Transcript_A2_UNRESTRICTED_PREPROPOSAL_CONFERENCE-07132016.pdf

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

GENERAL SERVICES ADMINISTRATION

FEDERAL ACQUISITION SERVICE

ALLIANT 2 UNRESTRICTED PRE-PROPOSAL CONFERENCE

Washington, D.C.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016

1 PARTICIPANTS:

2 Introduction of Enterprise GWAC Personnel:

3 JOHN CAVADIAS

A2 Unrestricted PCO

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 Creating a Quality Subcontracting Plan:

11 PAUL MARTIN

12 Key Focus Areas of the A2 Procurement Evaluation:

13 JOHN CAVADIAS

A2 Unrestricted PCO

Introduction of Enterprise GWAC Personnel:

JOHN CAVADIAS

16 A2 Unrestricted PCO

17 GWAC Success and Overview:

18 MICHAEL McFARLAND Director of Acquisition Operations, ITS

GWAC Program:

CASEY KELLEY

21 Acting GWAC Program Director & A2/A2SB Project Manager, ITS

1 PARTICIPANTS:

2 Creating a Quality Subcontracting Plan:

3 PAUL MARTIN

4 Key Focus Areas of the A2 Procurement Evaluation:

5 JOHN CAVADIAS

A2 Unrestricted PCO

7 * * * * *

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

2 (8:04 a.m.)

3 MR. CAVADIAS: Good morning ladies and

4 gentlemen, interested parties of Alliant 2

5 procurement, GSA industry partners and GSA guests, 6 thank you so much for attending this event and on

7 behalf of the Alliant 2 acquisition team and the

8 GSA we hope you will benefit from your attendance

9 and participation from this session. My name is

10 John Cavadias and I will serve as your Master of

11 Ceremonies by facilitating this program during our

12 few hours together two, two and a half max, 13 probably won't even reach that. And by the way, 14 I'm also serving as the procuring contracting

15 officer of Alliant 2 Unrestricted GWAC. So at the

16 outset of this preproposal conference we want to

17 say a few things about the information provided

18 today.

19 First, please be advised that we have a

20 certified court reporter taking a transcript of

21 today's proceedings. We will make a transcript

22 available in PDF format on Federal Business Ops

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1 also referred to as FBO or FedBizOpps as soon as

2 possible following the meeting. As soon as

3 possible could be a few days from now. You are

4 welcome to take notes of course but know that a

5 transcript will be made available to you. So put

6 your pens down.

7 Generally, here's the agenda. In the

8 first half of the session, however long the first

9 half is, we will go through a few of the most

10 relevant and salient points of the official RFP

11 and address some common questions that we've

12 already received via email, among the thousand

13 that I received so far. In addition, we will have

14 a little time for a Q&A following the first break.

15 So if you have a question that we don't address in

16 the first half please prepare an index card with

17 your question on it and we will attempt to respond

18 to as many of those questions as possible as time

19 allows. We will favor those questions that are

20 submitted by multiple attendees. I additionally

21 have a panel of acquisition team members by my

22 side here to occasionally help out with responses

1 to the questions.

2 Also I invited three speakers that will

3 follow my opening words who I'll introduce to you

4 in just a moment. Regarding questions and

5 responses please recall the GSA reserves the right

6 to publically discuss and publish or simply

7 consider questions and comments regarding the

8 official RFP. That said, in the time available

9 today it is not possible to address every question

10 asked but I will touch on some that have been

11 frequently asked or that stand out to us. Please

12 remember the Alliant 2 procuring contracting

13 officer is the sole point of contact for this

14 procurement and can be reached at a2@GSA.gov. You

15 all know my own email address but if you send it

16 to me it gets lost. Let's face it I probably

17 won't see it and no one else will see it either.

18 So send it to a2@GSA.gov.

19 Finally, the RFP and any amendments to

20 this RFP are the controlling authority for this

21 procurement requirement. We do not except to

22 create any confusion or contradiction by

1 mistakenly saying something today that doesn't

2 align with the official RFP. But if we do the RFP

3 and any subsequent amendments issued will always

4 be the controlling document you should look to for

5 answers. So in other words, don't hold me or any

6 of these folks to being official. What we're

7 trying to do here is we're trying to clarify some

8 of the issues that came up. When there is

9 something that requires a change you'll see an

10 amendment to the RFP on FBO.

11 Okay I will continue more on these

12 discussions after we hear from our three speakers

13 which I'll introduce prior to stepping up to the

14 podium. Our first speaker is Mr. Michael

15 McFarland serving as GSA's Director of the Office

16 of Acquisition Operations within the Office of

17 Integrated Technology Services, ITS. He guides

18 clients and customers on a wide range of

19 contractual issues and ensures acquisition

20 vehicles adhere to federal regulations and

21 policies. Under his department he performs

22 acquisitions for complex telecommunications, cloud

1 services and other IT requirements including

2 Government Acquisition Contracts, GWAC's and IT

3 acquisitions under the Federal Strategic Sourcing

4 Initiative. He is instrumental in ensuring his

5 team contributes to innovation and economic

6 stimulation through prudent contract awards and

7 the ongoing monitoring of contract performance.

8 Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Mr. Michael

9 McFarland.

10 MR. MCFARLAND: Yesterday they couldn't

11 hear me which I was surprised at since my kids

12 tell me I yell too much. I want to welcome you

13 all to the Alliant 2 preproposal conference. This

14 has been a long time coming and a lot of effort

15 and thought has gone into getting us to where we

16 are today. First I want to talk a little bit

17 about where we've come from. Alliant is and

18 continues to be GSA's premiere enterprise

19 information technology GWAC. We are proud that

20 Alliant suppliers are providing flexible access to

21 customize IT solutions throughout the government.

22 Alliant allows for long term planning of large

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1 scale program requirements through its long

2 program term and its multiyear options. Alliant

3 solutions encompass all components of an

4 integrated IT solution including new technologies

5 because of its alignment with the federal

6 enterprise architecture and Department of Defense

7 architecture which enables Alliant to evolve over

8 time in technologies change without requiring any

9 technical refreshes. High levels of Alliant

10 customer service are hallmarks of this program and

11 is a continued priority for GSA's Alliant GWAC

12 team.

13 Alliant has been a remarkable success

14 for agencies for you, our industry partners and

15 for GSA and has quickly become one of the most

16 successful vehicles in the ITS portfolio. For six

17 and a half years of Alliant more than fifty

18 federal agencies have awarded over $25 billion

19 dollars in task orders under Alliant. Alliant has

20 taught us the importance of partnerships, 21 education and training for both our agency

22 partners and our industry partners and customer

1 service in developing delivering successful

2 contract vehicles.

3 The Navy selected Alliant and Alliant

4 Small Business as mandatory use contracts for IT

5 services which is just one example of how agencies

6 value the Alliant portfolio. As a pre competed

7 vehicle Alliant is streamlining the acquisition

8 process for many government agencies and through

9 this streamlining agencies can more quickly and

10 efficiently procure needed IT solutions and tax

11 payers can save money.

12 One thing that has always impressed me

13 since I've come to GSA about the Alliant and the

14 GWAC program as a whole is the amount of

15 collaboration that goes on between all of the

16 parties. Success on projects through Alliant is a

17 three-part partnership; GSA, procuring agencies

18 and the companies performing the work under

19 Alliant task orders. The GSA GWAC program uses

20 three C's for their success. Communication, 21 collaboration and competition and we will continue

22 this for the Alliant 2 and the Alliant 2 Small

1 Business. The relationships we've built with the

2 government and industry partners have been and

3 will continue to be critical to the program's

4 success. Alliant has a very active community

5 website. The Alliant shared interest group is a

6 great collaboration. We launched the LinkedIn

7 Alliant page as another outreach effort and we

8 thank you for everything all of you are doing to

9 deliver and implement successful Alliant solutions

10 to support agency missions.

11 And now the GSA GWAC program, a leader

12 in government wide acquisition contracts having

13 established one of the very first GWAC's, the

14 Answer Contract in 1999 and creating more GWAC's

15 than any other federal agency is developing the

16 Alliant 2 and the Alliant 2 Small Business GWAC's

17 which are the sequel to the very prominent and

18 successful Alliant and Alliant Small Business

19 GWAC's.

20 The Alliant 2 has been developed to

21 continue to provide support to federal agencies

22 that have mission critical complex IT requirements

1 especially for long term programs. The Alliant 2

2 and Alliant 2 Small Business pre solicitation

3 phase has raised the bar on transparency and

4 collaborative processes involving both federal

5 agencies and industry partners. The Alliant 2 and

6 Alliant 2 Small Business team have performed

7 thorough market research and laid significant

8 ground work in the preplanning phase with efforts

9 including an interact group with more than 7000

10 members, a publically reviewed business case on

11 OMB Max, meetings with the coalition for

12 government procurement, AFCEA Northern Virginia

13 Chapter, the Alliance Republic Sector, Defense

14 Procurement and Acquisition Policy, the Office of

15 Federal Procurement Policy, Small Business

16 Administration, U.S. Department of State and

17 ACT/IAC.

18 We've had numerous presentations to

19 interested agencies. We have a customer working

20 group of 30 members from 11 agencies. We have an

21 industry working group with more than 500

22 participants. We've issued two RFI's through Fed

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1 Biz Ops. We've had two industry days with more

2 than 500 attendees. We've had face to face, one

3 on one meetings with more than 350 registrants

4 from industry.

5 ITS couldn't be more proud and more

6 excited about the future of our GWAC program. The

7 collective input and feedback toward development

8 of the Alliant 2, Alliant 2 Small Business the

9 past year have been a major contribution to what

10 we believe is an outstanding final product.

11 Notable overall enhancements between Alliant and

12 Alliant Small Business and Alliant 2, Alliant 2

13 Small Business includes scope improvements, 14 standardized information technologies served with

15 labor categories, new cyber security standards

16 which are the focus of our Administrator and OMB, 17 new environmental standards, increasing

18 competition for orders which provides savings for

19 agencies and more opportunities for our industry

20 partners and the incorporation of required DFAR's, 21 clauses and provisions within the master contract

22 so that they automatically flow down to the task

1 order level on any task orders that are issued by

2 the Department of Defense Agency.

3 We recognize your contributions and your

4 providing insights to the changes we've made since

5 the first draft RFP's. I'm confident that you

6 will be pleased with the final product and the

7 role you played in it. We at GSA cannot

8 overemphasize how the collaboration within GSA, 9 with customer agencies and with our industry

10 partners while doing market research and in

11 planning future solicitations and innovations is

12 key to being sure that what we want to do is

13 vetted, is on the right track and considers all

14 viewpoints. The Alliant 2, Alliant 2 Small

15 Business collaboration process is the load star by

16 which ITS is guiding the development of our other

17 contracting offerings.

18 ITS is committed to keeping our

19 contracts including Alliant 2, maturing, growing

20 and evolving in the new marketplace and I thank

21 you all.

22 MR. CAVADIAS: Thank you, Michael. My

1 second invited speaker needs no introduction

2 because there isn't anyone in the IT community out

3 here that doesn't know his name and I'd like to

4 thank him myself right here because he paid for my

5 plane ticket out, Casey Kelley.

6 MR. KELLEY: Thank you, John. Good

7 morning everybody and thank you for being here.

8 So my name is Casey Kelley, I'm the Program

9 Manager for Alliant 2 and Alliant 2 Small

10 Business. I see a lot of faces in the crowd here

11 that I recognize. Some of you, many of you I know

12 already through the Alliant GWAC program as I've

13 been the program manager for Alliant since it

14 started, serving also as the enterprise GWAC

15 division in San Diego. So I'm going to keep my

16 comments real brief. I want to thank John for

17 giving me the opportunity to just come here and

18 say hello. You're here to ask questions and get

19 as many questions answered. I just wanted to

20 convey to you just how much we appreciate when

21 Michael comes up who represents our leadership

22 this doesn't happen if we don't have the support

1 of our leadership. This doesn't happen if we

2 don't have people like John Cavadias and Greg

3 Byrd, the Procuring Contracting Officer for

4 Alliant 2 Small Business. Contracting officers

5 who are risk adversed who are willing to put to

6 official RFP's out there and be as transparent as

7 they have been to date. So I hope you all truly

8 appreciate what we've accomplished through the

9 leadership of John, Greg and this entire GSA

10 organization. If you haven't found out you'll

11 find out soon there's a passion within the GWAC

12 community and that passion shows by the way the

13 people in it live, breathe, eat GWAC's. Not for

14 the money, we don't make commissions on this it is

15 all about the level of what we do and I truly

16 believe that I think that is represented in what

17 you see.

18 So we wish all of you the best of luck.

19 As you'll see and John will speak to, be patient

20 with us in this team. This has been a three-year

21 process to get what we believe is a pretty good

22 final product already. Any minor thing that will

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1 be corrected or has to be corrected will be

2 corrected. It is always good to defer to John as

3 a (inaudible) and Greg on that but just be patient

4 with us and recognize how far we've come, how

5 important this is to us and how important you are

6 far success because at the end of the day we're

7 only as good as the people we have and your

8 industry partners to get on these contracts that

9 are the deliverers of the solutions to our

10 customers that we're all trying to support. So

11 thank you.

12 MR. CAVADIAS: Thank you, Mr. Kelley.

13 So the primary purpose of this preproposal

14 conference is for the government to capture

15 questions concerning the Alliant 2 Unrestricted

16 RFP. So that ultimately we could respond with

17 some answers to help you and perhaps some changes

18 will be effected to the RFP through amendment.

19 There are a few methods we use to provide

20 responses to you. Of course you'll receive some

21 answers here at this conference and the

22 discussions of the conference. And the second

1 conference held today will be provided to the

2 public along with this by the way. There actually

3 is going to be four transcripts and I'll mention

4 this a few times today. The first two are Alliant

5 2 Small Business which occurred yesterday and

6 there will be two today, one morning and one

7 afternoon. I recommend that when these are posted

8 on FBO that you look not only at this one but look

9 at all four of them and I'll explain why you

10 should look at small business also in a moment.

11 Another method we use aside from email

12 and conferences like these is we're using index

13 cards. Did you get index cards coming in? Okay, 14 all right very good. The way I will work and when

15 I say I it's not John, it's I in the capacity and

16 the role of contracting officer for this

17 procurement. I will post probably a few rounds of

18 Q&A. Those are not necessarily amendments, that's

19 just what happened here, what happened at these

20 sessions and what happened on the email when it

21 comes to responses. We don't respond to

22 everything; it is not possible. I did mention

1 that we have nearly a thousand questions and so

2 does Alliant Small Business which is a little bit

3 surprising considering we've spent two years on

4 the road, we've given interviews to the press, 5 we've been on radio, we've tried to be very clear.

6 But when I read the questions I see there's a lot

7 of repetition, a lot of the same questions keep

8 coming up and up and up. So in any case we will

9 respond like that and that does not officially

10 change the RFP. You'll know what is officially

11 changed to the RFP by what is called a Standard

12 Form 30 or an SF30. Any change to the RFP and

13 you'll see really mostly changes to section L&M

14 and those are at this point those are mostly minor

15 changes so far that we found. And you'll see

16 that. How many of those SF30's we'll do I don't

17 know yet. I'm going to try to limit the number of

18 amendments because the contractor community has

19 told me a thousand times that they don't like to

20 see a lot of amendments which I certainly

21 understand because you have to sign each one of

22 them that you acknowledge them. So what I might

1 do, what I'm considering doing is letting you know

2 ahead of time what those amendments will be, 3 what's going to be in those amendments

4 narratively. I'll tell you about some of them

5 here and I may write about them and I'll post them

6 on FBO. I'm not going to post them on GSA

7 Interact because FBO is really the official portal

8 for our communication. I'll let you know ahead of

9 time and the reason for that is you'll be able to

10 at least plan for what that change is. Okay

11 enough on that topic right now. I'll discuss a

12 little more of it lately, let's move on.

13 Let's talk about individual

14 subcontracting plans. Completing an individual

15 subcontracting plan to SBA standards can be as

16 daunting as completing your income tax returns to

17 IRS standards. For this reason, I will bring up

18 our third speaker to help us all out by offering

19 guidance, useful tips and government personnel

20 points of contact as a resource to completing your

21 subcontracting plans. There is no one else I know

22 or have ever known that understands the

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1 intricacies of dealing with the Small Business

2 Administration and their requirements when it

3 comes to small business subcontracting plans.

4 It is our next speaker, Mr. Paul Martin, 5 who serves as GSA's Branch Chief of Contracting

6 for Alliant 2 among other GWAC's in our San Diego

7 office. Paul is one of our original founders of

8 the GWAC program since its inception in the late

9 1990's. Welcome, Paul Martin.

10 MR. MARTIN: Thank you, John. Good

11 morning. My name is Paul Martin, for the record

12 and I am the Enterprise Acquisition Division

13 Contracts Branch Chief, located in San Diego. I

14 want to briefly discuss my lessons learned from

15 reviewing past subcontractor plans for the GWAC

16 program by laying out a series of questions and

17 responses that I wish for potential offerors to

18 consider when developing your small business

19 subcontractor plan. I'm just going to have

20 questions and common questions that I see a lot

21 and then just have a prepared response to them.

22 So the first question that I sometimes

1 get is what type of plans should the offeror

2 submit? The GSA model plan template has an X

3 marked for individual. I know there is three

4 choices but I made it easy for you for what I

5 need. Therefore, do not delete that choice or

6 select another choice when submitting your

7 subcontractor plan. The SBA wants the individual

8 subcontracting plan. An individual subcontracting

9 plan covers the entire contract period and has

10 goals that are based on the companies planned

11 purchases or products and services needed to

12 maintain a specific federal contract, the Alliant

13 2 contract.

14 So question number two. Who can the

15 offeror talk to regarding elements of a

16 subcontracting plan and is familiar with the GWAC

17 program. In general, the Small Business

18 Procurement Center representative, the PCR, is

19 your point of contact for issues related to small

20 business programs and can help you on questions

21 relating to creating a subcontracting plan. SBA's

22 PCR assists small businesses in obtain federal

1 contracts through six area offices across the U.S.

2 and territories. Their web page is sba.gov as you

3 see there and if you're looking for a particular

4 PCR in the search field type in PCR.

5 Also the General Services Administration

6 Office of Small Business Utilization can answer

7 questions specific to this agency, GSA. The GSA

8 OSBU has offices throughout the various states, 9 their web page is gsa.gov/osbu. And in the

10 search box you can type in staff directory.

11 Paul Chann is the SBA PCR assisting the

12 GWAC program and Pamela Smith-Cressel is the GSA

13 OSBU assisting at the GWAC program. They would

14 not address your submitted subcontracting plan so

15 please don't ask them about that nor answer

16 questions about the RFP, only the PCO can answer

17 that. But they can help answer your questions

18 about subcontracting plans in general.

19 Question number three. Please explain

20 the responsibility review of the subcontracting

21 plan. The subcontracting plan is not a scored

22 element. This evaluation element is a

1 responsibility determination. Therefore, it is

2 not necessary to try and impress the evaluators

3 with inflated goals above the targets. So they

4 are the targets in the section L that you could

5 just utilize. In the Alliant 2 RFP section

6 L.5.1.3 it states the proposed individual

7 subcontractor plan submitted is treated as a

8 responsibility determination factor rated as

9 either acceptable or unacceptable. The offerors

10 no points assigned or earned on this evaluation

11 factor. The offerors entire proposal will be

12 considered unacceptable if the individual

13 subcontractor plan is not included in the

14 proposal. So that's what we'll be looking at

15 first. If the plan is not there the whole thing

16 is out so, try your best to get your plan in

17 there.

18 In the Alliant 2 RFP section M volume 7

19 responsibility the overall responsibility

20 determination will be evaluated on a pass/fail

21 basis. Please note the GWAC program will only

22 review those subcontracting plans that make up the

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1 top sixty awards plus ties as this is an

2 administrative convenience for both the SBA, GSA

3 OSBU and the GWAC program. So if I get 200

4 subcontracting plans or 200 offers I will not

5 review all 200.

6 Question four. What is an

7 acceptable/unacceptable plan? When the

8 subcontracting plan meets all of the elements

9 outlined in the GSA model plan, I believe there is

10 11 of them, the subcontracting plan is deemed

11 acceptable. For instance, the offeror has

12 provided details that demonstrate and acceptable

13 approach to assisting, promoting, utilizing all

14 these categories, small business, small

15 disadvantaged business, woman owned, HUBZ owned, 16 veteran owned, service disabled veteran small

17 businesses. And when the subcontracting goals and

18 dollars and percentages are realistic, 19 challenging, attainable attributes of an

20 acceptable subcontracting plan. Sometimes I

21 receive plans that don't have dollars or don't

22 have percentages, I need both, dollars and

1 percentages. If any of the elements of the GSA

2 model plan are answered no, the subcontractor plan

3 is unacceptable and the offeror must review it

4 before contract award. Examples of an

5 unacceptable elements include the offeror has not

6 provided an acceptable approach to assisting, 7 promoting and utilizing small businesses.

8 Proposing subcontractor goals reflects less than a

9 good faith effort and substantial rework of the

10 plan is required to correct omissions and

11 establish realistic, challenging and obtainable

12 goals.

13 If your company receives notice of an

14 unacceptable subcontractor plan the offeror will

15 be permitted to adjust the plan to make it

16 acceptable. So we will go back and forth with you

17 to make that acceptable. The company will not

18 receive an award until the plan is marked

19 acceptable by the contracting officer.

20 The Small Business Administration has

21 developed a guide book called Handbook for Small

22 Business Liaison Offices that will be helpful for

1 office to review. In particular, appendix F of

2 that handbook titled Format for Letter from SBA to

3 Contract Officer Providing Advisory Comments on

4 Subcontracting Plans. I actually follow those

5 sample letter so when you see unacceptable it will

6 be similar to that letter that SBA has given to

7 the contracting officers. If the offer

8 subcontracting plan is deemed unacceptable, the

9 comments provided by the Alliant 2 PCO to the

10 offeror may be be similar to the format provided

11 in appendix F. Also note, the appendix F may also

12 be used by prime contractors to evaluate

13 subcontracting plans received from large business

14 subcontractors under the flow down requirement.

15 That is generally post award.

16 Question five. What are the general

17 steps for the review of the subcontracting plan?

18 The process for the subcontracting plan review and

19 acceptance are receipt, the offeror submits the

20 proposed subcontractor plan with the entire

21 Alliant 2 proposal. It is critical that you

22 submit that plan. The subcontractor plan is a

1 material part of the contract, therefore failure

2 to submit the subcontractor plan with its proposal

3 is a rejection of the whole proposal.

4 Number two, GSA review includes GWAC

5 program and the GSA OSBU. The Alliant 2 PCO will

6 work with your firm to make adjustments or updates

7 to your proposed plan. Since there are three

8 levels of review the Alliant 2 PCO, the GSA OSBU

9 and the SBA the GWAC program fully expects the

10 offerors to make adjustments expeditiously when

11 requested. So please it is not that difficult, 12 they're minor but we would like that as quickly as

13 possible.

14 Third, SBA review. The proposed

15 subcontractor plan will be reviewed by the Small

16 Business Administration after reviewed by the PCO

17 and the GSA OSBU. SBA's comments will be

18 considered and changes requested via the Alliant 2

19 PCO. So if you talk to the SBA they're not going

20 to talk about your plan in general. They're not

21 going to talk about the (inaudible) in general, 22 they also deal with other agencies so they may not

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1 be familiar with the RFP.

2 Four. Approval. Approval is the

3 acceptable plan and incorporation. The companies

4 subcontracting plan will be incorporated into the

5 solicitation award package.

6 Question six. Can the offeror just

7 submit the GSA model plan and I've seen this

8 several times, I've seen this four or five times.

9 Parroting the GSA Model Plan is unacceptable, it's

10 a short cut. The Model Plan is not a fill in the

11 blank form and the offeror must remove

12 instructional language. I'll see instructional

13 language in the proposal. GSA provides the Model

14 Plan as a tool. This Model Plan does not

15 establish minimum requirements for an acceptable

16 subcontracting plan. Adapt this Model Plan to fit

17 your subcontracting situation. The model reflects

18 objectives GSA encourages contractors to adopt.

19 Provide the supporting narratives that reinforce

20 your firm's commitment to achieving the small

21 business socioeconomic goals in terms of dollars

22 and percentages, it is important, dollars and

1 percentages and demonstrate that there are

2 procedures in place to finding and providing

3 opportunities for the small business. The lack of

4 supporting details is a red flag and can be

5 perceived as a lack of procedures and commitment

6 to the small business subcontracting.

7 Seven and I got this recently. What

8 magic number should I use on the subcontracting

9 plan? For this contract goals should be based on

10 total subcontracting dollars not the overall

11 contract dollars, so it is subcontracting dollars.

12 Dollars and percentages are required for the base

13 period of five years that individual years, it is

14 a base of five years so give me a grand total for

15 the five years and a grand total for the option

16 period of five years. There is no magic number

17 and dollars proposed will vary greatly. Actual

18 numbers for the small business subcontracting

19 achieved under Alliant from contract inception

20 until end of contract year seven which is March

21 2016 was $2.4 billion as reported by the 50 out of

22 the 57 Alliant contractors. The seven Alliant

1 contractors had zero orders and no subcontracting

2 dollars. The actual overall small business

3 subcontracting dollars can conceivably double as

4 more orders are issued to the Alliant contract's

5 expiration of April 2019. So right now it is at

6 $2.4 billon. So you could do the math -- we had

7 some large businesses that took Alliant's share of

8 the Alliant dollars so of course they had a much

9 higher figure. So based on your company and your

10 situation it is not 50 divided by 2.4 billion but

11 you could play around with the numbers.

12 The subcontracting plan should provide a

13 challenge and build upon prior achievements. Look

14 at what your firm has achieved under similar

15 contracts. If your company has achieved higher

16 goals on other IT contracts, consider this a good

17 starting point to projecting a higher goal. So

18 some of you did fantastic under Alliant so we

19 expect that to be a starting to go higher.

20 The GWAC program will examine a

21 company's revenue and if it is in the billions of

22 dollars we would anticipate that the small

1 business subcontract dollars would not be small.

2 Okay so if you're a $20 billion company please

3 show your dollars for the small business

4 subcontracting to reflect that. Potential

5 offerors may want to look at historical data on

6 expired or existing task order on the government

7 website usaspending.gov. This website offers a

8 useful tool for examining and exploring

9 subcontracting dollars on orders and contracts

10 awarded to companies. I do look at this so I do

11 look at task orders in particular and I do look at

12 the names of companies that get sub awards using

13 this database. The usaspending.gov was created in

14 response to the Federal Funding Accountability and

15 Transparency Act of 2006 FFATA required that

16 federal contracts, grants, loans and other

17 financial assistance awards of more than $25,000

18 to be displayed on a searchable, publically

19 accessible website to give the American public, 20 government agencies such as the GSA OSBU the SBA

21 task order OCO's and myself access to information

22 on how government primes and sub award dollars are

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1 allocated. So it is 25,000. Most of the Alliant

2 orders are way above $25,000 so I would expect to

3 see quite a bit on that site.

4 Additionally, the GWAC website at

5 gsa.gov/GWACs is a great resource for reaching out

6 to the current Alliant primes to team and

7 subcontract. Many will most likely be potential

8 offerors on Alliant 2 and many possess many years

9 of experience with the GWAC program. So if you're

10 interested in teaming, partnering, that's the web

11 page that you would go to to get to the Alliant

12 contract holders.

13 One more question, question eight. Do I

14 need to sign the subcontracting plan? Yes, it is

15 extremely important to have the administrator, the

16 subcontract administrator sign the plan. We may

17 not forward the unsigned plan to the SBA and until

18 it is signed it will further delay the review

19 process. So if you could have it signed this way

20 I can send the whole package to the SBA.

21 In closing, what Alliant 2

22 subcontracting focus should potential offers be

1 aware of? The GWAC program is pushing for more

2 implementation of the planned goals and efforts by

3 the ordering contract officers and to be cognizant

4 of subcontracting opportunities for awarding the

5 task order by asking the simple question will

6 there be small business subcontracting for this

7 order. OCO's that I've asked generally do not ask

8 that question, do not generally know what the

9 goals to the master plan is and do no communicate

10 with the companies. So I'm asking for that simple

11 will there be small business subcontracting for

12 this order. Task order contract officers have a

13 vested interest in maximizing small business goals

14 in terms of dollars subcontracted. Also

15 leveraging the data found in tools such as

16 usaspending.gov and ensuring small business

17 participation before order award. So they should

18 know who the winning contractor is subcontracting

19 too.

20 Subcontracting consideration does not

21 end with the Alliant 2 PCO. All participants to

22 the Alliant 2 are involved including end users, 1 task order OCO's, contractor sales and capture

2 managers and propose or developers must all

3 consider small businesses in the entire

4 procurement submission, evaluation and award

5 cycle. Thank you for listening today and we look

6 forward to reviewing your firm's thoughtful

7 subcontracting plan, thank you.

8 MR. CAVADIAS: Thank you, Paul Martin

9 for that presentation. The reason why I had asked

10 Paul to create this presentation is actually for a

11 few reasons. From my needs this is the number

12 item that holds up awards, the subcontracting

13 plans. It is also the only item by the way in the

14 source selection phase where we will go back and

15 forth with the offer. As you know, we intend to

16 award based on initial proposals. That means we

17 don't anticipate discussions. However, when it

18 comes to a subcontracting plan the back and forth

19 is standard, it is allowable within the rules so

20 we're trying to reduce that back and forth. I

21 want you to know and many of you already know

22 this. GSA goes beyond what is required by law and

1 regulation to support the small business

2 community. I don't know any other agency which

3 works like GSA when it comes to small business.

4 Small business is the foundation of our economy in

5 this country. We each take it very, very

6 seriously. So once again we can't emphasize

7 enough how important for other than small

8 business's the small business subcontracting

9 efforts and goals are to this agency and actually

10 to the entire economic health of America so thank

11 you.

12 Before I go on talking I do have a panel

13 of experts here today that I invited to the stage

14 and I don't know if they're happy about that but

15 they're here. You've just met Mr. Paul Martin.

16 He's my boss so he's invited regardless. We have

17 and many of you know Mr. Richard Blake and he

18 holds a very high position in this agency and he's

19 asked me not to really mention too much about it, 20 I'll let him speak. We have Mr. Paul Bowen who

21 works in the Massachusetts GSA office and he's

22 also a technologist. So we have two technologists

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1 here that will help me along with everyone else

2 respond to some of those technical questions.

3 Let's see who else do we have here. We have the

4 ACO, the Administrative Contracting Officer is

5 going to be Diemle Phan who works in this city

6 here and she will be the Alliant 2 Administrative

7 Contracting Officer, I don't know if she's out

8 here or not but we might defer to her with a few

9 questions later.

10 Let me speak generally about Alliant.

11 First of all, I want to recognize my colleague in

12 Kansas City who is over GWAC's of small business

13 and that is Mr. Greg Byrd. Mr. Greg Byrd please

14 stand up. I want you to be known. What made the

15 acquisition team very unique and acquisition team

16 I ever worked in we had one program manager which

17 is still Casey Kelley and two contracting

18 officers. Now there is a joke, there are all

19 types of jokes among contracting officers and no

20 two contracting officers agree on anything. I

21 commend Greg for working with me in that we are

22 very different in our perspectives in a few things

1 yet we manage to come together and develop this

2 contract. Essentially this Alliant 2 Small

3 Business Contract and the Alliant 2 Unrestricted

4 Contract are identical. There's only a few

5 differences such as limitations of subcontracting

6 and subcontracting plans and performance metrics, 7 there is just a few critical differences otherwise

8 they're pretty much the same. And it was Greg's

9 team and my team that actually developed both of

10 these vehicles. So anyway just wanted to

11 recognize Greg and thank Greg for all his efforts.

12 And while I'm on the topic of Greg, Greg

13 spoke yesterday bravely all day long. He was

14 pretty much the sole speaker for responding to

15 questions. I'm not that brave so that's why I

16 have a panel to depend on. In any case, Greg gave

17 a great presentation yesterday and you guys missed

18 it. Were any of you here yesterday? There, so

19 you know. There is going to be two transcripts

20 for Alliant 2 Small Business that took place

21 yesterday and Greg gave a very good overview of

22 the Alliant 2 Small Business Contract when it came

1 to the volumes and what to include in the volumes

2 one through seven. And I would highly recommend

3 that you review those transcripts for that alone

4 and there's some valuable tips in there. Greg

5 answered a lot of questions that he received via

6 email in that presentation. I will not be doing

7 the same presentation and I thank Greg for doing

8 that presentation for me. It is already there in

9 writing and you'll see that probably within a

10 week.

11 So once again that part of the

12 discussion is not going to be covered by me

13 although I will make a few points about it. Let me

14 talk about what I'd like to do today is I'd like

15 to start off by speaking a little bit about

16 Alliant 2 Unrestricted. It is not the same when

17 it comes to performance metrics, it is quite

18 different. And those of you who have actually

19 read the official RFP and maybe read the drafts or

20 maybe heard Casey, me and Richard Blake on radio I

21 did raise the issue of performance metrics. This

22 is unique, you don't see it in other GWAC's. In

1 order to stay you've got to play. That's came

2 back to me by the contracting community that that

3 phrase and it's true. We have what is called

4 contractor engagements performance based

5 requirements. And what that means if you haven't

6 read it it is all in section H19 and J5. We have

7 only two performance metrics and I speak

8 specifically to the master contract. Performance

9 based metrics and requirements at the task order

10 level is up to the Ordering Contracting Officer or

11 OCO. They could add whatever they want and I know

12 that -- I don't know what percentage is really

13 performance based on the task order level, I don't

14 know myself even though it is a requirement of the

15 Federal Acquisition Regulations but an OCO can set

16 whatever they want including small business goals

17 if they choose to and some of them do.

18 But for us on the master contract level, 19 those of you who will win and Alliant 2

20 Unrestricted GWAC all that means is that you have

21 an opportunity to play. I mention this because we

22 did this for many, many reasons. We primarily did

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1 it because of our client base. Remember GSA is

2 one of 60 or so agencies we work with today on

3 Alliant on the initial original Alliant GWAC. Our

4 largest customer in terms of dollars and numbers

5 is Department of Defense. Department of Defense

6 has goals of competition, effective. They call

7 effective competition which is a couple of more

8 numbers above, no it is one number above adequate

9 competition is two and effective competition is

10 three or more offers received on an RFP. And they

11 have been pushing this for a while and there is a

12 recent, when I say recent within the past year, a

13 recent memo on it once again to the public and to

14 their contracting officers that effective

15 competition is important for the following

16 reasons. You could see in I believe it is section

17 C.7 which is scope, it is part of the scope.

18 There are two performance based metrics this

19 contractor engagement one is what I call the

20 critical one because it is the one performance

21 metric where you either as an industry partner you

22 either succeed or you don't.

1 The second performance metric is Small

2 Business Subcontracting. With that if you had a

3 chance to read through it and in J5(b) I state the

4 acceptable quality levels and the acceptable

5 quality level for the small business goals is 80

6 percent I believe is what I have there. It may

7 appear a little intricate for contractor

8 engagement. I did take responses from industry on

9 the second draft and made a lot of changes on this

10 final draft and actually eased up on it a bit. In

11 any case, the reason why I emphasize this, the

12 reason why I have spoken about it on Fed News

13 radio is because it is important to understand

14 that you representing your companies and I don't

15 know how many owners are here but most of you are

16 representing your companies may not be getting the

17 support, the resources to work a contract and IDIQ

18 contract like this one, Alliant 2. What I found

19 as the PCO of Alliant which I did for about three

20 years, what I learned from the industry partners

21 is that some of them just did not get the support, 22 did not get the backing of their management, their

1 Board whoever is really making those decisions.

2 So it is important to know that if you want to be

3 on this contract that you have the full support of

4 your organization regardless of the size or who

5 really makes these types of decisions. I won't

6 get further into discussing this issue but I do

7 make this point. Because our fiduciary

8 responsibility is to our agencies and to provide

9 them with the highest level of service and the

10 best contractors we can provide and to ensure that

11 they will get competition on the vast majority of

12 their RFP's and to mitigate the competitive

13 one-bid results that happen too often and have on

14 our Alliant GWACs.

15 So I won't speak to much more on that

16 one because you all want to talk about L & M

17 because 98 percent of the questions came from

18 sections L & M. Let's see Alliant is a five year

19 multi year and a five-year option period. Another

20 point I just want to make is that there is never a

21 guarantee that an option is going to be exercised

22 and I made that point in the contract. When it

1 comes to Alliant I've read some articles like from

2 Bloomberg Government and others in blogs and I've

3 read too often that this is the biggest

4 opportunity for IT services in government for the

5 next 10 years. And if you don't get on this one

6 you're locked out. So it is sort of a myth, it is

7 probably a myth but I disagree with this. I have

8 gone back once or twice to the press and mentioned

9 that. Here's the reason why. This is going to be

10 a dynamic master contract; we have open seasons.

11 And they can happen any time and folks will ask me

12 when do you think you'll do it? Will it be at the

13 option period? I see it perhaps earlier than the

14 option period. Maybe at the mid mark of the base

15 term. And here's the reason why. On contractor

16 engagement we really have a very liberal AQL, AQL

17 is Acceptable Quality Level. And the first year

18 is pretty much a give-away, it is the initial of

19 the Alliant 2 contract so we allow a significant

20 AQL on that. The second year it gets a little

21 tougher. So if there are industry partners who

22 end up leaving the contract at the end of 24

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1 months because they did not want to participate or

2 they weren't able to compete we'll know at that

3 point how many we might lose. We'd hope not to

4 lose anyone but just based on statistics it is

5 going to happen. We don't know how the market

6 will change. We also want to respond to the

7 federal market place. So at that point will be

8 the first point where the PCO will take a look at

9 whether we should do an open season. We won't

10 consider it in the first two years. After that

11 the PCO will always consider each year whether to

12 do an open season. I did include open season in

13 section H, I think it is 20, 21, H 20 21 about

14 some of the specifics of it and we would hope to

15 be able to get through a source election very

16 quickly on it. We may ask for 10 companies to be

17 added, we may ask for 20, we don't know. We allow

18 ourselves to be flexible in that area. So these

19 are areas which are unique for Alliant 2

20 Unrestricted versus Alliant 2 Small Business.

21 With a show of hands how many of you

22 here are a small business under NAICS code 541512

1 computer system design services, how many of you?

2 Okay a few of you. Out of the few of you are

3 there any of you that and I'm not asking for

4 names, any of you who are considering a small

5 business teaming arrangement, CTA? Okay good.

6 That's another reason why Greg Byrd is sitting up

7 front here to help me out in that area if

8 questions come up on that. Greg did a great job

9 yesterday of talking about small business CTA's.

10 The big change was responding to the

11 NDAA 2016 section 865 joint venture and teaming

12 for small businesses. There is no implementing

13 regulation. This agency, this team was very

14 proactive and responded by amending the draft by

15 putting it into the final RFP. Once again, this

16 agency supports small business. This is an

17 unrestricted contract, this contract here and we

18 do allow it, it is unrestricted. What is

19 confusing and let me tell you why, a lot of this

20 came together last minute so Greg and I worked

21 together on trying to find a way to incorporate it

22 into our original plan. So you'll see some

1 mistakes in the official draft. Most of them were

2 pointed out to Greg and I. They're very obvious

3 and I think most of you knew what the mistake was

4 since you recommend what the change -- we are

5 going to each respectively include that in our

6 amendments. I have an alternate L5 section that

7 addresses the small business CTA's. I even used a

8 blue colored font to try and separate that out. I

9 did what I can just to draw attention to it but if

10 you're printing it out in black and white you

11 won't notice it. It does appear confusing and

12 those confusing areas it is really just a few

13 minor changes that need to be done to clarify

14 this.

15 I want you to understand this. That

16 NDAA section 865, 867, so what is in 865? All

17 right thanks I stand corrected. For the record, 18 it is section 867. That's part of the Small

19 Business Act. So this only applies to small

20 business, 100 percent small business. On the

21 teaming arrangements the subcontractors have to be

22 small business. It does not affect other than

1 small business. I've got a few of these questions

2 so I'll respond here. Does that mean I can do a

3 CTA I'm an other than small business, I'm a mid-

4 tier I should be able to do a CTA. No, you can't.

5 Nothing changed. Nothing changed in that area.

6 You must be, if you're teaming you must be an

7 established joint venture or partnership. So for

8 other than small business that still remains, 9 nothing has changed there.

10 And once again I'm going to defer to

11 Greg's transcripts from yesterday. Greg spoke

12 extensively on this subject. If you're interested

13 in creating a small business teaming arrangement

14 definitely do. And know this if you're going to

15 propose on the unrestricted you still have to meet

16 the criteria of L & M from the unrestricted. And

17 in certain places that is 800 percent higher

18 thresholds like for PSE's rather than one million

19 value it must be eight million, a minimum of eight

20 million. So anyone who wants to submit a proposal

21 we welcome it but understand you fall under

22 sections L & M and everything else contractor

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1 engagement you don't fall under subcontracting

2 goals if you're a small business you don't have to

3 do that. You fall under limitations of

4 subcontracting clause but everything else is the

5 same.

6 I'm going to -- I'm just moving around

7 to hit a few of those general questions. Mr. Byrd

8 when it comes to small business CTA's what are the

9 most important points on teaming?

10 MR. BYRD:: I would say the most

11 important point is that they all have to be small

12 business.

13 MR. CAVADIAS: They all have to be a

14 small business because we got some of those

15 questions. Those questions about can I team with

16 Lockheed Martin type of questions which came out

17 on teaming arrangements and there has to be

18 commitment letters. One of our mistakes in the --

19 did we make an omission, something confusing in

20 that section?

21 MR. BYRD:: (off mic)

22 MR. CAVADIAS: Okay previously performed

1 prior to the submission of the proposal…