Contracting with the federal government can be very complex and frustrating as many of you know. As a contracting officer for over 30 years, I have done tens of thousands of contract actions. When I was a contracting officer with the Defense Logistics Agency buying hardware spares, my team of 10 buyer produced 3000 purchase orders a month. Each one of those actions had to go through all the rules in the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR), the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulations (DFARs), and my local agency regulations. Typical decisions involve competitive versus non-competitive, small business set asides and evaluation criteria if not using low price technical acceptable methods. Each one of those decisions has rules that have to be followed, even if it’s a simplified acquisition.
I know contractors find these decisions frustrating and mysterious. I did not use my magic eight ball for most of these decisions, only the really tough ones. Seriously, the rules are as frustrating to the contracting officer as they can be to industry. The discussions that occur between the government customer and his contracting officer can be very challenging at times. Many times I have sat across from a customer who could not grasp why he had to do market research and write a Justification & Approval (J&A) for a weapon system that the government had been buying for years. It made no sense to me either that I would spend months getting that J&A for production of that system, after the government spent years going through the initial source selection and decided on that system. There was no alternative that wouldn’t find the Government going through another long development process. But the rules say you need to write a J&A for any non-competitive action.
I know those of you who do services find the process very confusing. When a contract comes up for re-compete, customers want to keep the same team, especially when the work is highly technical and contractor personnel have become integrated into a team. I have seen this in R&D work and system developments. It is a real challenge to get the customer to describe personnel needs that are not so tailored where only the incumbent could bid the work. It falls on the contracting officer to police this process and try and help his customer get the personnel he needs and provide industry with an open competition. Following the rules for source selection are as challenging to the government customers as it is to industry.
Over the years I have seen policies do 180’s on what is best for government. In the late 90’s bundling was encouraged and was deemed a cost saving policy. Within 10 years the whole bundling concept was deemed a bad policy and bringing like requirements together was discouraged if it would affect a small business. That was the new rule.
I think industry finds government confusing because industry makes many of its decisions based on what is the most efficient choice and maximizes profit. The Government does not do that. Profit isn’t the goal. One example is that the Government uses its contracting process to promote socioeconomic growth by potentially paying more for products and services through the various set-aside programs. The pace of any acquisition is set by these rules and is another reason why it takes so long to get a contract awarded. This frustrates the government customer as much as it does industry. So remember that your CO has lots of rules to check and they do their best to follow them and still get the product and services that their customer needs.