Compensation Study

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Senate Compensation Study
RFP 2019-R-033
June 14, 2019

Section C Statement of Work
Q1) Are the "external positions" being assessed defined as positions from private firms/organizations, other government agencies, or both?
Q1a) Yes, per the Statement of Work introductory narrative, external positions should include "both private sector and executive branch positions."

Q2) How many core positions/benchmark jobs exist?
Q2a) As per the Statement of Work introductory narrative, approximately 50 Senate positions may exist. See Section C.2.2.1 for responsibility of the Contractor to assist the Senate to firmly identify a final list of "core positions."

Q3) The Solicitation indicates that you will want internal and external market data on 50 jobs.
Q3a) Approximately 50 jobs. See Section C.2.2.1 for responsibility of the Contractor to assist the Senate to firmly identify a final list of "core positions."

Q4) What are your expectations for the number of geographic and/or size locations?

Q4a) The Senate requires the expert advice of the Contractor to determine the best comparative methodology possible with the available data. There are Senate offices in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Q5) What is meant by 50 Senate positions? Is this a number of job titles? Can the Secretary provide examples of these positions and the supporting content?

Q5a) Some examples may include: Chief of Staff; Administrative Assistant; Legislative Director; Systems Administrator; Staff Director; Legislative Assistant; State Director; Constituent Services Representative; Counsel; Professional Staff; Chief Clerk; Economist; Communications Director; Social Media Director; and Scheduler. Prior internal attempts to find common roles for such positions will be shared with the Contractor after award.

Q6) Are the Senate position descriptions position-specific or job-specific?

Q6a) Senate position descriptions for the Study will be generated pursuant to Section C.2.2.1.

Q7) Are the benefits across the 120 offices the same?

Q7a) Some federal benefits are standard; some benefits are not offered in all offices or are offered in different ways.

Q8) The Solicitation indicates the requirement for collecting benefits information for the internal and external study. Are you looking for content that describes the number of organizations that provide each benefit, or do you want to collect data on the cost of the benefit to the employer/employee?

Q8a) It is possible that both kinds of data will be desired for both external and internal comparisons, though it may depend on the specific data. The Contractor will make recommendations in the plan required in Section C.2.1, after consultation with the Secretary's staff, and may wish to address this question in their proposal.

Q9) When you say survey data must address benefits, are you limiting this to compensable benefits such as health, retirement, paid time off, etc., or do you envision expanding it to include items like flexibility, work environment, and voluntary benefits?

Q9a) The most comprehensive but logical analysis reasonably available, given data collection challenges, cost, and time limitations will be preferred.

Q10) Do you want to assess which employees have which benefits, or assess typical benefit level and/or annualized value only?

Q10a) This question is unclear. For each position in the Senate Position Matrix (see Section C.3.3) offices participating in the survey will describe the benefits provided for any employees matching that position.

Q11) Is there an opportunity to earn non-salaried cash (bonuses) in some roles?

Q11a) The Senate does not pay non-salaried bonuses.

Q12) For non-exempt jobs, do you want to quantify annualized overtime value?

Q12a) Yes.

Section C.2.2.1

Q13) Has a preliminary list of roles been identified; and if so, can it be shared?

Q13a) Prior internal attempts to find common roles for such positions will be shared with the Contractor after award.

Section C.2.2.2

Q14) Would the Senate be open to an online job questionnaire for the first phase, collecting job content?

Q14a) Yes, per Section C.2.2.2, "the Contractor shall create a draft online survey instrument to be managed internally by the Secretary's staff on an existing platform (Key Survey) for distribution by the Secretary to all Senate member offices and committees."

Q15) Will the survey be administered at the individual employee level or at the office level?

Q15a) At the office level.

Q16) Will the Secretary provide contact information to all 5,000 employees to collect voluntary job information?

Q16a) No. The Office of the Secretary will send all internal communications within the Senate Community.

Q17) Will there be access to the employees in any of the offices to ensure understanding of the work responsibilities?

Q17a) See the second paragraph of Section C.2.2.1 regarding any necessary interviews of Senate staff.

Q18) Will the Contractor have the opportunity to do any interviews if questions arise regarding the jobs, or will Senate staff perform all interviews? Are you expecting the Contractor to provide the questions to Senate staff and they will gather the answers?

Q18a) See the second paragraph of Section C.2.2.1 regarding any necessary interviews of Senate staff.

Q19) If offices do not participate in the voluntary survey, is there any additional information that the Office can provide in order to ensure the study is comprehensive and includes all types and levels of work?

Q19a) The Secretary is not permitted to include data that is not voluntarily provided.

Q20) How can internal parity be assessed if the information is not provided from the voluntary survey (information/data would be incomplete)?

Q20a) The Senate will rely on the expertise of the Contractor to assist the Secretary in providing the best study possible given whatever level of voluntary disclosure is achieved from the offices surveyed.

Q21) Has the Senate performed a similar study with voluntary participation in the past? If so, what was the level of participation from the offices around the country?

Q21a) Every state office has a corresponding office in Washington, D.C., through which office-wide (D.C. and state) data will be sought. Past attempts to collect voluntary data from offices, while internal and confidential, have been relatively successful.

Q22) Can you describe the Key Survey? Have you used it before?

Q22a) The Key Survey tool allows for the creation of a customized online survey instrument, administration of the survey, and reporting of results. The Senate has used this tool since 2006 to administer a variety of surveys.

Q23) Does the survey need to be administered on the Key Survey platform, or can it be administered on a platform utilized by the Contractor?

Q23a) The Senate's intent at this time is to use the Key Survey platform to maintain custody and security of Senate office data. Respondents are welcome to attempt persuasion toward another platform, but the ability to assist the Senate by designing a survey we can implement on the Key Survey platform, and to use the data received for all other requirements, is preferred.

Q24) If the Contractor does have an online survey for this kind of content collection, are you saying that it needs to be hosted on your servers? Or, that the Contractor would need to build the survey from a tool that you currently own?

Q24a) Experienced members of Senate staff will be able to build the survey onto the platform and manage the execution and technical aspects of the Survey. The Contractor's expertise is sought to assist the Secretary with the design of the survey questions and methodology, particularly with regard to enabling the best external comparison possible.

Q25) If the internal compensation data is gathered on the Senate's existing platform (Key Survey), what technological support is required from the vendor, since they will not have access to the Senate's internal system?

Q25a) Technological expertise may be needed in the manipulation of the data reported out of the Key Survey to allow for correlation of comparative data sets.

Section C.2.2.3

Q26) The Solicitation states that the Contractor shall conduct the comparative analysis with only currently available data collections. Can you clarify what your expectations for "existing" data collections are? Does this mean HR data from an in-house database, or would data from an outside public resource such as the Bureau of Labor Statistics meet the expectations?

Q26a) Any existing public (preferred) or proprietary database would be appropriate. The goal is to avoid the need to perform new surveys of executive branch or private sector pools to obtain the data.

Q27) Do you have existing market data (or access to data sources) for executive branch jobs for benchmarking?

Q27a) No.

Q28) To date, has any analysis and identification of external market peer groups been completed?

Q28a) None were completed in connection with this RFP.

Q29) For external benchmarking, do you want total remuneration values by position (i.e., cash compensation plus annualized value of benefits) or typical benefit level only?

Q29a) Total remuneration values by position would be preferable.

Section C.3.7

Q30) What format do you require for delivery of the final report?

Q30a) Drafts should be exchanged back and forth between the Contractor and the Secretary's staff in Microsoft Word. Excel may be useful for data portions of the report.

Section C.5

Q31) If the final report must be presented no later than January 2020, is there an estimated date of award of contract for this Solicitation?

Q31a) Award will be made as soon after the posted closing date as reasonably possible. January 2020 is the date for submission of a completed draft report to the Office of the Secretary, and brief editing by the Secretary's staff, with the Contractor's assistance, may continue after January to finalize the report. If the Contractor believes the Study cannot be performed in this time frame, you may suggest the shortest amount of time you believe is reasonable for this Study. Ability to meet the January 2020 timeline will be preferred, but is not a required element of the response, and proposed timelines will be evaluated against other submissions.

Q32) The presentation of the results to the Secretary is to occur in January 2020. Is there a specific date that has been identified for the presentation, and is the presentation of the results expected to be in person?

Q32a) A completed draft of the final report is expected by the end of January 2020 (but see the previous question). There is no expectation that the draft must be delivered in person.
Section F.2

Q33) Section F.2 indicated that Contractor staff may be required to attend meetings, briefings, interviews, and working sessions at the U.S. Senate campus in Washington, D.C. However, L.4 indicates that no site visits are currently contemplated. Please clarify whether Contractor staff will be on-site (as required).

Q33a) L.4 refers only to those requirements that apply to the Solicitation bidding period, not to any point in the period of performance of the contract itself. L.4 reflects that there will not be a site visit required for eligibility to respond to the Solicitation. Requirements listed under Section F.2 apply to the contract period of performance and therefore are required within the execution of the contract.

Q34) Are meetings expected to be in person, via teleconference, or a combination of the two? To the extent you can, please approximate the number of in-person meetings you anticipate.

Q34a) At least one to three initial meetings should be in person. Subsequent meeting arrangements will be at the discretion of the Secretary's staff and determined in consultation with the Contractor.

Section F.3

Q35) Implementation was not mentioned in scope of work; however, it is mentioned in section F.5.1 (F.3.1). What are the expectations with respect to implementation? Is the Senate looking for recommendations on how to implement, or actual implementation assistance (i.e., communications, processes, etc.)?

Q35a) Implementation of the system for purposes of this Contract means performing the requirements as described in Section C.

Section H.3.1

Q36) Section H.3.1 requests a project team that consists of a project manager, lead programmer, lead product designer, lead systems installer, lead technical support, and lead trainer. These roles seem disconnected from the scope of the project relative to the design of position matrices and the collection of market data. Is the Secretary looking to build and install a system or to set up a career-level structure with market data?

Q36a) Section H.3.1 is hereby amended so that the project team must include a project manager, a subject matter expert, and sufficient staff to accomplish the requirements in the RFP.

Section H.10.2

Q37) Section H.10.2 states that personnel project requirements must meet Public Law 111.117, Section 704. Does this include project staff on an H1B work visa?

Q37a) Such staff may or may not comply with the requirements of the Contract, which specifically references certain statutory definitions and conditions. Such conditions might require the permanent resident to have applied for naturalization under certain circumstances as described in the statute. The Contractor will be responsible for ensuring that the specific statutory requirements referenced in Section H.10.2.1 have been met.

Q38) Section H.10.2.2 indicates that Contractor personnel report to USCP headquarters for fingerprinting. Are Contractors able to go to an office in their home state to be fingerprinted, or will they be required to go to USCP headquarters?

Q38a) Contractor personnel may be fingerprinted by a local Law Enforcement Agency or Licensed Fingerprinting Agent and thereby must submit their completed FD-258 Fingerprint Cards (two original copies), along with a color copy of a government-issued photo ID, to the Senate upon submission of their documentation to the Contracting Officer's Representative (COR).

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