One of the lesser known types of contracting is Contingency Contracting. This is contracting in an unknown or unstable and often unsafe environment. Contingency Contracting Officers award contracts and procure goods and services in response to disasters, as part of stability efforts in foreign nations, and/or in a war zone (for example). In other words, NOT a traditional business to government environment.

In this episode, Kevin is joined by Troy Small from the Skyway team. Troy is a retired US Marine Corps Contracting Officer. One of his many roles in contracting was as a Contingency Contracting Officer in Iraq. He knows this role from the ground level.

Troy helps Kevin outline what contingency contracting is – and how being a Contingency Contracting Officer is unique, and uniquely interesting, in many ways. We explain how Contingency Contracting Officers operate in a different environment, in a VUCA environment (more on that in the episode).

This episode will likely broaden your perspective on what contracting officers do, and how they do it, in a VUCA environment.

As you can imagine, the contracting officer has lots of options on how to buy something…Kevin and Paul cover so many of them in 400+ podcast episodes. One of the elements in the process of deciding how to buy something is deciding which type of “solicitation” is appropriate, applicable, allowed, etc.

What type of solicitation would/should/could the Contracting Officer use? An RFQ, an RFP, an IFB, an oral RFP, or a combination?

In this episode, they outline the types of solicitations in government contracting and the why, how and what behind them.

Here’s a Simplified Buying Process.

Step 1. Identify the problem

Step 2. Decide to buy something to solve the problem

Step 3. Decide how to differentiate between options (choose a Basis for Award)

Step 4. Get offers from sellers

Step 5. Pick an offer using the Basis for Award from Step 3.

While GovCon is nowhere near that simple, this process shows the importance of the Basis for Award. When awarding government contracts, especially through source selection, It’s critical for both government AND industry to clearly understand how the award decision will be made. That decision comes from the Basis for Award.

In episode 465, Kevin and Paul covered what “evaluation criteria” and “evaluation factors” are. In this episode, they dig into why these two elements are so important, and how they combine to become the “Basis for Award.” Without a clear understanding of Basis for Award, it is difficult to effectively and efficiently award contracts to meet the requirements we started with in Step 1.

The point of a government contract is not to award a contract.

The point of a government contract is to meet a need for a government customer. The official term for that “need” is the “requirement”. It can often be difficult to describe that need in terms of the problem the contract is solving…not the product the contract is delivering.

Cesar Lopez joins Kevin on this episode to help map out this concept of writing requirements. Cesar is the newest member of the Skyway team. He is a retired US Marine Corps Contracting Officer who has decades of experience across many of the GovCon topics we cover on our podcast.

Cesar shares his experience and his stories of how writing requirements well, or not so well, can be THE difference in whether the contract is awarded to deliver what the government customers wants….or some cases whether the contract is even awarded at all.

The government buys many (or most) things using Firm Fixed Price (FFP) contracts. This contract type is a great option when the government clearly knows what it wants and the contractor knows how to deliver it (see episodes 320 and 473 about building those requirements). FFP is also the ideal option for buying commercial products and services (see episode 386 about using Commercial acquisition procedures).

But what if some part of a FFP contract is more volatile? What if FFP would be a great fit for a contract – except for that one item that has a much more volatile price. In that case, the contractor may not be willing, or able, to absorb the risk of performing the entire contract at a fixed price because that one variable drives so much cost – therefore, the risk that the contractor will lose money is too high.

Enter: the Firm Fixed Price contract with Economic Price Adjustment (the FFP EPA). This contract type allows for the government to adjust the price of one (or a few) particular elements that may drive cost throughout contract performance. The adjustment serves as a guardrail to keep that the one cost from overshadowing the cost of the entire contract.

In this episode, we dig into FAR 16.203 to outline the why, how and what behind the use FFP EPA.