The Government in the past 15 years has been using multiple-award IDIQ contracts for many of the services it needs to acquire. There are many reasons why this type of contract was implemented, but I think the biggest reason was the ability to make award fast to pre-qualified suppliers, thereby making the process faster to support a requirement. Many of these contracts were used in agencies with large recurring like requirements across the agency. Things like program management, administrative support and other basic service needs. Many offices had specific budgets for this work and it became more efficient to award these like requirements across the agency.
I won’t go through the long list of things that go into requirements development but I will say that the government tries not to “bundle” requirements where it would make it harder for smaller companies to compete. However, multiple award IDIQs usually lead to some consolidation of contracts and to more small businesses subcontracting with other small businesses to bid the RFP.
The evaluation process is well understood and no different than a non IDIQ. But it has really two parts to it and it is important to remember that not only are companies evaluated as to their ability to perform but also their ability to compete with the other vendors who have made offers. First the evaluation team goes through all the technical evaluation criteria to determine if the proposals can support the requirement. That is a review of the personnel and their qualification that were laid out in in the RFP. The cost team looks at prices for the personnel and other cost (overheads, G&A) to determine cost. Where this gets tricky is the hours estimated for each labor category needed for each year, so that each company has a level comparison of cost.
The key thing to remember is that the government can chose to award as many contracts as it wants but an offer on a multiple award RFP is no guarantee of an award! What happens is that the government has to decide if all the companies can compete and win work under the IDIQ. If a company’s rates are too high, it may be determined that the company is “outside the competitive range” and not award a contract to them. There is no reason to award a contract to a contractor if there is no possibility that the company will ever be competitive on the individual task orders. Also, the government has to offer a minimum to each awardee and to award with a low % chance of that company getting any meaningful work to meet the minimum, it becomes a scramble to find something for that company to do to meet the minimum. This frustrates contractors who think they have a contract for lots of work but keep losing on each task order competition. I have seen companies lose task order after task order and the government scramble at some point to find something for them to be able to meet the contract award minimum.
After award the management of multiple-award contracts, the process of awarding individual task orders starts. Each order has the requirements sent out and the contractors bid the hours needed for the work. How the contractors propose to complete the task and hours required drives the award decision. This is a smaller version of a proposal since all the contractual provisions flow from the main IDIQ contract. The government can take the low-cost offer, but if it chooses a higher cost proposal, the government must document why it is willing to pay a premium. Hopefully there is sufficient work and the competition process will balance the work distribution across all the awardees. The CO has to manage this with the help of the requirements office.
What is your redress if you don’t like the choice of the government in selecting a winner for the task order? It is very limited. For many years, the GAO had jurisdiction over DoD task order protests valued in excess of $10 million. But in the 2017 NDAA, Congress upped the threshold to $25 million. This significantly varies from the threshold for orders under civilian IDIQs, which remains at $10 million. So, if a company loses a $9M task order it has no means to protest the award decision for the task order.
The multiple award contract has its good points in that it keeps competition in the process for each task order. This keeps cost down for the government. Like any long term deal it has risk for both sides in that cost and requirements change and that can have a negative impact on the bottom line.