It has been discussed many times in the Ask a CO forum about the blending of contractor and government personnel in the workplace. I recently got a call from a Naval Officer who had been one of my customers when I was a PCO, who has a large workforce of contractor personnel in his office. He was concerned about the use of contractors to support a government technical evaluation. As the use of contractors for technical support has grown, the issue of contractors supporting source selection has become an issue. This will help you advise your customer and employees if you’re asked to support a source selection
The DoD Source Selection Guide, Section 1.4.6, Other Advisors, clearly lays out the rules for what is termed “non-government advisor” participation in a source selection. For an advisor to participate there are two things they must complete. First these advisors must complete a financial disclosure form (OGE 450 is normally used) providing the government with information about their financial holdings to ensure that the advisor does not have conflict of interest. A good example would be an employee who had a 401K with a former employer that is now an offeror on this acquisition. That employee would be unable to participate in that evaluation.
The second thing your company must do is complete a non-disclosure agreement (NDA). Your employees should not look at any data from a company without the appropriate NDA in place. Proprietary data must be protected, and you don’t want your employees accused of leaking data.
It is suggested that the government inform potential offerors in the RFP of the participation of companies supporting the evaluation.
Once approved to participate, what can the advisors do? They can evaluate the proposals against the source selection criteria, but they cannot provide any ratings or rankings. This must be done by government personnel only. In the Navy we had evaluation teams where the leaders were the authors of the evaluation reports and had to be able to defend it through the review process. Contractor personnel could not participate in that part of the process. While contractor personnel can participate in technical evaluations, they can not participate in any past performance evaluation in any form. That is solely a government responsibility.
Contractor employees can participate in a source selection evaluation within the rules described above. I have completed source selections where contractor employees have participated. If the rules were followed it went smoothly and the evaluations were not challenged because of contractor participation.
Great article Steve – this explains what could be a very complex situation. I like your point – it works well when the rules are understood and followed. Thanks for the explanation!
Steve,
When I was a KO at SOCOM, it was very common to use contractors to evaluate proposals. It still is.
There is every a clause in the SOFARS (SOCOM’s FAR Sup) that explains that contractor personnel will be used to evaluate proposals (SOFARS 5652.209-9002 and 9003. For example, -9003 states:
“The contractor’s attention is directed to the fact that USSOCOM contracts for various IT, business, acquisition, technical, and staff support services, some of which require support contractor access to proprietary information submitted by other contractors during administration of this contract. Execution of this contract constitutes approval to release the contract, contractor proposals, other contractor information, or proprietary data obtained during contract administration to Government Support Contractors who require access and have signed Non-Disclosure and Rules of Conduct/Conflict of Interest Statements.”
In other words, offerors are on notice.
This clause used to require the KO to identify the company who employed the evaluators, but they took that out when they updated it in 2015 – probably since that info is easy (ish) to get on USASpending.gov for example.
Bottom line, the govt team is assuming offerors already know that other contractors serving as evaluators and influencing the decision to some extent.
The best risk mitigation strategy for other contractors seeing your proposal? Targeting. We are more likely to know who is evaluating, what they are looking for, what they are advising on, and why.
Targeting doesn’t cure all, but it come pretty close….