Pre_Propsal_Conference_Transcript-SOL-OAA-14-000062.pdf

Support Services for the Bureau of Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance Program (HASC) SOL-OAA-14-000062

Transcript of Pre-Proposal Conference

MICHAEL CLARK: Good morning and thank you for coming. My name is Michael Clark and I am the CO for this procurement. I will quickly introduce some of the folks up here and a couple on the procurement team and then just a couple of the remarks and we will get into the agenda.

Again, Michael Clark, CO for the procurement. Renee Reed is the Lead Contract Specialist. She is also a warranted CO in this procurement. Stephane Bright and

Chris Nikola are also in the procurement team for this procurement. Speaking today to my left, Lance Butler, the Ombudsman for the Agency; Mauricio Viera who is the Director of the Office of Small Business Disadvantage Utilization and Aimee Lauer, representing the Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance Bureau.

Again, thank you for coming. The primary purpose of today is to familiarize you with the Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance - DCHA - bureau portfolio and try to put some context around how it relates to procurement. Hopefully it will be insightful and helpful.

As Aimee will explain we currently have a vehicle for this but there are some changes and so it will be very good to hear from Aimee. At the end of the presentation we welcome questions. We encourage questions around the presentation primarily because there is a process for questions on the RFP where we will answer on the Q&A for an amendment. So this is our best shot at talking to the technical office directly so that’s why I encourage those type of questions.

We are scheduled to end at 12 but we do have the space a bit longer so if you would like to you are welcome to stay until 12:30 or even 1 o’clock to do networking and talk to each other if that helps at all. That’s all I have and with that I will hand I over to Mauricio.

MAURICIO VIERA: Good Morning. Thank you Michael. It’s a pleasure to be here and it’s good to see everyone - such a nice attendance this morning. I know that a lot interest in the small business community over this requirement and we are glad that we are finally here together this morning. I just wanted to say a couple of brief comments because just to let you know a little bit of background in terms of how my office has been working with our friends in DCHA and of course the Office of Acquisition and Assistance on this requirement. We have been planning this for quite a while as many of you know. This is an important requirement. This is one that we view as being very small business friendly. In doing the market research quite some time ago we were of the opinion initially that this should be a total small business set aside. But this is one that hopefully we learned a little bit. We put out a sources sought notice on this and we actually got zero small business responses. So that is something that came as a bit of a shock to us. And this was quite some time ago. I’m talking about a year and half to two years ago. So again this was probably partly our fault. We take some responsibility for that for maybe not getting the word out as much as we could have. But in the end you know it’s it made it very difficult for us to argue for total small business set aside. As you will see it’s not a total small business set aside but it does have significant small business components to it and we attribute that to our collaborative relationship with DCHA with Aimee and with Carolyn and several other folks in the DCHA/OFDA team and of course to OAA. So we are excited about this opportunity. We are also excited about the fact that we are also doing this pre-proposal conference because it really gives an opportunity for us to engage and also for you as Michael mentioned, for you to network among yourselves and to get to know some of those who may be competition but also those who may be your partners. One of the concerns that we had and I will share with you internally about making this a total small business set aside, I will be very frank, one of our concerns was about surge capacity with small business. So this procurement is worldwide. It tends to have because of the nature of the work that OFDA does it tends to lead to situations where you have to staff up quickly and that was one of the things that was a concerning about doing this for just one small business so I would encourage you to team up with the small businesses that are here team up with small or large so that you have that surge capacity. Again we are going to be working on this procurement very closely with DCHA and OAA. We want to make sure that there is significant small business participation. Again this is one that we view as very important to our small business program. We really look forward to the whole competition. We are glad to know that there is going be significant competition and we really again encourage teaming that is why we are very glad that DCHA has opened up their facility here for some additional time so that you can all network with each other. I know there will be a bit of time for Q&A. I have to leave a little bit early today so if you do have small business questions if you can get those out by – I have to leave in about a half an hour or so. So I will be glad to answer any of those questions when the time comes

With that let me pass it on to my good friend and our Agency Ombudsman Lance Butler.

LANCE BUTLER: Thank you Mauricio. Good morning to each of you. If you are a development partner here at USAID or a potential development partner, my name is Lance Butler and I am your Acquisition and Assistance Ombudsman here at USAID.

In terms of my role, I serve as an independent dispute resolution practitioner. I receive issues, concerns, complaints, any aspects regarding the procurement process whether it be acquisition or assistance. I work to resolve those issues informally, quickly, expeditiously and confidentially if you require that. I also identify complaint patterns and trends within the agency. I make reports on those whether it be to the CO or the Agency Senior Administrators or whether it be to people in the bureau’s themselves. In addition, since this is an IQC, I also serve as the Taskforce Ombudsman. If any of you during the process, whether it be this or any other IQC of the USAID procurements, if you believe that you have not received a fair opportunity to be considered if you want to informally engage my services, please do so.

In terms of my jurisdiction, here is what I am allowed to do. I am able to conduct inquiries, investigate, report findings or make recommendations on any aspect of the acquisition or assistance process. I am also able to facilitate and mediate disputes or complaints informally. I identify complaint patterns and trends. I conduct education sessions whether it be to external parties or with my colleagues inside the Agency. And I also, when appropriate, advocate on behalf of eitheran issue, an individual or an organization. Only when appropriate.

Here are my limitations I am not authorized to compel or direct any agency for CO action. The CO role is sacrosanct and you don’t want to infringe upon that. I am not here to substitute for the formal process whether it be protest, dispute or appeal. My process is an informal process. The Agency and the Federal Government have a formal process. Those are different. My process supplements the formal process but it does not substitute it.

I also do not toll the time limitations in the event of a protest, dispute or appeal or request for adequate adjustment. What that means is that if you have a prescribed period of time in you have to contact the CO or the Agency just because you engage me does not mean that you have engaged the Agency. You must do both. Also, I am not compelled, required or authorized to make binding decisions or determine rights on behalf of the Agency. Again my process is an informal process, not a formal process.

Generally when partners external or colleagues contact me within the agency, here are some of the areas that I work to address. Questions, concerns or complaints. Good faith belief that you have been treated unfairly in the procurement process, any violation of procurement laws or regulation or any reporting of misconduct by the CO or the COR or the AOR. I should say Agreement Officer: AO and Agreement Officer Representative:

AOR, CO: Contracting Officer, COR: Contracting Officer Representative.

When you contact me, these are the questions that I am always going to ask you. What is your complaint, issue or concern? And what redress do you seek. If I am not able to provide for that redress I will let you know early on so you can seek a formal process.

Who are the relevant parties? Have you spoken to the CO? I always encourage our external parties to try to engage the CO or to try to engage the AO before you contact

me. If you feel like that is an obstacle then please reach out to me. Do I have your permission to investigate the matter? Do you require confidentiality? When you contact me, the rule is if in confidence unless you prescribe otherwise. Again it’s within confidence unless you allow me to engage others on this issue. Also what are your time constraints and these are very important. You need to let me know if you are under the clock with any issue so that I can prioritize your action.

Here is my contact information. Renee has let me know that she is going to post that on FBO and any other documents with respect to this procurement. Please feel free to reach out to me. That is my cell phone, office phone, email address. Any time day or night. Prior to being the Ombudsman I was the Contracting Officer for the wonderful group here OFDA and also Food for Peace as well. I enjoyed my time immensely.

About my background, I have been at the Agency for about 30 years in the acquisition and assistance realm. Formerly a CO. My Bachelor’s degree is in procurement and contracting. I also have a law degree and I am licensed to practice law in DC and Maryland. If you have any questions please reach out to me. Thank you.

AIMEE LAUER: Thank you Lance.

MICHAEL CLARK: Thank you Lance. Now I think we will hand it over to Aimee.

AIMEE LAUER: Good Morning Everyone. I guess I will stand and take Lance’s lead and move around a bit. It is great to see so many faces here and that you have come out in great numbers, expressing interest for our requirement. I see some old faces and some new faces and it’s great to have everyone here, so welcome. Like Michael mentioned, I’m going to present to you on the DCHA context so that you understand the context in which this contract is being awarded and help you understand a little bit about our line offices that make up the DCHA bureau and then speak a bit again specifically to the context of the IDIQ and where that fits into the overall DCHA mandate roles and individual line offices missions.

So with that I will - there a lot of words on the page but I wanted to be thorough and I know we are posting this on Fed Biz Ops and it will be available to you. I apologize for the wordy power point slides. The DCHA bureau brings together a wide range of technical experts and really the Agency’s global operational capacity essential for crisis, prevention, response, recovery and transition efforts.

Our vision is to lead the government's international response to stabilize fragile states, to promote democracy, and support transformational development. So that is quite a mouthful and it’s a huge vision and a huge mandate. As you can see, it’s very wide ranging - from transformational development to pure humanitarian response to democracy and governance to transitions, political transitions etc. With that again, its wordy but as these will be reference material we wanted it to be inclusive rather than exclusive.

Our four objectives for the Bureau are prevention, response, recovery and transition.

What do those mean? With prevention, we work specifically in countries vulnerable to disasters, vulnerable to political instability and recurring crises whether man made or nature made and whether human rights abuses, violence conflict etc. and we work to strengthen the resiliency of communities, of states, of the people that we respond to --our beneficiaries in the field. We try to prepare for and mitigate the impacts to them. I can speak best to a natural disaster setting but for all volcanic activity early warning system. So we are establishing those so the people can get out of harms way in the event a volcano is set to erupt. Those types preventative measures. But beyond that we are also trying to consolidate new effective democratic institutions and basically address underline grievances that cause instability conflict on the Food for Peace side, food insecurity etc.

Response - as you are probably aware we have a few responses going on now out there in the world today. During emergencies we as a Bureau will provide lifesaving humanitarian assistance in response larger scale disaster. We will deploy a team to the field. We stand up operations centers here in Washington to support that and basically we are the lead coordinating within USAID and within the DCHA bureau we coordinate that response so across the DCHA offices many of us are engaged with that effort. So that is life saving and life sustaining support given a disaster again man made natural. It doesn’t matter.

Recovery - so after a disaster hits we are also promoting rapid and durable recovery Trying to get people back engaged in their livelihoods, putting their lives back together, basic services, trying to get back to the point they were at before the disaster hit whether that is looking at markets or other types of efforts like that.

Transitions - so what is transition mean in the DCHA context? So, this is specific to countries experiencing political crisis whether they are emerging from authoritarian regimes, conflict, etc. We are there to promote peaceful political transitions, strengthen civil society and the respect for human rights. We can facilitate reconciliation and promoting again effective democratic governance and basically not just fostering a return to economic recovery but also taking advantage when there are these little points in time where political transition seems very ready. We can go in and promote that in a society and to work on a local context. So those are our four objectives as the DCHA bureau.

So how do we get there and that is a tremendous amount work up there. We basically get there through our nine line offices. We all have very distinct components of these four objectives but we also work together as appropriate. Not in every response, not in every political transition, not in every situation but we do work together as appropriate.

So I am going to run through the individual nine offices at a very high level what each of them do.

I will start with my office. So as Michael mentioned I work in the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, OFDA or O-F-D-A. We coordinate the US Government’s humanitarian assistance in response to international disasters. Our mandate is to save lives, alleviate suffering and reduce the social and economic impact of disasters. We also take part in that prevention and recovery component of the DCHA objectives. We build capacity to help people gain resiliency and be able to rebound more quickly from the shock of a disaster.

Next up there is the Office of Transition Initiatives and I have one of my colleagues here from OTI, which is great. So OTI is a very unique, very nimble, very flexible component of DCHA. They support the US foreign policy objectives by helping local partners advance peace and democracy especially in priority countries and in times of crisis. So like I mentioned they grasp those critical windows of opportunity where they see an opening for a political transition to be made. They go in and very quickly they provide fast and flexible short term assistance and again it’s targeted at either stabilization and/or key a political transition. So, going back to the surge and contract requirement that Mauricio had mentioned. This here, again OTI can stand up an office and stand one down within a year. Usually they can go a couple of years etc. but they do this very quickly and very nimbly.

The Office of Food for Peace. So I would say this is the third office, so we all have off on this page, operational components to the work that we do as does Food for Peace.

Food for Peace is focused on responding in two ways: to the emergency requirements of food needs to rapid or slow onset complex emergencies to address the immediate food needs of the population who are at risks. It’s during those post disaster or during complex emergencies such as Syria where they are providing food to meet the needs of the population who are in crisis. They also have the development component to them where they respond to chronic food insecurity and they have other activities that they pursue: maternal child health, nutrition, WASH which is Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, environmental stabilization, sustainable agriculture, food education, so basically the development arm of food and food needs.

So these offices are together on the page because as I said in times of a response we work together. We all have emergency components but we all are operational in nature.

The next three I will go through are the Center on Excellence and Democracy Human Rights and Governance. This may be the office with which I am the least familiar so I am going to read from up here so that I don’t get it wrong for you guys. They create and disseminate knowledge on the advancement of democracy, human rights, sound governance abroad, as well as manage grants and provide technical support to USAID missions implementing programs in these areas. So what does that mean? They are a center of excellence on this subject area democracy, human rights and governance They work with our missions overseas to build those components into their programming. Whatever kind of programming that is where there is an opportunity to build that kind of synergy. So it might not be a straight DRG program. It might be an agriculture program where there is a component in there which they can target a DRG element. They serve that technical support with our partners, with our Missions overseas. I hope I am doing that one justice.

The next office and I believe we have someone – no – from CS3 – no. So CS3 is this unique part of DCHA. They mobilize technical experts with critical development skills set in support of USAID operations that are essential in crisis prevention, response, recovery and transition. So what does that mean? So basically they have a cadre of people that they will surge to support a mission overseas or pillar bureau or an effort here in Washington. So for me what comes to mind is the Haiti earthquake. After the Haiti earthquake hit not only did we have a lot of destruction in Haiti obviously and offices like FFP, OTI and OFDA where focused on beneficiary needs CS3 which was called something different at the time was focused on helping bolster the mission. Right because here are folks who had been through a traumatic event, there was damage to their homes, there was damage to, you know their families where in this event and they have all of USAID and the InterAgency descending on them to help the Haitians. CS3 provided people to support the mission staff be that helping coordinate the motor pool, sending in additional XO or contracting support, sending in an agriculture expert who can help move those grants out the door etc. So they are really unique office within

DCHA.

So then CMC is USAIDs primary point of contact with the Department of Defense.

Providing liaisons support at the COCOMS major commands overseas. They train USAID, they train military personnel they help to plan and coordinate assistance that we share in common with the military. So as you are probably aware, the military really sees that they have a role in what call HADR so humanitarian assistance and disaster response. So their definition and USAID’s definition while they are a little bit different there are overlaps and synergies. CMC really works at that point of overlap to help facilitate that. That is what they do. They are sometimes engaged with us on responses as well.

The last three offices. PPM which is our program office. So they are the coordinators of DCHA. They provide oversight, guidance, coordination, policy. They are the touch point to the rest of the Agency in terms of the Office of Security, HR, FM others they help advocate for our budget. They help us respond to taskers that affect all the offices. They coordinate and pull that together. So they are very critical to us. So none of the line offices could do what they do without PPM, without the support of the rest of the agency. They are the touch point there.

The Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation. So they target and analyze sources of conflict supporting early response where possible if they can get at the underlying causes of instability and violence and conflict. They support much like I mentioned DRG they support the integration of conflict mitigation and management into the rest of the work that USAID does whatever type of programming that may be so into our analyses strategies and programs that we are building into those sectors. So where there are opportunities for CMM principles they try and engage there and make sure that they are incorporated.

And then the last office, which is also unique, so as you can see these offices are very unique from each other. ASHA, so I’m going to read this one as well to make sure I get it right. Through US supporting organizations, they support self-sustaining private and not profit universities, secondary schools libraries and medical centers abroad that train students, professional on using American ideas and practices. So they are very also unique office within DCHA.

That was a lot of information again you are going to have access to this information that I rolled through quickly. So the DCHA, the IDIQ overview, so this is all from the RFP.

We do anticipate a target of three awards over a 5 year IDIQ performance period.

Targeting up to two small business and we reserve the right to award more or less than the anticipated number. Total estimate value is 300 million over 5 year ordering period.

The NAICS code is up here 541611. If we were to look at the current IDIQ that we are under and were to approximate how many current task orders would fall under the proposed small businesses threshold it’s pretty significant. 14 out of 24 would likely fall under that small business threshold. So as Mauricio mentioned this is small business friendly it’s not an insignificant component of the strategy. So just raising that to your awareness.

So the last and probably the most important thing for me to focus on today is what do all our missions and mandates mean in terms of this IDIQ. So how does that context translate into the work that you are all here to express interest in. So I will start off by saying that even though this is a follow on contract. At the beginning of the process, the Bureau got together and really collectively took a look at what our administrative support needs where across the bureau and individually and we merged and consolidated a lot of those requirements. So this is not the same old same old. This scope has evolved and so I would encourage people to consider that and to really look closely at the requirements as they are laid out.

Second point, the admin services that you all provided that are provided through this IDIQ are really part and parcel of the work we do around the world. So think about it, you might not be the person, you might not be the WASH expert going out to look at the letrines and seeing how do we need to respond and calculating what is needed by the beneficiaries needs are but you are the person that is up in the middle of the night getting that person their visa, getting them out the door, making sure that USAID’s travel office responds to us, moving stuff forward. You are the ones working over the weekend helping get our grant packages to OAA to sign either PALs or awards. It’s critical. It’s part and parcel. It’s not separate from the work that we do. And again maybe that has some of an OFDA lens to it but I think that it applies across DCHA. We’re really integrated. This is part and parcel of all of those missions that we talked about. I mean it can’t be understated how integral and important to the success of what we do. You are out there working with us to recruit people to hire PSCs to all of that and its really critical work that you do. So bleeding into my next point here for the contingency offices like OFDA, OTI and Food for Peace again it’s a core component of how we respond quickly effectively appropriately. It allows for that surge and contraction. It allows us to move very quickly and it’s really – its critical to our ability to respond to our ongoing operations. For any of the offices. So it isn’t just admin support there is nothing ‘just’ about it. It’s critical. Last two points I will leave you with and then we will play two videos to inspire you hopefully. They inspire me. But I would like to say that the DCHA mandates combines are some of the most compelling work that the US Government does – period across the USG. You don’t get more interesting you don’t get more tangible. You don’t get more passionate about it. I don’t know how else to express it.

These are really important things that our government does and the contract support we receive through the current contract and through the follow on is again part and parcel of that. We could not do it without you. It is that critical.

And last point is that really as OFDA sees it and other DCHA offices have expressed to me we are really one team and not many. So we are one team across DCHA and we are also one team within the offices across hiring mechanisms, across instruments, across partnerships, across contracts. We don’t distinguish and we don’t delineate. We are one team making that really important work I went through happen. As we will see how this follow on goes, the winners, the successful offerors, are going to be part of that team and that is truly exciting and I am being 100% sincere when I express this. I worked in other parts of AID and other parts of the US government and it’s a really, really unique aspect of DCHA, really unique. At least I believe that. Hopefully to convince you along those lines I will play a couple of videos to inspire you. The first one is from Food for Peace.

RENEE REED: For all questions, in front of you, you should have an index card or something of the like. Please jot down all of you questions and when you are done if you could just raise your hand and someone will come around and collect those questions.

AIMEE LAUER: I am going to restart. Again this is Food for Peace. It’s Food for Peace’s 60th anniversary this year so that’s very exciting milestone and this is a video they have put together to express some of their unique capabilities and successes over the years.

If it’s not loud enough please raise your hand.

FOOD FOR PEACE VIDEO PLAYED

Great. All right if you ill humor me with one more video. That was food for peace and now we will watch the FODA video. It is actually our 50th anniversary actually this year.

This video was not made this year.

OFDA VIDEO PLAYED

All right with those two videos I will leave you with one last thought to inspire and encourage you. My boss always says that when you go see a play and you spend a100 dollars on that ticket, you see a show. What you just saw up there is the show. It’s the success of the work that we do. What you don’t see in that 100 dollars is the set guy and the lighting guy and the woman or the man that sewed up the uniforms or the outfits that they wore on stage, or the person that does the makeup or the person that prints up and passes out the playbill. Right you don’t see that? But it all goes into making that show happen and making it great. And that is what this contract is. It’s all the rest behind the scenes that makes that great whether it’s OFDA, whether Food for Peace or OTI or other line offices. It’s a critical component so that is what I want to express to you. Thank you.

RENEE REED: Are there any questions?

AIMEE LAUER: Can you guys get the audience mikes and this lady here Sheryl. Was it also written on the card? No.

SHERYL TYLER: Good morning. My name is Sheryl Tyler. We are a small business and recently the program and we are trying to, I don’t want to use the word break in but we trying to break into working with USAID and I know that the networking goes on but with this project this is a very large project, a very much needed project and I already see ways that tour company can support it. Is it best for us to try and network and try to get with another company here today or should we be on a list with you as a small business or what is the best avenue?

MAURICIO VIERA: Sure, that is a great question. Welcome to USAID. We absolutely again would encourage you to make the best of today obviously. Also one thing I might suggest is to get to know our office a little bit. If you have not worked with the Small Business office there’s a couple of staff members from my office that I didn’t introduce before. Kevin Davis, right in the front row. Kevin please raise your hand. Kevin Davis is a seasoned small business specialist on my team who backstops DCHA. So he works closely with DCHA so I encourage you to get to know Kevin. Let him know about your capabilities but please come in to our office because we frequently have events with various parts of USAID, provide opportunities for networking and for also to just get to know the agency a little bit more. We usually have focused events on various parts of the agency so that is just a couple of recommendations. I think one last thing I will mention, most of the small businesses that have been successful with our agency have started out as subcontractors to our large partners. So that is a great way to sort of break into the agency.

I’m sorry may I, I just have one here. The questions is: “Will we receive a list of attendees?” I imagine the answer is…

MICHAEL CLARK: I don’t think there is intent to provide a list of attendees but we will post all the information from the meeting.

RENEE REED: Repeat the question: Will we post a list of attendees? Initially it was not our intent to post the listees but we will post all other information that was shared today.

MAURICIO VIERA: The other question that is small business related is: “Does USAID currently have a small business performing this work?” The answer is yes and no. The current contractor performing this work is Macfadden and I don’t know if they are performing the totality of the work that is required for this requirement but Macfadden was a small business when they won the work. It was not a small business set aside last time this was competed. They were small but now they have grown and no longer small. SO that is the complete answer to that question.

AIMEE LAUER: The question here is: “How is DCHA evolving? Where do you see DCHA in five years and how is that different from today?” So if I put on my DCHA corporate hat and not my line office hat I would say that the big focus for our bureau and you can nod in agreement or frown you guys if I get it wrong but I would say that for our Assistant Administrator the focus is really trying to integrate the DCHA core competencies and line of thinking and our push for resilience into with what the rest of the agency does and I think that to really broker relationships with the rest of the agency and to become integrated into the broader USAID agenda. I think also to have in as many ways as we can between offices to really build synergies to really work together better more efficiently and really move towards that goal. So I think five years from now and how it will be different from today I don’t know but when I think about five years ago and how we are different from today, its significant. I mean I can speak most to OFDA but even with in the rest of the offices I see this evolution I see us being at the table. We are at the principal committee meetings, we are at the DCs PCs we are there around the table with the interagency on whether its food or whether its disaster response or whether it’s engaging with the military DCHA is there and we have a stronger voice and I think that is something that we didn’t see five years ago. I don’t know that I could have forecasted it then so I’m not sure I can forecast five years from now either. I do see us growing as a bureau. I see us evolving and better integrated within and among our offices and across the agency.

“Can I give some examples on how the IDIQ is different of what currently is in place?”

On a high level I can speak to that. I think we have integrated from specific offices requirements that they were not using in the current contract to do. I don’t know that I want to go line item by line item in the RFP. I would have to consult more with Food for Peace on it but it was one of their year critical in terms of the adding on to the requirement and some of the offices other offices did as well. But I think it’s broader.

There are nuances but then there are new components to it. That is not a very good answer to that question but it’s the best one I’ve got.

The question is: “The scope of work states that a team needs to be deployed within 72 hours of TO award. What will the response and award times be?”

AUDIENCE MEMBER: So basically what is the response time to any task order issued if the team has to be in country within 72 hours.

AIMEE LAUER: Ok from the time we put out the request for TO. So I am not sure specifically on that, how long you all would have to respond.

MICHAEL CLARK: I would say that there are circumstances specific so that is why it’s important to know that. So there are times when 72 hours could be the reality. There are plenty of times that it isn’t. That would really be driven by what is provided when the task order is competed.

I will answer this small business question: “Will all small businesses be evaluated in a separate pool amongst themselves for two designated small business set aside awards or will the small business compete against large for a total of three total IDIQ award?”

The way that typically works and its intended for this to work here is that all of the proposals are evaluated for the unrestricted award. Again we anticipate one unrestricted, two small business set aside. The top rated proposal will be the unrestricted award. We then reach out to see the next two top small business awards are the two that would be the two small business set asides. So they would all be evaluated against each other for the unrestricted awards and then we would be looking at the next two highest rated small business proposals. Again assuming that they are acceptable and at a range that they would get a contract but that’s.. so the unrestricted would be limited to that and the set aside would still be the two set asides.

Let me go ahead with this one since it’s a follow on. “Can a small business prime use teaming partners past performance or will the prime need to have its own past performance” I think you just need to follow the instructions on the RFP for that. It lays out the past performance for the prime. We do look for past performance for the prime and the major subcontractors. It’s required

AUDIENCE: It’s a small business question. I am the one who wrote the first question.

I’m Lori Robinson Project … Management. We are women owned and have some business and it’s always imperative for us to have the listing of the other small business or large businesses so we can do research on the companies before we team and I noticed on FBO.gov, interested vendors the tab does not come up for us to see a list of vendors. So that is why I brought up the question asking for a list of vendors that are here today.

MICHAEL CLARK: Right and we can do that. We are happy to do that. We can provide a list, slightly broader, and make sure that it’s all-inclusive. We expect that it will be but it will be as good as the information we receive so please make sure that we have all the contractors that are here I assume. We can post that.

AIMEE LAUER: So the first question is: “Will this new vehicle absorb work that falls under other current existing IQCs if so which ones?” So I am not sure that I am allowed to speak about which ones but yes there was a consolidation of requirements across the DCHA offices into this IDIQ. So yes I don’t know that from an acquisition strategy perspective that I am allowed really to discuss that per se.

MICHAEL: I think that in the context that applies to this IDIQ I would say that the answer is actually no because it’s a critical element of the re-compete. There may be parts that are available under other IQC’s but that is not the intent here. The intent was its critical that it be formed the way it’s been formed.

AIMEE LAUER: I read the question differently. And the second question is: “Which DCHA offices are most likely to use this vehicle?” I think currently they all do. All except possibly one so all the offices use the vehicle and have over time over existing performance periods.

MICHAEL CLARK: Ok if its ok Aimee for the next five minutes I will start on these but we may go back and forth because there’s similar and they are split down the middle between contractual and …

Are there particular offices, arenas or tasks that small business task orders will focus? I would say… I will repeat the question: Are there particular offices, arenas or tasks that small business task orders will focus? Not necessarily. There is a threshold of five million in the RFP for small business so the approach to that will be that for under five million we will go to small businesses and assuming that they can do the work. If there is an issue there then we will figure something else out but the expectation is under 5 million. So if the scope is as the scope needs to be for the office that is what it will be. It will not be broken out for any particular business category.

There’s going to be a couple of answers that we are going to respond to either in the Q&A or the posting of the information here because we are going to do a bit more work.

AIMEE LAUER: So “Which office in DCHA will manage the contract?” The way that it currently works and where we see it working on the follow on is that usually OFDA is the primary liaison with OAA on the broader IDIQ, the umbrella, and then individual offices will have their individual task order managers and CORs on their individual task orders.

We don’t see that changing. So we do a lot of the coordination function and how they manage the ceiling across all of the task orders and general stuff but for individual task orders that relationship exists with the offices.

MICHAEL CLARK: This question came up a couple of times “Who are the existing contract holders?” or similar question. Currently it’s held by Macfadden Associates. It’s a single award. Again we are doing three awards this time and it’s not precisely the same scope. So it’s important to know that while there is an incumbent the scope has changed.

“Is there a list of interested vendors?” I understand the tab is not working. We will post a list of attendees and we will attempt to activate the tab for the list of interested vendors on FBO so between the two hopefully that is as much information as we can give you for as many firms as have expressed interest.

After contract award are new teams allowed to be added on? And the answer to that is yes. The process for that can kind of depend. I mean it’s going to be at the task order level, I mean you can add a team at the task order level for a particular scope or you can propose to add a team at the task order level. The process for each will be different so without getting into too much detail on that. Yes, you can add teams, again it kind of depends whether it’s the IQC where you would add them because you will use them frequently or just because it’s a particular task order that you need to carry out so you need to get a certain team involved.

So “the use of small business, please confirm that all offerors need to complete this”.

The answer is no. If you are a small business then I would just follow the instructions on the RFP.

“Past performance, please confirm that three to five is required for the prime and all major subs”. That is correct.

“Please clarify if the information included in the tecg proposal is the same as the provided on the Spt 8 project sheet.” I don’t know what that is. We are going to hold on that one for now.

“For the government, please confirm the threshold for small business. For the small business only it’s 5 million?” Yes that is correct.

“Can past performances from a sub be submitted and part two can we provide government contact information instead of prime contractor information?” I think that is saying can they provide government folks as contacts. The answer is yes. And the past performance requirements are laid out on the RFP for the prime and for the subs.

“How does DCHA plan to administer the awarded task order and requirements, post award and the initial task order?” I think Aimee has addressed that so I think that the initial the IDIQ, the COR for the IDIQ will be OFDA, the COR for the task orders will be the appropriate offices.

“So please clarify if the information included on the TEC proposal is the same as that provided on Spt 8 project sheet?” I may ask for clarification but I will try to answer the question. If it’s the past performance piece that needs to submitted by Spt 8 that is the past performance that we are looking to evaluate. I think that answers the question but please feel free if I have not gotten that right.

So I am sorry, the question is, “please clarify if the information included in the Tech proposal is the same as that provided on Sept. 8 called Project Sheet” So I am not sure what Project Sheet is there is a requirement to submit past performance by Spt 8th and that will be past performance for the tech proposal.

Well we are a couple minutes after 12. I will wrap up questions. Again we have a couple that we will include in the posting. Thank you all for coming. And we now welcome you to stay around we have until 1 and network and chat and hopefully you can take advantage of the time to talk to each other and get to meet folks.

AIMEE LAUER: And if I could just comment, if you are going to mingle if you could just stay in this room and the two break out rooms here and the galley area because we do have a response up and running here and people are working etc so if you could stay in this general vicinity that would be great.

MICHAEL CLARK: Thank you.

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