Okay. Starting with Volume 1, general.

6 As far as the Standard Form 33, you will note, as

7 was told to us through the questions and answers, 8 we did realize that we did had a due date on the

9 SF 33 that was incorrect. There was a corrected

10 Standard Form 33. That was uploaded to

11 FedBizOpps. The due date is August the 29th at

12 4:00 p.m. Central Time.

13 What I'd like to say about, the next

14 thing I'd like to talk about is the document

15 verification and self-scoring worksheet. The one

16 thing I would like to say about that is that in

17 addition to the Excel file that is supposed to be

18 submitted with your proposal, we want one paper

19 copy of your L.P-1. The paper copy is for our

20 efficiencies. As we open up packages, we can

21 start accumulating them and start putting down the

22 points, and start doing that tabulation.

1 So it's very important for you guys that

2 when you do that type of copy of your L.P-1, 3 document verification and self-scoring worksheet

4 that it does jive with the electronic version of

5 it that's in your proposal, the Excel version of

6 it, because you're going to be ranked, initially

7 ranked with that paper copy of that J.P-1.

8 The next topic in the general is the

9 meaningful relationship commitment letters. We've

10 had a number of the questions about this. What I

11 would say about this is that, these are meaningful

12 relationships when companies are sharing resources

13 within a corporate structure such as division, 14 subsidiaries, parent companies, and et cetera. So

15 it is, those are when an offeror is using the

16 resources of another entity within that corporate

17 organization, that's when the meaningful

18 relationship commitment letters are applicable.

19 Now, I'm sure you guys saw the major

20 change that happened between the draft RFPs and

21 the final RFP, and that had to do with CTAs or

22 Contractor Teaming Arrangements.

1 We did make some major changes to the

2 solicitations in light of the NBAA 2016 that dealt

3 with small business contractor teaming

4 arrangements. So we are allowing now newly-formed

5 joint ventures, and we're also allowing a prime

6 and a team of subcontractor to propose on the

7 solicitation.

8 As far as the, in Volume 1, general, 9 this is just where you would give us a copy of

10 your joint venture, or where the subcontractor, 11 the subcontractor letters of commitment that are

12 required by the RFP, if it is a prime and

13 subcontractor's CTA.

14 The third one under this topic is the

15 claiming prime contractor relevant experience from

16 an existing or Previous joint venture or a

17 partnership. I'm going to be explaining some

18 prime contracting issues in a little bit later, 19 but this is one of the exceptions where the

20 experience of the offeror does not have to be as a

21 prime contractor.

22 We are allowing a prime contractor to

1 use experience that was performed under a joint

2 venture when they were the only joint venture

3 member that was performing the work and all the

4 verification requirements that go with that that

5 are explained into the RFP. That is what that is.

6 The next thing is just the professional

7 employee compensation plan and the uncompensated

8 overtime policy. Those are what they are.

9 The next topic, the representations and

10 certifications, we need to make sure that we have

11 reps and certs for all members of a joint venture, 12 including the joint venture, and all, the prime

13 contractors and all of the subcontractors if it's

14 a prime contractor/subcontractor team.

15 Going to Volume 2, relevant experience, 16 this is a question that we got because of the

17 statement that we had in the RFP. What we say in

18 the RFP is that all relevant experience must have

19 been preformed as a prime contractor. What we

20 mean by that is that even if it is a joint

21 venture, or a prime and a subcontractor team, that

22 any relevant experience that is cited in your

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1 proposal, if it's a member of your team, for

2 instance, a subcontractor, a prime subcontractor, 3 and they're using that subcontractor's experience

4 to satisfy a relevant experience, that work that

5 that subcontractor had bid had to be done as a

6 prime contractor. It can't be work as a

7 subcontractor.

8 So if you're citing, if you have a JV

9 and one of the members of the JV is using a

10 relevant, one of their relevant experience

11 citation, that member of that JV had to have

12 performed as the prime contractor on that work.

13 As far as PSC Group relevant experience, 14 as stated in the RFP, the value of the project, 15 which is the value as defined in the RFP, has to

16 be $1 million. It can be cited no more than one

17 time in the PSC, and it has to be ongoing or

18 completed within five years with one year of

19 performance.

20 The only exception to the one-year of

21 performance is an interim or final CPARS, PPIRS, a

22 completed award determination, or a period of

1 performance that's less than one year, and

2 completed, and meets all of the other requirements

3 to be used as a PSC Group relevant experience.

4 We ask the offerors to use their

5 reasonable discretion in determining if a PSC is

6 integral to the project. It only has to be

7 integral to the project and not necessarily the

8 primary PSC for we are not asking offerors to try

9 to get contracting, ordering contracting officers, 10 or contracting officers to try to make changes to

11 the FPDS-NG. Changes, we don't want the CO making

12 changes to the FPDS-NG, primarily because the PSC

13 doesn't have to be the primary PSC. It only has

14 to be integral to the work being performed on the

15 project.

16 There are two types of verification of

17 PSC Group relevant experience. The first one is

18 the FPDS-NG available, is complete and accurate.

19 All of the information for the PSC Group relevant

20 experience can be verified on the FPDS-NG report.

21 If it is available, if it is complete, 22 and if it is accurate, all you simply have to send

1 in is the J.P-2, the relevant experience PSC

2 template, the FPDS report, and the statement of

3 work. That's all that's required. And that's it.

4 All of the elements in the PSC Group relevant

5 experience is verified by that FPDS report.

6 If the FPDS-NG report is unavailable, or

7 if it's incomplete or inaccurate, the J.P-2 Form

8 must be signed. The default is the contracting

9 officer. If the contracting officer is not

10 available, we will allow a contracting officer's

11 representative, which includes the contracting

12 officer's technical representative.

13 In that case, the documents that we need

14 is the J.P-2, the template. We need the FPDS

15 report because some of it can verify some of the

16 elements in the PSC Group relevant experience. We

17 need the award form, such as a Standard Form 33, 18 Standard Form 1447, or others that are listed in

19 the RFP. We want a copy of the statement of work

20 which the pertinent sections are highlighted

21 spelling out where that PSC was integral to that

22 project.

1 Now, if it's not federal work, and it's

2 a commercial work, then, of course, there's not

3 gonna be a FPDS-NG report available. The J.P-2

4 template form for the PSC Group relevant

5 experience would apply. Would be filled out the

6 same way, except it would be signed by a corporate

7 officer, or an official of that commercial entity

8 that the experience comes from.

9 Now, there are a number of extra points

10 that can be acquired through the PSC Group

11 relevant experience. The first extra point is the

12 experience project size and complexity. As you

13 saw in the RFP, projects from 2 to 5 million earn

14 points, projects from 5 to 15 million earn even

15 more point, and projects greater than $15 million

16 earn the greatest amount of points. The second

17 one is demonstrating experience with multiple

18 federal government customers. This is another one

19 that you may have noticed as a change from the

20 draft RFP. And the final RFP we changed, instead

21 of having the list that we had in the original, we

22 changed it to simply being the funding agency ID

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1 that you can find on FPDS-NG.

2 The funding agency ID actually open up

3 more opportunities for demonstrating experience

4 with multiple federal government customers because

5 it's much more than the list that they originally

6 had in the draft.

7 Now, this is one of the three. This is

8 number one. The next three, including this one, 9 can only be verified by FPDS. That's if there's

10 no other verification methodology. If it can't be

11 verified by FPDS-NG, you won't get the points for

12 those particular projects.

13 The next one is project with cost

14 reimbursement. That, again, is only verified with

15 FPDS-NG. We are interested in contracts, task

16 orders, what have you, that were primarily cost

17 reimbursement type contracts. If there a cost

18 reimbursement element within another type of

19 contract, for instance, if it's primarily fixed

20 price, that would not get points. FPDS-NG has to

21 show the type of contract, again, a cost

22 reimbursement type contract, in order to gain

1 those additional points.

2 And the third one that is only verified

3 through FPDS-NG is the fair opportunity task order

4 award against multiple award IDIQ contracts.

5 Again, it's FPDS only, and these are

6 task orders awarded against multiple award IDIQ

7 contracts such as, that are explained in FAR Part

8 16.505. They had to have been task orders that

9 were awarded the fair opportunity competition.

10 Federal supply schedules, and FAR Part 8 type task

11 orders do not count.

12 What we are looking for under this is we

13 are looking to give additional points to those

14 companies, those offerors, that have experience in

15 managing the type of contracts that the Alliant

16 Small Business GWAC is. Much, much different than

17 federal supply schedule type contracts.

18 So if it's a fair opportunity task order

19 against a MA IDIQ contract where fair opportunity

20 was provided for in accordance with FAR 16.505, 21 then you will get additional points for those

22 citations.

1 The next PSC relevant experience that

2 you can get from additional points is project in a

3 foreign location. We define foreign location in

4 the RFP as outside the United States, and we

5 define the United States as being the contiguous

6 48 states, Alaska, Hawaii, and the United States

7 possessions and territories and possessions.

8 Everything outside of those is what's

9 called, is what's considered in the RFP as a

10 foreign location. And it has to be, to get the

11 extra points for a project in a foreign location, 12 it has to be people actually working in that

13 foreign location. It can't be temporary travel.

14 It can't be TDY. It can't simply be travel to

15 places outside the U.S. It has to actually be

16 people working on the ground in that foreign

17 location.

18 Now, it does, we understand that, we're

19 not using FPDS-NG necessarily, although it can, 20 necessarily to verify this, because we're just

21 interested in the contractor having experience

22 with its employees in a foreign location.

1 So, for instance, a task order or a

2 contract may be primarily in the United States, 3 but it has a contingent of that contract with

4 workers that are outside the United States, or in

5 a foreign location. And that is okay. And that

6 can be verified through the verification process

7 that was mentioned earlier.

8 The last thing about the PSCs I would

9 like to say is that we had had a lot of questions

10 about additional descriptions, or definitions of

11 PSC Code. We're deferring to the PSC Code Table, 12 Federal Procurement Data System Product and

13 Services Code Manual. The website for that manual

14 is actually in the RFP, and that's all we're going

15 to say. That is the information that we have for

16 the RFP for the PSC Code Table, or for the PSC

17 Code.

18 The next thing I'm going to talk about

19 is the leading edge technology relevant

20 experience. The leading edge, from here on out

21 I'll call it LET, the LET value has to at least be

22 150,000. The one thing that I will say is that

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1 each one of the -- in the PSC projects, there can

2 be up to seven PSC citations. Four in Group 1, two

3 in Group 2, and one in Group 1. So there's a

4 total of seven PSCs that I was talking about

5 earlier. Each one of those PSCs can be used one

6 time in the leading edge technology relevant

7 experience.

8 So you can have up to seven times, seven

9 citations in the leading edge technology relevant

10 experience that was also a PSC relevant

11 experience.

12 As I said earlier, the value of each has

13 to 150,000. It can be cited no more than one

14 time. It has to be ongoing or completed within

15 five years, with one year of performance, and, 16 again, the only exceptions are there is an interim

17 or final CPARS, a completed awards fee, or a

18 period of performance of less than a year, and the

19 project is completed.

20 And just as the PSC, the leading edge

21 technology only has to be integral to the project, 22 and not necessarily the primary purpose. And, 1 again, we would ask that you use your reasonable

2 discretion in determining if a LET is integral to

3 the project. And I will say our evaluators will

4 use our reasonable discretion when determining if

5 that LET is a part of that project.

6 The verification of leading edge

7 technology relevant experience submission is the

8 J.P-3. It is the relevant experience leading edge

9 technology template. The verification for the

10 leading edge technology is going to be much like

11 the PSC if the FPDS does not verify all of the

12 information. Again, it has to be signed. The

13 default is the contracting officer. It has to be

14 signed by the contracting officer, or the

15 contracting officer's representative. And if it's

16 a commercial product, it will be the corporate

17 officer or official of that company.

18 We would want the award form again, 19 which as stated earlier, a thing such as the

20 Standard Form 33, Standard Form 1447, or any other

21 agency award form. And we want you to highlight

22 in the (inaudible) those pertinent areas that show

1 that this LET was an integral part of the project.

2 There's only one area that you can get

3 additional points in the leading edge technology

4 relevant experience, and that is, it is the

5 breadth of leading edge technology relevant

6 experience.

7 Now, that's not the number of LET

8 citations. As you saw in the RFP, each leading

9 edge technology has three instances where you can

10 with points, you get more and more points, the

11 more that you can underneath a single LET up to

12 three times.

13 So when you have ten leading edge

14 technologies in the RFP, if there's -- so that

15 means that you could have a maximum of 30

16 citations under the LET, leading edge relevant

17 experience, three for each leading edge

18 technology.

19 What we mean by breath of leading edge

20 technology relevant experience doesn't mean simply

21 the number of LET citations. But it's the number

22 of LET categories that are hit with experience

1 citations. So you can have one citation in one

2 LET, one citation in another LET, and one citation

3 in another LET, and that would mean that you hit

4 three.

5 The difference, you can get additional

6 points for two to four leading edge technologies

7 hit. You can get more points for five to seven, 8 and you get even more points if you had greater

9 than eight as the number of leading edge

10 technologies relevant experience that you were

11 able to put a citation for leading edge relevant

12 experience.

13 The leading edge technology listing with

14 the descriptions are in Section J.P-4, and that's

15 the leading edge technology description.

16 Moving on to Volume 3, past performance

17 for relevant experience projects. We are asking

18 for a past performance on all PSC projects. So

19 that means that you can have a maximum of seven

20 past performance PPIRS that you would have to

21 submit to us.

22 The one thing that I would like to say

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1 about past performance is that if you go back to

2 the J.P-1, the self- scoring and document

3 verification worksheet, we had a lot of questions

4 about it not adding up when they put in their

5 citations for their past performance. One of the

6 reason that it's not adding up, the form works

7 well, is that there's a place in there where

8 you're supposed to put the number of PSC projects

9 because the points for projects actually change

10 according to the number of PSC projects that you

11 submit for past performance. So there's one space

12 in there that you have to put the number of

13 projects, and once you put that number in, then

14 everything works.

15 Okay. We verify, our primary way of

16 verifying the past performance is through PPIRS.

17 There's two different ways to do this. It's

18 either the past performance PPIRS information

19 exists, and then we're only simply asking for a

20 copy of the most current PPIRS.

21 If the past performance information does

22 not exist, we have provided a template, a J.P-5, 1 past performance rating form. This form is the

2 same format as the PPIRS and uses the same past

3 performance measures.

4 We ask that you, if you don't, if PPIRS

5 is not available, we would ask that you send it to

6 your customer, have them fill out the past

7 performance form, and they should not send it back

8 to us. They have to send it back to you because

9 everything has to be in your package, in your

10 proposal that you send to us. So make sure that

11 your customers, if you have to have the form

12 filled out, make sure that your customers send

13 those forms back to you so that you can include it

14 in your proposal.

15 The other thing about past performance

16 is that we do provide an opportunity for offerors

17 to provide a negative past performance narrative.

18 And this is optional. It is one page. We've been

19 made aware that the table, the format table said

20 double sided in it. That will be fixed in an

21 amendment. It is one page.

22 And moving on to Volume 4, system

1 certifications and clearances. The importance

2 about this section is that everything must be in

3 the name of the offeror, the prime contractor. If

4 it's a CTA being offered as a prime with a team of

5 subcontractors, all of these system certifications

6 and clearances must be in that prime contractor's

7 name.

8 If it's a JV, it can be met one or two

9 ways. Either the JV has the system

10 certifications, and clearance for the additional

11 points, or every member of the JV has the

12 credential. If every member of the JV has the

13 credentials, then those points are available to

14 the offeror.

15 Under Volume 4, the first thing is the

16 cost accounting system and audit information.

17 We've had many questions about this. I would say

18 that the, there's a huge change from the original

19 Alliant Small Business GWAC back when it was

20 awarded a number of years ago. And that RFP, the

21 cost accounting system and audit information, 22 which was pretty much written the same way that it

1 is right now, was a go-no go factor. So if you

2 didn't have that credential, you couldn't even

3 participate in the solicitation. We have, we've

4 eased that requirement. Right now it's just

5 simply another mechanism where you can gain

6 additional points.

7 You can see from this -- I'd like to

8 talk about the cost reimbursement contract for

9 just a second. You can see from this, for

10 instance, this area where you can get additional

11 points, plus earlier in the PSCs, we had another

12 one where you could gain additional points if it's

13 a cost reimbursement type of a contract that is

14 your experience citation.

15 As you can see, cost reimbursement

16 contracting is very important to us, and it's very

17 important to the Alliant 2 Small Business GWAC in

18 the future. And we know this from past history.

19 Cost reimbursement contracting was a huge success

20 on the Alliant Small Business contract. For a lot

21 of our customers, our agencies, especially DOD, is

22 a primary reason why they used the Alliant Small

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1 Business GWAC. We see this as not changing from

2 the Alliant Small Business GWAC to the Alliant 2

3 Small Business GWAC.

4 So you can see that the cost

5 reimbursement, that it's important to us, and we

6 want contractors to small businesses that win

7 places on the Alliant 2 Small Business GWAC, we

8 want to insure that we have a preponderance of, as

9 many companies that have cost reimbursement type

10 contracting experience among the awardees because

11 we want to be able to offer this to our customers

12 on Day 1 of the contract, because many times many

13 of our customers in DOD actually had that

14 requirement as a past go-no go pass/fail on their

15 task order competition. So we need to make sure

16 on our contract, on the A2SB contract, that we

17 have adequate competition for our customers for

18 cost reimbursement type work.

19 The second one is approved purchasing

20 system. And we understand that we may not have, 21 we may have two, if any, small businesses that

22 have an approved purchasing system. We understand

1 that. We did have one, maybe two contractors that

2 won an Alliant 2, I mean, an original Alliant

3 Small Business contract that bid. We (inaudible)

4 valuation factor and Alliance Small Business, the

5 original one. It still is in here, but it is

6 something that most small businesses don't have, 7 but it will be rated in the solicitation.

8 As far as the forward pricing rate

9 agreements, the forward pricing rate

10 recommendations, and/or approved billing rates, 11 those changes -- it's clear the documentation

12 that's required we look, we look to see that you

13 submit the documentation to us that shows that

14 DPAA or DPMA has actually extended that to you, 15 has actually audited that, and has given you the

16 okay for that.

17 We have the earned value management

18 system, the acceptable estimating system. Again, 19 all of the CMMI certifications, ISO 9001

20 certifications, ISO 20,000 certifications, and ISO

21 27,000. Those we see as relatively simple as

22 documenting to us that you hold those

1 certifications. And then, of course, the facility

2 clearance level.

3 With a few questions about the facility

4 clearance level, if there is an interim facility

5 clearance level, facility clearance given to a

6 company whether secret or top secret, we will

7 accept an interim facility clearance because it

8 basically is a facility clearance because they

9 have given you the ability to work on the

10 classified information, so we will accept an

11 interim facility clearance designation. It has to

12 clearly say that your facility has been cleared on

13 an interim basis, and that work has started.

14 Okay. In Volume 5, the organizational

15 risk assessment, this is new from the draft RFP, 16 one of the new items. What I would like to say

17 about this is that a business arrangement for the

18 purposes of this evaluation factor is defined as

19 an individual company, a joint venture, or a prime

20 contractor and its proposed first tier

21 subcontractor team.

22 We've gotten a lot of questions about

1 what previously performed means. There will be an

2 amendment to the solicitation. We knew what it

3 meant, and we just want to submit, we want to

4 issue as part of an amendment to clarify what we

5 meant by that.

6 What we mean by previously performed for

7 the purposes of the evaluation factor, it's

8 defined as performance that took place before the

9 issuance of the A2SB solicitation. And on top of

10 that, performed means that actual performance has

11 taken place.

12 If there's only been a contract signed

13 between two parties, and no work has taken place, 14 and no performance has taken place, then that

15 would not count. So previously performed, it's

16 performance that took place before the issuance of

17 the RFP, and performance means actual work has

18 taken place.

19 A business arrangement is considered to

20 have previously performed if one of the following

21 applicable conditions is met. An individual

22 company that is not proposing as part of a joint

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1 venture or with a team of subcontractors, they get

2 the organizational risk assessment additional

3 points. If you're proposing as an individual

4 company, you get the points.

5 A joint venture has previously performed

6 work on a contract or a order. Prior to the

7 issuance of the A2SB solicitation, if there's a

8 joint venture that has actually performed work, 9 that joint venture can receive the points for the

10 organizational risk assessment.

11 Now, as far as a prime and a team of

12 subcontractors, each proposed subcontractor has

13 previously performed on a contract or a order as a

14 subcontractor to the offering prime contractor.

15 Again, a lot of questions about this.

16 What this means is that they, the CTA did not have

17 to perform work as a team with all of the

18 subcontractors. It simply means that each

19 subcontractor proposed has to have, that prime

20 contractor had to have subcontracted to them in

21 the past.

22 And it can't work the other way around.

1 If the prime subs to the proposed subcontractor, 2 that would not work. The prime contractor and the

3 team has to have been the prime contractor with

4 each one of the subcontractors that they're

5 proposing.

6 Moving on to Volume 6, cost and price.

7 The first thing that we ask for under cost and

8 price is the basis of estimates. How you

9 determine your prices, how you determine your

10 indirect rates, profit, such as that, it's all

11 explained in the RFP.

12 Our direct labor rates that we have --

13 keep in mind that this is direct labor. These are

14 not low -- the ranges that we put into the

15 solicitation, those are not loaded rates. Those

16 are direct labor. That's only the wages to the

17 employees. It does not include fringe benefits.

18 Does not include indirect rates, GNA, or any

19 indirect rates. It's simply the direct labor, the

20 wages to the employees.

21 We got all of our labor categories from

22 the Bureau, all of our labor rates that we use, 1 and, really, our methodology for coming up with

2 the range of direct labor rates, we got that as

3 explained in the RFP from the Bureau of Labor

4 Statistics.

5 As far as the indirect rates and the

6 profits, offeror shall propose indirect rates

7 according to their most current BCAA, BCMA

8 approved billing rates, and our forward pricing

9 rate recommendations and/or agreements, if

10 available.

11 As far as the direct labor rates, the

12 indirect rates, and then we have the profit that

13 we set as a fair and reasonable maximum profit of

14 7.5 percent, we established that knowing that

15 these labor rates that are going to be in the

16 contract are going to only apply to time and

17 material, and labor hour type contracts which is a

18 low risk type of contract for contractors. And we

19 established that profit at 7.5 percent.

20 The one thing that -- and you can see

21 cautions in the RFP. Offerors, and let me make it

22 clear that offerors are free to submit whatever

1 direct labor rates, whatever overhead, and

2 indirect rates, and whatever profit that they see

3 fit. If they do any of those, if they propose, if

4 they propose any rates that are outside the

5 ranges, either high or low, from the ones that we

6 provided, than the range that we provided, if they

7 provide indirect rates that are outside, that are

8 not in line with their most current BCAA, BCMA

9 approved billing rates, et cetera, or if they

10 propose profit that's greater than 7.5 percent, 11 the solicitation requires that, number one, the

12 offeror does that at their own peril. But if they

13 do, if you as an offeror do that, the RFP requires

14 you could send in an explanation as to why you

15 exceeded either the ranges or your own indirect

16 rate, or profit of 7.5 percent. If you do exceed

17 those, then you are required by the RFP to submit

18 a justification for that.

19 Your prices are to be submitted to us on

20 J.P-8. It's the cost price template. We're

21 asking for you to provide only the rates, the

22 ceiling rates for year one of the contract. For

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1 instance, you are going to put in your, when you

2 propose on an individual labor category, you're

3 going to put the direct labor rate for that labor

4 category, you're going to apply your indirect

5 cost, your, any kind of labor burden, any kind of

6 indirect cost such as GNA or overhead, you're

7 going to apply those to the column, and what will

8 happen is it will auto populate the whole

9 spreadsheet for all ten years.

10 The annual escalation for each one of

11 the years is the current Bureau of Labor

12 Statistics ECI. It's a three-year average. Right

13 now it stands at 1.93, and that's what it's being

14 escalated at right now. And don't forget that

15 there is a government cite spreadsheet, and a

16 contractor's cite spreadsheet, and a J.P-8.

17 Another thing that I would like to

18 mention about the spreadsheet itself, if an

19 offeror has a different indirect rate structure

20 than that identified in Columns C through F, if, 21 for instance, if it doesn't fit, you have more, 22 you can adjust, that's one of the areas that you

1 can actually adjust the spreadsheet.

2 Columns D through F can be adjusted to a

3 accommodate that different indirect rates

4 structure, so please be aware of that, that you

5 can do that. And that is mentioned in the RFP.

6 And before I leave the cost price, I

7 just want to remind you that you're free to submit

8 whatever direct labor rates that you see fit, 9 whatever profit that you see fit, whatever

10 overhead that you see fit. But if it goes outside

11 of the lines that we've drawn in the RFP, then you

12 have to provide us justifications for doing that.

13 If not, in all of those cases the offerors pricing

14 may be deemed to be not fair and reasonable.

15 In Volume 7, responsibility, the only

16 submittal and responsibility under Volume 7, it's

17 the GSA Form 527, we submit these. Once we

18 receive these forms, we have a financial analyst

19 that actually looks through the form and do their

20 financial analysis for us. They are very

21 particular about the names of companies.

22 When you fill out the GSA Form 527, make

1 sure you put your legal official name as it is on

2 your, whether it's your state incorporation, or

3 however you obtained the legal name of your

4 company, make sure it is the full legal name. For

5 instances, IBM would be International Business

6 Machines. Just make sure that you have your full

7 legal name on the GSA Form 527 because it helps

8 expedite financial review on our side.

9 For offerors proposing as an unpopulated

10 joint venture, financial responsibility documents

11 required by this Volume 7 must be submitted for

12 each member of the joint venture.

13 For a populated joint venture, financial

14 responsibility documents required by Volume 7 must

15 be submitted for the joint venture itself.

16 We have gotten a lot of questions about

17 the GSA Form 527, but before I get to what I was

18 about to say, the other side of that is for

19 offerors proposing as subcontractors, the GAS Form

20 527 and all attachments must be provided by the

21 offeror and all proposed subcontractors.

22 Determinations of prospective

1 subcontractor responsibility may affect the

2 government's determination of the prospective

3 prime contractor's responsibility. And it's the

4 same way for a joint venture.

5 We understand that the GSA Form 527 can

6 have some very sensitive information for companies

7 that they don't like to share. In the RFP, we've

8 provided an out for that. And the out is, is that

9 a subcontractor, or a member, a subcontractor on a

10 prime subcontractor team, or a member of a joint

11 venture, can submit their GSA Form 527 on a

12 compact disc in a sealed envelope, can submit that

13 to the offerors to commit in the proposal itself

14 to us.

15 It can't be sent directly to GSA. We

16 will not consider any packages, Form GSA Form 527s

17 that are sent directly to GSA from subcontractors

18 or members of joint ventures. It has to be sent

19 to the offeror to submit with their offeror.

20 Everything has to be submitted by the offeror.

21 There's nothing can be submitted outside of that

22 to GSA.

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1 So we do understand the sensitivity, so

2 subcontractors and members of JVs, as I said, can

3 submit a CD with their GSA Form 527 in a sealed

4 envelope to the offeror, and the offeror can

5 provide that as part of their package, and GSA

6 will open that package up.

7 All right. That's actually takes care

8 of all of the volumes for Section L of the

9 solicitation.

10 When you look at Section M, the

11 evaluation practice for award, there's just a

12 couple of things that I'd like to say because it's

13 very straightforward in Section M, just mirroring

14 the requirements in Section L and stating how

15 those would be evaluated.

16 The source selection process on the

17 Alliant 2 Small Business GWAC will neither be

18 based on the lowest price technically acceptable, 19 nor tradeoffs. Within the best value continuum

20 FAR 15.101 define best value as using any one, or

21 a combination of source selection approaches.

22 For the master contract, the highest

1 technically rated offerors with a fair and

2 reasonable price will determine the best value

3 basis for contract awards.

4 The GWAC Program will issue multiple

5 awards to a maximum of 80 contractors. And as

6 stated in the RFP, even if there is single point

7 difference between Offeror 80 and Offeror 81, only

8 the offeror in the 80th position will receive an

9 award.

10 In the event of a tie at the maximum

11 number 80 position, all offerors tied at the 8th

12 position will receive an award. And if there's a

13 tie earlier in the ranking of offerors, if there's

14 a tie, for instance, at number 39, one of the

15 offerors will take the 39th spot, and the other

16 offeror will take the 40th spot. So there will be

17 a maximum number of awards of 80, and it could be

18 more only in the instance that there are ties at

19 the exact 80th position.

20 This concludes this A2SB Virtual

21 Prep-Proposal Conference. Remember that a

22 transcript of the two live sessions of the

1 pre-proposal conference conducted last week in

2 Washington, D.C. will be posted on FedBizOpps

3 shortly.

4 And, again, the transcript of this

5 virtual pre- proposal conference will also be

6 posted on FedBizOpps.

7 And again, you can also expect one or

8 more rounds of questions and responses to be

9 published on Federal Business Opportunity.

10 As stated in the opening statement, if

11 there is a difference between what is said today

12 and the written language of the RFP, the written

13 language of the RFP governs. Only an RFP

14 amendment posted on FedBizOpps can change the RFP.

15 And remember the A2SB procuring contracting

16 officer is the sole point of contact for this

17 procurement, and can be reached at A2SB@gas.gov.

18 OPERATOR: Thank you for your time, and

19 thank you for attending this pre-proposal

20 conference.

21 MR. COLE: All right, Jennifer, that

22 wraps up our end. Thank you very much, and thanks

1 again, everybody.

2 OPERATOR: That does conclude today's

3 conference call. We thank you all for

4 participating. You may now disconnect and have a

5 great rest of your day.

6 (Whereupon, at 2:57 p.m., the

7 PROCEEDINGS were adjourned.)

8 * * * * *

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1 CERTIFICATE OF NOTARY PUBLIC

2 DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA

3 I, Carleton J. Anderson, III, notary

4 public in and for the District of Columbia, do

5 hereby certify that the forgoing PROCEEDING was

6 duly recorded and thereafter reduced to print under

7 my direction; that the witnesses were sworn to tell

8 the truth under penalty of perjury; that I am neither counsel for, 11 related to, nor employed by any of the parties to

12 the action in which this proceeding was called;

13 and, furthermore, that I am not a relative or

14 employee of any attorney or counsel employed by the

15 parties hereto, nor financially or otherwise

16 interested in the outcome of this action.

19 (Signature and Seal on File)

20 -----------------------------------

21 Notary Public, in and for the District of Columbia

22 My Commission Expires: March 31, 2017