**Contracting Officer's Representative**

**Refresher Training - Day 1**

**A Telecast Originating from the BLM National Training Center in
Phoenix, Arizona**

**April 3, 2002**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

\[ Willie Nelson\'s \"On the Road Again \]

Announcer: Live from the Bureau of Land Management National Training
Center in Phoenix, Arizona, the BLM Satellite Network presents
Contracting Officer\'s Representative Refresher Training. Or The Road to
Successful Contract Performance Through Consistent Contract
Administration. And now, the host of your program, Denise Bickler.

D. Bickler: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our satellite
presentation of Contracting Officer\'s Representative, or COR Refresher
Training. We have a number of department of interioring as represented
from across the U.S. as well as the Forest Service. So welcome to all of
you and thanks for joining us for the broadcast. As required by the
department, CORs are to receive 24 hours of initial training and eight
hours of Refresher Training every three years to maintain their
certification. Well, this is your year for Refresher Training, so for
the next two days we will be reviewing and discussing with you the
various elements involved in proper administration of supply, service
and construction contracts. At the end of these two days, you\'ll need
to complete the test located in the Course Management Tool on the BLM
National Training Center website. After you\'ve successfully completed
the test, which by the sway a minimum score of 70%, you will be
recertified as a COR and receive your certificate. Please remember to
send a copy of your certificate to the person in your office responsible
for maintaining the list of certified CORs. In the BLM, this is usually
the state procurement analyst. Now, joining me today to share their
knowledge and expertise are two other Contracting Officers from the
Bureau of Land Management National Business Center. Gwen Moore works
with me in the Construction and A/E Branch. Good morning, Gwen. It\'s
good to have you here.

G. Moore: It\'s great to be here.

D. Bickler: You and I have trained together before, and today we are
going to have to be on our best behavior because our other instructor is
the boss.

G. Moore: Liz as worked with us before, she knows what to expect. I
don\'t think it will be a problem.

D. Bickler: That\'s true. Our other instructor today, folks s Liz
McDill, and she is the branch chief for construction A/E. Liz, we are
glad you came to join us.

L. McDill: Good morning to both of you and thank you.

D. Bickler: Well, do you realize, ladies, that among the three of us, we
have 70 years of contracting experience in every area of contracting?

G. Moore: That\'s overwhelming.

L. McDill: And most of that\'s me.

D. Bickler: I wasn\'t going to give that away, Liz, but since you did.

G. Moore: Thank you, Liz.

D. Bickler: During these next two days a lot of information will be
discussed, including some helpful hints, personal anecdotes or war
stories and some short exercises. We\'ll have you doing during the
broadcast. Hopefully by the end of the course we will have clearly
presented to you a review of proper contract administration and all your
questions will have been answered. With that in mind, we encourage and
invite you to participate during the course. We\'re here for you. You
will be using the information from this course in your everyday work
assignments. We want you to know that your participation is very
important to the success of the satellite course. And to help you
communicate in real time, we\'re going to use push‑to‑talk technology.
So you can interact with us directly. We encourage you to use those
push‑to‑talk microphones when you have a question or something to share
with us and other viewers. Now, whenever you use the push‑to‑talk, we
ask that you begin by stating your name and your location. We\'ll
acknowledge your call and then you can proceed with your question or
comment. That will help us avoid confusion when more than one of you
calls in at a time. To help manage all of this, we\'ll let you know when
it\'s ok to push‑to‑talk by displaying a green light in the upper right
corner of your screen like you should see right now. During periods when
we\'d prefer that you hold your questions for the moment, a red light
will be displayed in the upper right corner. Now, we\'ll keep the green
light on as much as possible because we want to hear from you and we
want to answer any questions that may come up. If you do not have the
phone number and numeric pass code for the push‑to‑talk telephone bridge
for your agency, please call our operator at\.... If you don\'t have a
push‑to‑talk system at your viewing site, we still want to hear from you
and we encourage you to participate by telephone or fax. You can call us
at the toll‑free number\.... Sites in the greater Phoenix area should
call\.... You can send us a fax at any time at\.... Please use the fax
form provided in the back of your study guide. All your course
materials, including the study guide, course evaluation and test are
provided at the website at www.ntc.blm.gov. Have your study guide handy
because we\'ll be referring to it throughout the broadcast. It will
assist you in completing your test as well. Now, during the next two
days we\'re going to address several topics. Today we\'ll cover
teamwork, e‑commerce or electronic commerce and I.D.E.A.S., Prompt Pay,
Developing Your Requirement and Purchase Requests. Tomorrow we\'ll cover
solicitation review, site visits, conducting a pre‑work meeting,
documentation, contract modification, variation in quantity, labor law
compliance, standards of conduct and, finally we\'ll close out the store
with Joe Federline, the group manager for the Bureau of Land Management
property and acquisition management. He\'ll joinous a video call from
Washington D.C. to talk about current management issues related to
contracting. We will have two 15‑minute breaks during each broadcast to
stretch your legs and clear your mind. Well, I guess that\'s about it
for the housekeeping items. Gwen, would you like to get things started
for us, please?

G. Moore: Thanks, Denise. Before I begin my unit on teamwork, I need to
make a disclaimer. All the information being provided today may not
apply to every situation. Every office functions differently. So you
must pick and choose what applies to your particular requirement. If you
are in doubt as to how this works in your agency, your local procurement
office can offer you guidance. Let\'s all turn to page 4 in the study
guide and begin our review. The American Heritage Dictionary defines
teamwork as a cooperative effort by the members of a team to achieve a
common goal. Our goal in addressing teamwork is that you know that it
takes more than one person to procure an item or service, to know the
COR\'s role and responsibilities in the process. BLM usually uses a
three‑person team approach to the contract administration. This team
consists of a Project Inspector or PI, a Contracting Officer, or CO, and
a Contracting Officer\'s Representative, or COR. In supply contracts, or
service contracts, we generally use only two people, that of the role of
a CO and the role of Project Inspector.

D. Bickler: Excuse me, Gwen, Weaver a question that came in earlier via
e‑mail regarding that very topic. This is the question\... in a general
services contract with multiple separate task orders at different
locations, what is a task order manager or ‑‑ and what are that
person\'s responsibilities compared to the designated COR on the
contract? Is a task order manager actually another term for an alternate
COR or Project Inspector?

L. McDill: Denise, I will be happy to answer that question. In the BLM,
first of all, we do not call them task order managers. We refer to them
as task managers. The responsibilities of ‑‑ are similar to a PI and are
associated with delivery orders or task orders that are issued against
existing contracts such as IDIQ contracts or BPAs. The duties of this
individual are they are the on site eyes, they are the technical expert,
they are the one who is actually overseeing the work as it is being
performed. Now, if you are appointed as a task manager, my suggestion is
that you attend a formal training course on contract administration to
familiarize yourself with the administrative duties of that type of a
position. Does that answer your question?

D. Bickler: I hope so.

L. McDill: Ok.

G. Moore: Great. Well, these are the only people with authority on the
contracts, that of the CO, the COR and Project Inspector. This
three‑tiered approach provides number one a checks and balance system.
It offers more than one pair of eyes, and it allows the government time
to think. Each team member is defined in the Federal Acquisition
Regulations. FAR discusses the Contracting Officer as the person with
authority to administer and terminate contracts and make related
determinations and findings. This term includes certain authorized
persons acting within their limits as delegated by the Contracting
Officer. The term authorized persons is where we get our COR. The FAR
also goes on to discuss the person that is conducting project
inspection, but now they\'re referred to as the person providing
government quality assurance performed at such times and places as may
be necessary to determine whether or not the supplies or services
conform to the contract requirements. So they\'ve expanded the
inspection clause just a little bit. Each member of the contract
administration team is of equal importance to the health and success of
the team. That\'s why we establish this team early in the acquisition
process. So that everyone has a feeling of ownership of the project.
Now, let\'s talk about the expectations of each team member. On page 4
in your study guide are some fill‑in‑the‑blanks. If you would like to
fill those in as we talk, that would be great. The Project Inspector
expects support from the other team members. This means that the
inspector has a place to go to get questions answered, it\'s an
opportunity for him to vent or share feelings when he is encountering
problems, and the PI also should expect and can expected continual
dialogue from the other team members. Good communication is necessary
through the entire contracting process. The Project Inspector needs to
be able to get ahold of someone when a problem arises. The Contracting
Officer\'s Representative has a bit different expectations of the team
members. The COR can expect sound business advice. What are the
appropriate actions to take? They can also expect help with acquisition
strategy. How do we deal with problems? And what might alternative
solutions be? Continual dialogue, too, is a part of the COR\'s
expectation. The Contracting Officer, again, has even different
expectations from the team members. First of all, we need your help in
obtaining sound technical advice. We contract for a lot of different
work methods that we might not have much expertise in. We expect you to
help us understand. Well drilling 101, excavation 101. These are the
types of things that we look to our technical representatives for
assistance. Continual dialogue. Again, we want to know what\'s going on
with our projects. We appreciate you calling us and just letting us know
not only the bad things that might be happening out there, but more
importantly, what is going right. And, finally, we expect good
documentation. We must have a record of what\'s going on with our
projects. The responsibilities of each team member vary. So let\'s talk
about them. Can anyone, using your push‑to‑talk, can anyone tell me
based on your own experience what you think the most important
responsibility might be for any one of the members of the contract
administration team? Well, the Project Inspector is the eyes and the
ears of the Contracting Officer, providing on‑site observation and
documentation of the contractor\'s activities. The COR has the ultimate
responsibility ‑‑ the COR has the ultimate responsibility for ensuring
work performed is in compliance with the project specifications and also
ensures that any payments made are only for work that\'s actually been
completed. And, finally, the COR is responsible for making a physical
observation of the end product, or the final inspection. The Contracting
Officer is ultimately responsible for the overall completion of the
project, in other words, we try to keep it all together. We are the only
ones warranted to obligate government funds. Open communication is the
essential element in teamwork. We\'re all human and errors are going to
occur. But we must work together to concentrate on the solution to these
problems rather than how they happened or who caused the problem. Lack
of open communication can result in the contractor playing team members
against each other, and the end result of that is nothing but chaos.
Now, sometimes we have a tendency to discuss in these training sessions
negative situations because those are the ones that we most remember,
and sometimes they make the most interesting war stories, if you will,
but I have an occasion and we\'re going to try throughout this training
to give you some of the positive things that happen, too, and my
positive experience regarding teamwork has to do with the \$5.5 million
project that is currently under construction. The COR visits the project
on a weekly basis, more often if necessary. The Project Inspector is on
site daily and was hired specifically to do just this job. Those two
people have a great line of communication, because they see each other
frequently, the documentation is good. My COR calls me after every visit
to the job site. We have a very good teamwork going. The problems are
solved early, the solutions are done as a team, everybody\'s aware of
what\'s going on, and that project has gone extremely smoothly and
we\'re just about finished with it. So for a very high dollar job, very
high visibility, the teamwork has been an essential element in this
project\'s success.

D. Bickler: Gwen, sometimes I think those high‑dollar projects have a
tendency to go awry because they\'re so big, too, don\'t they?

G. Moore: Exactly.

D. Bickler: I have a small‑dollar project I\'m working on, a small
bridge project, the placement of the bridge, and the contractor we
awarded to was known for being a problem, and the COR contract team, we
came together, the COR, the PI and I, and we prepared to baby‑sit the
contractor and stay on top of his work. In doing that, the COR sends his
diaries, regularly, he calls me weekly to let me know what is going on
on the project, and as a result, the contractor has kept on schedule and
the project will be finished on time. And it would not have been
possible if we hadn\'t worked together.

G. Moore: Great. Two good examples of how teamwork, when it\'s working
well, makes the project go well for all of us. So just remember, we must
talk to each other because we need to work together to get the job done.
It brings great results for all of us. Denise, it\'s all yours.

D. Bickler: Thanks a lot, Gwen, for all that information. And let\'s
move right on to our next topic, which is electronic commerce and
I.D.E.A.S. Liz, I believe you signed up to handle this one.

L. McDill: Yes, I did. Thank you, Denise. The electronic commerce and
I.D.E.A.S. Section begins on page 7 in the study guide. At the end of
this segment you\'ll understand your role in using electronic commerce,
commonly referred to as EC, and I.D.E.A.S., the department\'s electronic
acquisition system. Federal Acquisition Regulations or FAR part 5,
specifies that all procurement actions greater than \$25,000 must be
publicized. We refer to these notices as synopses. In the past the
synopses were sent directly to the old commerce business daily. However,
as of October 1st, 2001, we were mandated to utilize a new process. This
process includes sending synopses through a single government‑wide point
of entry, or GPE, one more acronym that we have to learn, which is now
called Federal Business Opportunities, or FedBizOpps. There is a website
called FedBizOpps.com where you can have more information and this is
where you access what is going on. The CBD no longer exists.

Caller: Is that.governor or.com?

If I say.com?

D. Bickler: It\'s dot GOV.

Caller: In the study guide it says dot GOV.

L. McDill: In addition, the solicitations will be posted electronically.
The eventual to have contractors respond electronically. However, since
all contractors are not presently registered, the BLM will be issuing
solicitations both in hard copy and online. Other agencies may be using
different procedures, so you should check with your local contracting
office to see what procedure your agency is using. Contractors must be
registered to access the solicitations and to send electronic bids or
proposals. Your role in this process as a COR is to encourage potential
contractors to register. The website once again is
WWW.fedBizOpps.governor. By the way, you can access that by typing in
OPPS with one P or two Ps. One of those strange situations.

G. Moore: Liz, the BLM deals with many mom and pop shop type
contractors. These folks have little or no commute computer skills. How
are they able to bid our jobs?

L. McDill: This question has come up quite often, Gwen, and since this
is the electronic age, most vendors have the opportunity to utilize
computers by going to their public library, the BLM\'s public rooms have
computers available for use by contractors or potential contractors, and
it\'s becoming more and more prevalent. So we do have ways of them
accessing this information. When they do utilize these, they must always
provide a name and number of the contract specialist when we publicize
these and they can contact us directly by telephone. We can help them
become registered and go from there. In my office, one of the first EC
solicitations that we issued we made sure that we publicized the
contract specialist\'s name and phone number and we had numerous calls
from potential vendors asking how they could become registered and how
they could get the information. And we suggested that they go to their
local public library or the public room. We did have one phone call from
an individual who made the comment that he was unfamiliar with
computers, had never utilized one, but his granddaughter knew how to do
it and she would help him access the information necessary.

D. Bickler: I guess we\'re all ‑‑

G. Moore: I guess we\'re all in the electronic age whether we like it or
not.

D. Bickler: Like it or not.

L. McDill: In addition to posting electronic solicitations, the DOI
bureaus utilize an electronic system for processing procurement
transactions. This system, please don\'t faint, this system is called
the Interior Department electronic acquisition systems or I.D.E.A.S. It
is not a perfect system, but we are mandated to use it as best we can.
The COR is responsible for submitting the requirement, including a
Purchase Request and the specifications or work statement through
I.D.E.A.S. All requests public submitted electronically. For land
treatment and construction projects, additional information is required
for the Purchase Request in I.D.E.A.S. This information was previously
provided on the 1510‑5 but is not on the I.D.E.A.S. Purchase Request
form. This information will be replicated in I.D.E.A.S. As an attachment
in the near future. Completion of the Purchase Request will be discussed
in detail later in today\'s broadcast. There is a positive side to the
I.D.E.A.S. Program. Most information for specific acquisition only needs
to be entered once, and carries through the entire process. If you do
not know how to enter a purchase requisition in I.D.E.A.S., contact your
state procurement analyst\'s office or your I.D.E.A.S. Help Decemberk
and someone will be glad to help you. Are there any questions concerning
either FedBizOpps or I.D.E.A.S.? If so, use your push to talk and we\'ll
be happy to answer them.

Caller: This is Bob.

D. Bickler: Hi, Bob. What\'s your question for us?

Caller: How would we access I.D.E.A.S. To get the information you were
just referring to?

D. Bickler: What bit of information? The 1510?

Caller: You said we could get the help line from I.D.E.A.S. That would
help us through the program or what have you.

L. McDill: Ok. Within the BLM we have a help desk, an ideas help desk
assigned. You would have to look in the phone directory, or if you would
like to contact us, send a fax to the one of the three of us or call us
after this broadcast, and we can get the number, the help desk number
for you. Does that answer your question?

Caller: All right. Thank you.

L. McDill: You\'re welcome.

D. Bickler: Great. Any other questions?

L. McDill: Ok. Now we will move on to Prompt Pay, which is on page 9 in
your guide. The object of this segment is to identify your part in
processing a payment request properly to avoid paying interest. This is
a team effort as the invoice goes through several individuals prior to
payment, but still must be paid in the time frame mandated by law. The
Prompt Pay act requires payment of a proper invoice within a specified
time frame. The payment due dates after receipt of invoice or acceptance
of goods or services are seven days for perishables, 14 days for
construction progress payments and 30 days for all others. Every
contract has a Designated Billing Office or DBO, and invoices should be
sent to the DBO. They must be date stamped immediately upon receipt and
processed expeditiously. Time is of the essence. The date stamp is
critical because without a date stamp, the payment due date is
calculated from the actual date of the invoice.

D. Bickler: Liz, I had a little situation where that\'s exactly what
happened. My pay request was for more than \$100,000. It had been
properly submitted to the designate billing office. Was processed and
forwarded to the Contracting Officer. However the DBO forgot to date
stamp the invoice when they received it. I received \"about 10 days
after it had been signed by the COR and there were several dockments
with a variety of dates, and I did not note the date on the invoice
either and I processed it for payment. The voucher examiner notified me
that there would be interest paid because the invoice was two months old
and there was not evidence of when the DBO had received it. So I sat
with the voucher examiner for two hours looking over every piece of
paper that had been submitted, trying desperately to find a date that we
could use to save us from that interest, but to no avail, and the bottom
line is we wound up paying over a thousand dollars in interest because
the invoice was two months old and we forgot to date stamp it and I
didn\'t catch it.

L. McDill: Oh, dear. That\'s just one example. And these happen
frequently. It\'s nothing new. It\'s been happening for as long as I
have been working in contracting. And it\'s such a simple fix to date
stamp an invoice. So we must remember to do that.

G. Moore: Liz, we have a different situation in the area I work in. Many
times our project inspectors are out on the job with the contractor, and
it\'s remote. The contractor hands the invoice to the Project Inspector.
That\'s not the DBO. Now what happens to that payment?

L. McDill: Well, what they can do is the Project Inspector should either
hand the invoice back and request that the contractor prepare and submit
an invoice properly, mail one directly to the DWO, we can date stamp it
in those, or we can have the Project Inspector get the invoice to the
COR within a reasonable period of time, which would be like two or three
days, have the COR date stamp the invoice and process it in the normal
manner.

Caller: What\'s a DBO?

L. McDill: That\'s the Designated Billing Office. And that is the office
that is designated in a contract where the contractor is supposed to
send an invoice. In all of our contracts we state what is the correct ‑‑
the billing ‑‑ the Designated Billing Office, we give the address and a
point of contact in that office.

G. Moore: But most importantly, we need to make sure we date stamp those
invoices when they are received in the DBO ‑‑ at the DBO.

L. McDill: Thank you, Gwen.

D. Bickler: Are there any other questions?

L. McDill: If an invoice is incorrect or incomplete, there are two
courses of action to follow. The preferable action is to return the
invoice to the contractor. This must be done within seven days of
receipt of the invoice. You must tell the contractor what was missing or
incorrect and request that they submit a corrected invoice. The payment
due date will be calculated from the date stamp on the corrected
invoice. The second course of action is that if the invoice only
required minor corrections, you may hold the invoice and request the
contractor submit additional data. You must document on the invoice the
date you requested and the date you received this additional data before
forwarding it to the C.O. The payment due date is suspended until you
receive the additional data only if you have documented everything.
Finance must see that the invoice was delayed because you were awaiting
additional information from the contractor and it was not a delay caused
by the government itself. So, here\'s a question\... what happens if
you\'re out of your office during all of this? Someone in your office
must be designated to check your in‑box for payment requests for
invoices. If your office is the DBO, payment must be made within the
required time frames, whether you\'re in the office or not. So someone
has to be responsible for looking at and forwarding an invoice to the CO
to process for payment. The CO occasionally may make payment when the
COR is unavailable, but to do so, we must receive the invoice. We can\'t
make a payment when we don\'t actually have the invoice. So, please,
have someone check your in‑box if you are not going to be in. Items you
need to remember to submit with a construction progress payment is a
little different, and these are frequently a cause for delay in a
payment. They must include a certification of a progress payment ‑‑ you
know, I can talk ‑‑ Subcontractor Payment Information. The bottom line
is that we must avoid paying interest. Every BLM state and Center
Director receives interest statistics for their state or center each
month, and I believe other bureaus also receive the same information.
The BLM Washington Office administration has set a goal of 97% or
greater for the number of invoices that should be paid on time. For
FY2002, BLM\'s current year‑to‑date is 95.3%. So we\'re a little below
where we should be. Last year we did better on our payments, and we are
increasing ‑‑ or we are becoming a little better with our payments each
month. The 9/11 episode caused ‑‑ and the shutdown of the Internet both
caused some additional delays that we hadn\'t experienced before. We\'re
coming out of it now.

G. Moore: I believe a very heavy fire season also had a lot of impact on
interest that was paid on some of those things that was occurring.
We\'ve had several really serious things happen this year that have
affected our interest percentages.

L. McDill: The interest ‑‑

Caller: This is Rich Page. From Worland, Wyoming. I missed how long do
you have to return the invoice to the contractor.

L. McDill: You have seven days from the date of receipt. If you don\'t
reject an invoice within that time period, it is considered accepted and
you should not return it to a contractor.

Caller: Thank you. What\'s the critical day on the date stamp? What do
you gauge that by?

L. McDill: The critical ‑‑ the date stamp in the Designated Billing
Office is the date that the payment section uses to calculate interest.
In the case of construction contracts, the date ‑‑ 14 days from that
date stamp is the date that the grace period that you have to process an
invoice. On the 15th day after that date stamp, that invoice starts
accruing interest. In the case of other invoices other than perishables,
it\'s 30 days. So 31 days after that date stamp is when another invoice
would start accruing interest.

G. Moore: I\'d like to add a little something here to something Liz said
earlier regarding the receiving of a an invoice. If you are going to be
out of the office, you\'ve got planned leave or whatever, training, all
the things that we\'re out of the office for, how are you going to know
that a payment is due? Well, this should have been discussed at the
pre‑work conference, and we\'re going to talk a little later in this
presentation about some of the things that you need to talk about at the
pre‑work, but one of the things definitely is try and figure out when
the contractor anticipates asking for a draw. Generally it\'s a couple
times a month, 1st and the 15th. If you\'re planning to be on leave
during the 15th, make sure that your office, somebody in that office,
knows that that payment is expected, and they will handle it for us so
that we\'re not wasting our money on this doggone interest.

Caller: What if you have invoices that are not the correct amount,
there\'s minor errors, say, they had to pay ‑‑ you had to pay 30% of the
total and it may be a few dollars off, do you have to go back for
another invoice or can you correct and that just make a note on it as an
‑‑ and then contact the contractor?

L. McDill: Generally what we do is we can make corrections to invoices
that reduce the amount to be paid. Can never increase the amount. But
what we do, or what I\'ve always done, is I contact the contractor,
discuss it with them, let them know what corrections I\'m going to be
making, and make sure that they are in agreement with the corrections.
Make the necessary pen and ink changes to an invoice and then I forward
it on to payment for processing.

D. Bickler: We had another question ‑‑

Caller: Dana McClure, Yellowstone Wyoming.

D. Bickler: Hi, how are you?

Caller: Good. What is the interest rate?

L. McDill: It changes yearly. It is published in the Federal register, I
believe, at the beginning of every fiscal year. The current rate is
6.25%. Some years it\'s been at 8. ‑‑ I believe it was about 8 1/2
percent a couple years ago.

D. Bickler: Just as a reminder to everybody, I didn\'t say this to begin
w but on the push‑to‑talk system, if you could stay about 18 inches away
from the mic, and you sound just fine, we can hear you. Otherwise it\'s
a little loud. Ok?

L. McDill: Dana, did that answer your question?

Caller: Yes, it did. Thank you.

L. McDill: You\'re welcome.

D. Bickler: Thank you, Dana.

L. McDill: Are there any more questions?

Caller: This is care 41 Omaha. If you were to ‑‑ Karen from home you a.
If you were to receive an invoice from a contractor say dated December
1st but received this invoice via fax and the fax machine dates it, say,
September 15th, and the Designated Billing Office does not date stamp
it, what would be your best guess as to what date the voucher examiner
would hold you to?

G. Moore: What voucher would do if it was not date stamped, voucher
would go back to the date on that invoice and many of our contractors do
predate their invoices. They do it all at the first of the month, but we
might not get it until the middle of the month. And so, Karen, that\'s
why it is essential that we have a date received. If it was fax to do
our office, we need to somehow highlight that, date received, so that
voucher will know that that was the day we received it.

D. Bickler: They can still date stamp that fax, too.

G. Moore: Good point.

D. Bickler: Any other questions?

L. McDill: Your part in this process is crucial, as you are responsible
for recording the date the invoice was received. So, please don\'t
forget to date stamp the invoice and forward it to the COR promptly. Why
don\'t you all now turn to page 10 and I will read a scenario with you,
and then using your push‑to‑talk, you may give us your answer. An? Voice
for ‑‑ an invoice for January actual annual services was dated July 1st
was submitted for payment. The invoice was received in the Field Office
on July 15th. The COR prepared the 1510‑10 and forwarded the package to
the CO on July 25th, the invoice was not date stamped. What date will
payments used to calculate the due date? Ok. Who thinks ‑‑

Caller: This is Bob Chenoweth.

L. McDill: Go ahead.

Caller: I think it\'s July 10th.

L. McDill: You are absolutely correct. Had they date stamped in that
voice, the date calculated would have been July 15th rather than the
10th. Thank you, Bob. Gwen, I believe you have a scenario you\'re going
to read now.

G. Moore: I certainly do. A contractor has prepared an invoice on
October 1st for payment on his fence construction contract. The invoice
was received and date stamped by the COR on October 3rd. The COR
prepared and forwarded the invoice package to the Contracting Officer
for payment. The Contracting Officer received the payment on October
11th and forwarded it to payments for processing. Was this invoice
handled in a proper manner to avoid paying interest? Anybody know?
Anybody have any ideas?

Caller: Yes, this is Bob ‑‑ I think ‑‑

D. Bickler: Bob, I heard you first. What was your answer?

Caller: Yes, I think it was handled correctly.

D. Bickler: Ok. Wait a minute, I heard Don. What did you think?

Caller: I agree.

D. Bickler: Ok.

G. Moore: Well, you\'re absolutely correct, although this one was very
close. In reiterating the details of the scenario on the calendar, we
had a date of October 1, it came to the COR on October 3rd, went to the
Contracting Officer on the 11th and it was date stamped in on the 3rd.
So 14 days from the 3rd makes that due on the 17th. The Contracting
Officer had it in their hand on the 11th. That\'s four working days
before the payment is due, but it was very, very close. Now, since
September 11th, we\'ve all had and experience add little bit of problem
with erratic mail service. So when a payment is this close to the 14
days, we probably need to take some special steps, and one of those
steps would be fax ‑‑ send this information to us by express mail,
overnight mail. Now, many of us are finding out that overnight mail has
turned into two or three days, but would that certainly have been one
way for us to make sure that these documents got to the Contracting
Officer timely. Another suggestion is if we are up against the final
payment date and really running out of time, call us. Talk to us about
the situation. We have a very good working relationship with our voucher
examiners, and oftentimes through ‑‑ by taking fax information down to
them, they will go ahead and make a payment to try and avoid having to
pay interest. But, again, talk to us about these situations. We don\'t
want this to become a habit, but we can certainly do it on special
occasions.

L. McDill: Now, Gwen ‑‑

Caller: Don Winner, Mount Ranier National Park. Does have it to be
postmarked or received by the 14 days?

G. Moore: The payment will be made by the department of treasury through
wire transfer and the transfer has to be made on the 14th day.
Otherwise, we are stuck with that interest.

D. Bickler: And the 14 days is calculated from the date that you\'ve
date stamped the invoice, and if we for get to do that, then it\'s
calculated from the date of the invoice. Does that answer your question?

Caller: Yes. Thank you.

Caller: Clay at arcadia park. Name is GILLEY. Arcadia park checked in a
while back but you were busy. Question is sometimes when we receive
invoices which the work has not been approved yet, or, in fact, there is
not a valid payroll involved, so we have to hold the invoice up. How do
we date stamp this? Or do we just return the invoice?

L. McDill: Gill, this is one of those situations where you still date
stamp the invoice. Always date stamp when you receive one. But this is
one of those situations when you have to make a determination whether or
not to return the invoice to the contractor or request additional
supporting information. I would say in this case, if it looked like the
work was ‑‑ the amount charged was correct but you just didn\'t have
some of the back‑up documentation, contact the contractor, ask for the
additional back‑up information, and annotate the invoice that this is
what occurred. Then, when you receive the additional information or
back‑up data, go ahead and forward the entire package to the CO for
processing.

G. Moore: One caution I would offer in this situation, if it\'s a very
minor correction that needs to be done, we need to make sure that when
we\'re requesting that information from the contractor that we keep
track of it. We are all very busy people and wearing a lot of hats and
sometimes these things get lost in the stack of work that we\'re all
expected to do. So if we\'re going to hold an invoice, we need to make
sure that we follow up. If you don\'t hear from the contractor
immediately and we\'re still within that seven‑day period, perhaps it
would be better to return it to him rather than trying to correct it.

L. McDill: Another thing that you could do is when you do contact the
contractor, let him know that you cannot process his invoice for payment
until you do have the additional data that is required. Tell him that it
will delay his payment, so please expedite the information so that you
can go ahead and pay him in a timely manner.

G. Moore: And in your particular situation, you suggested that you had
not received a payroll. What we do in our office frequently is if you
don\'t have payrolls, contractors having a hard time getting them to us
for whatever reason, we can then reduce his payment and withhold some
money, retain some money. We\'ll only do that once, and he\'ll get the
hint that he better get his documentation into us. So in your situation
there are a lot of scenarios that we can go through. If you\'re in doubt
about which one to use, please call your Contracting Officer. We\'ll be
more than happy to chat with you about what is the appropriate action to
take.

Caller: Hello, this is Rich in Wyoming again.

D. Bickler: Could you step back from the mic just a SMIDGE?

L. McDill: SMIDGE?

Caller: How is that? If it\'s a construction contract and he signs
certifications but doesn\'t have the payrolls, there seems to be a
discrepancy at that point.

L. McDill: Gwen, you want to address this one again?

G. Moore: Well, the certification merely says that he has paid his
people and paid his suppliers. We, of course, need the weekly payrolls,
Rich, but as we well know, sometimes that gets lost in the paper work
shuffle, and my own personal way of handling this is if it\'s the first
payment, I really don\'t get too excited about it. But if it\'s a second
or third payment and we still don\'t have payrolls, I feel we need to
take a bit stronger action and by withholding some of his money,
retaining some of his money, because of the payroll, the lack of
payrolls, we do get his attention.

D. Bickler: We have a fax that\'s come in from Doug porter, and the
question s how does a contractor, Contracting Officer or COR know when
interest has been paid?

L. McDill: I\'ll answer that one. In the BLM we receive a monthly report
from our payment office and on this report it annotates the specific
contract, the payment number, the dollar amount of interest that has
been paid each month. This report is what is forwarded to the department
each month also and this is how they\'re tracking our Prompt Pay
interest. Now, when department is tracking Prompt Pay interest that is
paid, it is not the dollar amounts that they\'re so concerned about,
which is strange, it is, rather, the number of Prompt Pay interest
actions that are processed each month. So if you are charged interest on
your project, my suggestion is you can either contact your payment
office or perhaps your budget person that\'s responsible within your
specific location will also receive a copy of that report and you can ‑‑
they\'ll tell you.

G. Moore: In addition to this monthly report, not only does it tell us
what contracts interest was paid on, but every Contracting Officer has
to justify what happened. We have to give a short scenario of who
dropped the ball, if you will. So it\'s ‑‑ we all become this awful
statistic when we have to pay interest.

D. Bickler: And obviously the contractor will know that interest has
been paid when he ‑‑

L. McDill: Receives his check.

D. Bickler: Receives his notice of deposit.

Caller: This is chip in Phoenix. How is that feedback taken back down to
the COR and the PI? Do they normally find that out or a lot of times are
they not aware of the interest payments?

L. McDill: Actually, we don\'t normally pass on the information ‑‑ well,
we do. Because if we\'re making ‑‑ if we\'re paying Prompt Pay interest
and if the delay was caused by the COR or the PI, we will let you know.
The CO will normally let you know because we will be telling you in the
future, please process your payments more expeditiously.

G. Moore: Also the interest comes out of their budget. That\'s what
they\'re trying to do, is identify the office that made the mistake, and
the interest comes from their budget.

L. McDill: If it\'s their fault.

D. Bickler: I know also in our fault, when we get that invoice, we
usually will know that interest is going to be paid, because we know how
much time we\'re going to have. If we don\'t see a date stamp on the
invoice, and it\'s the day that we think it\'s roughly the day it\'s
due, we\'re going to call the COR and say ‑‑ we\'re going to let you
know, there\'s going to be interest paid. I will process it as quickly
as I can, but it\'s due today so there will be a bit of interest paid on
the invoice. Sometimes we know the interest is going to be paid. It\'s
obvious the payment is late. We call the COR and tell them. Otherwise,
it\'s these notices that we have to justify and your Field Office ‑‑ or
your supervisors get those reports. Are there any other questions?

Caller: Yeah, one other question ‑‑

D. Bickler: Who are ‑‑

Caller: Sit the responsible of the PI or the COR to certified a weekly
payroll?

D. Bickler: Could you step back from the mic just a little bit ‑‑

G. Moore: Yes ‑‑ I am sorry, I didn\'t catch your name. Daal Don from
Casper.

G. Moore: Don, yes, all of the Contracting Officers representatives
should be conducting some sort of audit on a contractor\'s payroll, and
in the construction arena those are expected to be turned in weekly, not
just for the prime contractor, but also his subs, and we expect that
those are audited and submitted to the Contracting Officer.

Caller: Thank you.

D. Bickler: Casper, was that you that just called?

Caller: Yes.

D. Bickler: You might want to call AT products. There\'s some feedback
and echoing going on with your push to talk. Do you want the number?

Caller: No, I\'m too feet away now. I\'ll stand back to three.

D. Bickler: It\'s not how far ‑‑ could you please go outside?

D. Bickler: The problem is not how far back, I am being told, it\'s just
there is an echo, and if you want to fix that problem, AT products can
help you and we can give you the phone number. It\'s on the screen right
now.

Caller: Got you.

L. McDill: One more thing that I have been trying to get to, when I was
in the services branch rather than having the invoice sent to the COR,
PI or task manager, I had invoices sent directly to me. I\'m rarely out
of the office. This way I could ‑‑ I had control over when an invoice
was processed, and what we do is we would prepare the 1510‑10 in our
office, fax that as well as a copy of the invoice to the COR and have
them certify ‑‑ why are you grinning ‑‑ have them certify the
information was accurate either by responding with an e‑mail or signing
the 1510‑10, faxing it back and then we get it out quickly. Just takes a
Matter of hours.

G. Moore: I think that\'s a good example of the way that teamwork again
can work. Whatever your situation is, talk to your Contracting Officer.
We are accommodating. And we\'ll do everything we can to get payments
made promptly so that we can avoid interest.

D. Bickler: Ok. Are there any more questions? This has been a great
discussion.

Caller: Good morning, Gwen and Denise. This is norm out in Elko. How you
doing today?

D. Bickler: From Rockwell, how are you?

Caller: I\'ve got a question. Do you foresee the day when we might be
able to fax the dash 10 and the invoice with a note that everything else
is there and the old proverbial it\'s all in the mail to you to
eliminate this delay we seem to be having in the mails?

G. Moore: I think, norm, under special circumstances that\'s perfectly
acceptable. I can take those fax documents down to voucher ‑‑ they make
us sign in blood when we do those that those are coming, though. So you
have to make sure you drop those in the mail to us. But under special
circumstances I think that\'s certainly appropriate.

D. Bickler: I don\'t remember if we talked about the ‑‑ since 9/11, the
mail has been real erratic, and when you\'re dealing with the payments,
especially construction payments, it might be best just to overnight the
payment to the Contracting Officer. Sometimes even that takes two days.
So it really ‑‑ just handle the payment as expeditiously as possible.

L. McDill: The sad part of that is we are paying \$5 to save \$2 in
interest, but once again, they\'re not counting the dollars of the
interest. They\'re counting the number of interest payments made.

G. Moore: Actions, that\'s right.

D. Bickler: Any more questions?

Caller: This is Eddie.

D. Bickler: Hi, Eddie. You need to call AT products, too.

Caller: Ok. I\'ll call back.

D. Bickler: Ok.

G. Moore: Thank you. We\'ll get this all worked. All the bugs will be
worked out tomorrow.

D. Bickler: Please feel free to call back if you can call AT products
and get that echo worked out of there.

G. Moore: Or call on the telephone or use the fax machine. We would love
to hear from you.

D. Bickler: We will absolutely answer your question.

Caller: This is John from Jackson, Mississippi. This is John from
Jackson, Mississippi. Earlier you had one person ask about time sheets
and all for employees of the ‑‑ doing the contract. I think you need to
look at the contract, and sit a construction project, or are you just
paying for services. Look at your contract and see what you need to
review.

G. Moore: That\'s a good point. On surface contracts, we do not require
the contractor to provide us with payrolls. This is only on
construction. That\'s a good point. Thank you for bringing that up.

D. Bickler: Are there any Fish & Wildlife sites out there watching
today? If you can just push to talk and let us know you\'re out there.

Caller: Yes, two people in Arlington, Virginia.

Caller: Arcadia.

D. Bickler: Virginia and Acadia. Anybody else? Ok. And do ‑‑ we\'re just
trying to see who\'s with us today.

Caller: Got pat from WOHL.

D. Bickler: Hi, pat.

Caller: Marcel from the National Park Service.

L. McDill: The National Park Service.

D. Bickler: Ok ‑‑

Caller: Time from the National Park Service.

D. Bickler: Ladies, do you know that we had almost 600, I believe, 600
people signed up to participate in the class today.

G. Moore: That\'s great. What a great audience.

D. Bickler: They\'re from all over the department of interior. We
weren\'t sure who all was here with Fish & Wildlife. We know there are a
bunch of people from park service and we welcome all of you. You know
what, ladies, you guys have talked an awful lot and I think we\'ve made
it clear on this particular topic that we need to process our invoices
timely, and if we don\'t, we\'re going to be paying interest and we will
become another statistic. But as I promised earlier, we are going to
take a 15‑minute break. And when we come back, we will talk about
Developing Your Requirement. If you have any questions, you can fax them
or you can call us and we will take care of them after break. We\'ll see
you in 15 minutes!

D. Bickler: Well, hello again. Welcome back. I hope everybody got a good
break. Now, we\'re having a little bit of an issue with push to talk. We
are getting a couple people that push to talk at the same time. I have
this lovely handy dandy hand prop, and if I have two people coming in at
the same time, you might see me hold my hand prop up and I will call on
the first person that I\'ve heard and we will get to everybody, because
we know which agencies are calling in when you push to talk. So we\'re
excited about this push to talk and getting to talk to everybody. So
I\'ll let you know if there\'s two or more and take you one at a time.
Our next segment, as I said before, is Developing Your Requirement.
It\'s rather detailed, so follow along closely in your study guide, and
if you have any questions, please ask them at any time. So we\'ll get
right to it, and Liz and Gwen will team teach this, and they\'re both
full of good information. So ‑‑ well, you\'re interchangeable, right?

L. McDill: That\'s great. I love it. This segment discusses Developing
Your Requirement and begins on page 11 of the study guide. The
objectives are to understand the various options available to you in
Developing Your Requirement and use these options to make informed
decisions. I\'m going to highlight some of the policies and procedures
related to Developing Your Requirement. First, you need to determine
what you need, and what category does it fall under? Is it a supply, a
service or construction? The second determination is the estimated value
of your requirement. Some sources to help you determine this are past
history such as how much has it cost in the past for the same item. Have
we purchased it before? What was the source? How long ago was this? So
do we need to adjust for inflation. Market research is the next one.
Call around. Look in your Yellow Pages. Personal knowledge. What you\'re
looking for is general information. All you want to know is, is it
readily available, do you give quantity discounts, what is the base
price and so on. Do not guarantee or try to inform a vendor that you are
placing an order at this time. You\'re just trying to find out what\'s
there. Another way of doing this is catalog pricing. Look at catalog,
hard copy on the Internet or whatever. Or there\'s the old proverbial
pull it out of the air. This is your wild guess, and it does happen
frequently. If your need is under the micropurchase threshold, check
mandatory sources and process your requirement with your charge card or
with a convenience check. Mandatory source websites are WWW.unicOre.GOV
or WWW.JWOD.gov. If your estimate is over the pry crow purchase
threshold, you must also check these mandatory sources and then begin to
prepare your Purchase Request to be sent to your procurement office.
Many items are available through existing contracts. For the BLM, a list
is available on our Internet site at\.... These contracts include
Bureauwide contracts which are awarded by the BLM National Business
Center for items and services that are commonly used throughout our
Bureau. These items are ‑‑ or these contracts are in the form of BPAs
and IDIQ contracts and they support such national programs as National
Fire Plan, the land use planning and also provide for appraisal
services, A/E services, cattle guards and fencing materials.
Departmentwide contracts are awarded by the department or individual
bureaus. The BLM has awarded many such documents. We have BPAs for IT
technical support services. We have BPAs for IT hardware and we also
have some narrowband IDIQ contracts. The government‑wide contracts
include those awarded by GSA, the Navy, the army, et cetera. The GSA has
a Federal supply schedules as most of us are aware of and these include
schedules for supplies and services. The GSA website is WWW.GSA.gov.
Now, the BLM contracts that were awarded departmentwide are available
for all bureaus and the Forest Service, so any of you, if you need
additional information, you can contact me at the National Business
Center and I can guide you to the correct Contracting Officer who can
give you information on how to utilize these contracting vehicles. These
contracts save time and effort as they are already established sources.
So it is a good idea. They\'re quick. They are there for your use. Now,
if your need is for supply, you must determine if it is commercially
available. You may have already begun to determine that when you did
your initial research for price estimates. The FAR defines a commercial
item as any item other than real property that is of a type customarily
used by the general public or by nongovernmental entities for other than
governmental purposes. As previously discussed, the process used to
determine if an item is commercially available is market research. What
is the COR\'s role in market research? You must conduct the market
research and forward the results to the CO. When conducting market
research, you must document the calls made. That documentation should
tell you who called, what was said, when you called them, where they\'re
located and why you called them. What was it you were looking for? What
information did you want? Other research you may conduct includes such
work as looking through Yellow Pages, catalogs, Internet, personal
knowledge of the item and so on. Once again, you must let us know who
you called, what you wanted, when you called them, where they\'re
located, why you called them. You can send us this information along
with your initial package, and it really helps us get going with your
acquisition. If it is a commercial item, the requisitioner uses a
commercial item description when you are describing what it is you want.
If it is not a commercial items, you as a COR will need to write a
detailed description or specification. The specification must include
the salient characteristics required. Now, there are very few, if any,
supply items that are not commercially available.

G. Moore: Now, if your need is for service, service related, the same
process applies. You must determine if the service is commercially
available. Conduct the market research, forward the information to the
Contracting Officer, and describe the need. Service is defined by FAR as
an identifiable task rather than to furnish an end item of supply. A
service contract may be either personal or nonpersonal. It can also
cover services performed by either professional or nonprofessional
personnel. Whether on an individual or organizational basis. If the need
is nonprofessional, the Service Contract Act applies. And service
contract wage rates must be obtained. Professional services are exempt
from this act. Please contact your procurement office to determine if
wage rates exist for your required services. These are obtained on the
web. Many of the wage rates are available online. However, if the wage
rights that you need are not standard categories, these wage rates must
be obtained from the Department of Labor, and this will require a bit of
additional time.

L. McDill: You know, that additional time can take 90 to 120 days even
in this day of computers and quick access and so on.

G. Moore: The Department of Labor has a lot of requests to process, and
that\'s part of the reason that they\'re so slow. So if you have those
types of services that are going to require wage rate, we need to make
sure that we plan for that time.

Caller: This is chip in Phoenix. Could you clarify the difference
between a nonpersonal and a personal contract? I\'m not sure exactly
what those terms mean.

G. Moore: Yes, chip, in fact that\'s the next part of the lecture. So
your question is perfectly timed. The BLM does not have authority to
enter into personal service contracts. The Federal Acquisition
Regulations or the FAR lists the six key elements that constitute
personal service contracts. You need to compare your need to this list,
and these are the various items that are included in the FAR. The first
item is, is the performance conducted on site? Then, are the principal
tools and equipment being furnished by the government? Number 3,
services are applied directly to the integral effort of agencies or an
organizational subpart in the furtherance of assigned function or
mission. Are comparable services, meeting comparable needs, are they
performed in the same or similar agencies using civil service personnel?
St the need for the type of service provided, kit be reasonably ‑‑ can
it reasonably be expected to last beyond one year\'s duration? And
finally, and this is a long one, is the inherent nature of the service
or the man inner which it is provided reasonably required directly or
indirectly, government direction or supervision of the contractor\'s
employees in order to adequately protect the government\'s interests,
retain control of the function involved. Or retain full personal
responsibility for the function supported in a duly authorized Federal
officer or employee. Now, that\'s very convoluted, but specifically what
they are trying to ‑‑ and probably a rule of thumb to use for this
description, it\'s personal service if it creates an employer‑employee
relationship between the government and the contractor\'s personnel. Are
we directing the contractor\'s people, just as we would if ‑‑ just as we
would if they were a civil servant. Chip, I hope that answers your
question regarding personal services.

Caller: Yes, it does. I guess, then, what is nonpersonal services?

G. Moore: Nonpersonal services is everything else. You would have
defined statement of work, clearly defining the work to be accomplished
by the contractor. You would hand them that specification or that
statement of work. And they would be able to work independently of
direct supervision. That\'s the big difference.

Caller: Got it. Thanks.

G. Moore: You\'re welcome.

D. Bickler: If I can interrupt for just a second. Someone from the Fish
& Wildlife was trying to test their bridge and I want to let you know
that your bridge was good, but if you can talk to us one more time so we
can make sure, whoever that was.

Caller: They\'ve since left. But can you hear us?

D. Bickler: We can. There is a slight echo, but we can hear you.

Caller: Thank you much.

D. Bickler: You\'re welcome. Ok ‑‑

Caller: And this is Christine Whitaker in Denver. We also want to check
it.

D. Bickler: You\'re fine. We heard you.

Caller: Thank you.

D. Bickler: You\'re welcome.

G. Moore: Ok. I think we\'ve covered now the difference between personal
and nonpersonal services. Again, I want to emphasize that the Bureau of
Land Management does not have the special authority needed to enter into
personal service contracts. Now, Liz will discuss a new old tool.

L. McDill: This tool is Performance‑Based Service Contracts, or PBSC.
It\'s really not a new concept. The preferred way to contract for
services has always been to describe the desired work rather than the
method. But due to poor performance and desire for control, we, the
government, gravitated toward telling contractsors precisely how we want
a service performed. This did not necessarily lead to better
performance, and it puts the risk of failure on the government. If we
tell a contractor precisely what we want them to do they do that, and it
does not work, then it\'s our problem, not theirs. In an effort to turn
this around, we are now mandated to define work in terms of results.
This is called performance based service contracting. The definition of
PBSC is on page 15 of your study guide. Basically ‑‑ I\'m not going to
read that ‑‑ but basically what it says is that we should define the
work in a result‑oriented manner. In other words, we\'re supposed to
tell them what we want and not how to do it. We are now mandated to use
PBSC to the maximum extent practicable for all services over \$25,000.
However, we also strongly encourage you to use it for requirements under
\$25,000. Now, the performance work statement includes several elements.
As I cover these, please fill in the blanks for exercise 1 found on page
16 of your study guide. The performance work statement specifies results
and not the process. A statement of the required service as an end
product is required. This does not include methodology or processes
unless required by regulation. It is very difficult for the government
to prepare a very pure performance work statement because we must comply
with many regulations, and any time we put any restrictions on a service
contract, then ‑‑ for the contractor, then it cannot be a pure
performance work statement. The performance work statement also states
the requirement in measurable terms. A measurable performance standard
of the service, in other words. Or how fast, how often, how well, how
many, how accurate, et cetera. The performance standard is usually
measured by a performance indicator. It is a feature of the service that
can be measured by a number. It also uses a quality assurance
surveillance plan and generally there are three methods of conducting
surveillance. These methods are management of information systems, in
other words, we collect information for 100% of the activities for a
specified period of time, like one week or one month. The contractor
must perform to that standard of measure. We also can measure it by
surveillance check lists, in other words, we document our observations.
And the third method is random sampling. We document defects per 100
observations, such as we want to get 100 ‑‑ or the percentage of defects
for that 100 observations. The performance work statement also uses
performance incentives and dedeductions. The incentives allow us to
award the contractor for performance exceeding our set standard and
deductions allow us to accept work less than the standard we have
specified. It also includes the government\'s acceptable quality
standard. This includes the allowable deviation from perfect, meaning
100%. And the allowable leeway or variance from a standard before we
reject a product or service. It\'s a very cumbersome process the first
time you prepare a PBSC, and it is imperative that you work closely with
your CO throughout the process. However, before you attempt to write a
performance work statement, I suggest that you attend a formal training
course. You still won\'t know what\'s going on afterward, but at least
it gives you a starting point. There is good news, however. The more you
prepare, the more PBSCs you prepare, the easier it does become as time
goes on. Now, when it is not feasible to use a performance based
statement of work, we are still allowed to use the old stand by contract
types of labor hour, time and material or job specific where we indicate
how we want it done. Now, in the study guide on page 16, you will find
exercise number 2. I\'d like you to review each item and determine
whether it is a performance‑based task or not. We\'ll give you two
minutes to complete the exercise. Then we\'ll be back.

L. McDill: Now that you\'ve a all had a chance to decide what was what,
let\'s quickly go over the exercise. The first question was\... grass
shall be mowed three times a week. This would be a nonperformance based
statement of work. Because we are specifying how often we want the
contractor to moat lawn. It is not a result. We just want them to mow
the lawn three times a week, and that is not performance based. The
second item was\... paper towels shall be available during working
hours. This is performance based. All we are saying is, we want paper
towels to be available. It doesn\'t matter whether the contractor has to
come in there and stock them three times, four times, daily, hourly or
whatever. We just want to make sure that there are paper towels
available and it\'s up to the contractor to decide how often he must
check and resupply them. The third item was\... calls to the help desk
shall be answered on the second ring. Now, we had a bit of controversy
when we were developing this one. Took a little while to reach
agreement. This one would be a nonperformance based work statement
because we are telling them we want it answered on the second ring. What
we should say is the contractor shall answer the phones, and we can use
the second ring as a standard. We can state that within the standard the
contractor shall let the ‑‑ the phone ring no more than five rings or
something like that. But what we want the contractor to do is answer the
phone and respond to questions. We don\'t want them picking up every
telephone by the second ring and not accomplishing anything else. The
fourth item is\... carpets shall be free of debris. This is performance
based. All we\'re saying is it shall be free of debris. If he has to
vacuum once a day, five times a day, once a week, it\'s up to him to
determine how often he must perform it, but we\'re just saying no
debris.

\> And the fifth and last one was\... the per visit payment for
emergency calls shall be reduced \$10 for every half hour delay after
the specified response time. This is a performance based statement. This
falls under the incentive and deduction. What we are doing is we are
going to reward the contractor for not doing that and we\'re going to
not penalize him, but we are going to duct \$10 for every time they
delay and to not respond within the specified time period. This is the
example of the incentive or deductions.

Caller: \[ INAUDIBLE \]

Caller: Is there a percentage in these dedeductions?

L. McDill: I did not catch that. Did you catch it?

Caller: This is Loretta in Albuquerque. I was wondering, on these
deductions, is there a percentage, or is it just a stated amount?

L. McDill: You can do it either way. You can do a percentage of a
payment. It depends on how you have set up your payment schedule. If you
can isolate a specific standard or specific requirement by a set dollar
amount, you can say that it can be a percentage or a dollar deduct from
that amount. In other words, if you have line items in your contract
that says the contractor shall make paper towels available during the
day, and you\'re going to pay him for that specific line item, you can
make it a percentage or a specific dollar amount for that line item. But
it must be isolated. You must be able to isolate that charge. Did that
answer your question?

Caller: Yes, it did. Thank you.

L. McDill: Ok. Are there any other questions?

Caller: This is Christine in Denver.

Caller: This is Loretta again.

D. Bickler: Loretta, are you at a BLM site or a fish site?

Caller: We\'re on a fish site.

D. Bickler: Ok. There is a little echo and someone might want to call
your product support to try to work that out. We can hear you, but
there\'s a little bit of an echo. And I heard ‑‑ Christina ‑‑ Loretta,
why don\'t you go ahead with your question. Then we\'ll get to Christina
in Denver.

Caller: This is Don in Casper. Homed on a minute, Don.

D. Bickler: Loretta, do you have another question?

Caller: Yes, ma\'am, I do appraisal contracting, and could I also put
this deduction in my instructions to the contractor?

L. McDill: You must let the contractor know that ‑‑ yes, all of these
factors must be included in the contract up front. In fact, they should
be included in the solicitation. So the potential contractors will know
how we will be evaluating and providing oversight for their performance.

Caller: Ok. I know they had to be in the contract, but we write
individual instructions to the contract appraisers, and I see now we can
put in that there and also in the solicitation. I understand. Thank you.

L. McDill: You\'re welcome.

D. Bickler: Ok. Christina in Denver, you were next and then we\'ll get
to Don in Casper.

Caller: Ok. This is Christine. I have a question about the measurable ‑‑
about requiring things in terms of measurable terms. You were describing
those in terms of how fast, how well, how many. How does that work,
then, for grass being mowed three times a week, that that\'s
nonperformance based, but if you are specifying ‑‑ I guess I\'m
confused. How can you have measurable terms specifying how fast ‑‑ how
many times, et cetera, in a performance‑based contract and yet somehow
you\'re not telling them what to do and how to do it?

L. McDill: These are standards that we put in the contract. We are not
telling them how fast. We are measuring them on the specific criteria.
In other words, these are the criteria we\'re going to use to measure
their performance and to ensure that they are providing the quality of
support that we desire or require. The measures ‑‑ we do not tell them
how to measure ‑‑ how to do it, we tell them what we are measuring. We
are telling them that we are measuring not necessarily how fast they are
doing something ‑‑ you have to ‑‑ each contract, you must specifically
create and develop for your requirement. This is one of the reasons PBSC
is so difficult, because there are not standard boilerplates that fit
every situation.

G. Moore: I think some of the confusion may, Christine, that mowing the
grass three times a week is not a performance based. Keeping the grass
at a specific height during a seven‑day period, that it can be no longer
than an inch and a half or two inches or whatever an acceptable height
for a lawn mowing service would be, that\'s performance based. Then the
measurement that we would do, is how many times would we inspect it? Are
we going to look at it once a week? A couple times a week? That sort of
thing. PBSCs are extremely difficult to write and we think we have a
handle on it. I have taken two classes, and I still ‑‑ I start with a
piece of paper and a pencil and I just don\'t know ‑‑ I\'m just not
comfortable with how to actually write one. They are extremely difficult
to think through.

L. McDill: Did that answer your question?

Caller: Yes, that\'s fine. Thank you.

D. Bickler: Ok. Don in Casper, it\'s your turn.

Caller: Christine asked the same question I had. I\'m not sure I still
understand it, but I appreciate the discussion on it.

L. McDill: Go ahead and repeat it.

Caller: No, I don\'t understand how you can say that number one is a
nonperformance based and number two is. I do understand the discussion
on performance being, for example, the height of the grass that is
expected. Ok, I can understand that. But it seems to me if you specify,
you shall mow three times a week, that\'s a performance based statement.

L. McDill: Is that the result we want them to perform to? Do you want
them to mow the lawn three times a week? If that\'s the result you want,
then that\'s fine. But if that isn\'t your objective, if your objective
or result is that the lawn will not achieve a height of any greater than
three inches, then we don\'t tell them how often. Our result is we want
the grass to be maintained at a height of three inches. How often ‑‑

Caller: This is Graham in Medford.

L. McDill: How often they mow it is they themselves determine so that
they can maintain and achieve the standard that we have specified or the
result.

D. Bickler: Liz, another way to look at it would be in comparison mowing
the grass three times a week would be like saying paper towels are to be
replenished once a day. Instead of telling them how often to replenish
the paper towels, we\'re simply telling them they must be available
during work hours. We haven\'t told them how often they need to
replenish them. That\'s their problem up to them.

L. McDill: And we don\'t care how often they replenish them.

Caller: This is Graham in Medford.

D. Bickler: Graham, we will get to you in a second. Have we answered
your question, Don?

L. McDill: I think we lost him.

D. Bickler: Go ahead, Graham.

Caller: What\'s to prevent them from mowing the grass three times in one
day?

L. McDill: These are not labor hour contracts generally, so if they want
to mow the lawn three times a day, and they\'re willing to expend that
amount of time and effort, that\'s their prerogative.

G. Moore: Not a problem. The point of performance based is that we
don\'t do this kind of work for a living. That\'s not what you\'re paid
to do. We have people out in the private sector that make a living at
this, and they know the best methods to maintain whatever they\'re
maintaining. That\'s the thinking behind performance based. We
shouldn\'t sit there and give them every single step in the process, but
allow them to use their expertise, their experience, to achieve the end
result that we\'ve asked for. Are you buying that, Graham?

Caller: Yeah, fine.

L. McDill: Are there any more questions about PBSC?

Caller: Milwaukee that?

D. Bickler: Hi.

Caller: We do a lot of horse adoptions in the east and we rent
facilities. First, most of them are under \$2500, so I don\'t have to
get livery rates for them but we\'re now going over 2500 for quite a few
and some of the things that come into play are hauling of the waste. How
do I handle that?

G. Moore: So you\'re involved in contracts for manure removal, is that
what you\'re suggesting?

Caller: That\'s part of the cleanup, yeah.

G. Moore: Believe it or not, that\'s a standard category with the
Department of Labor, and we would have to go forward with a Service
Contract Act wage rate and tell them the kind of work we\'re doing. They
would ask us if we had performed it before. You have a history with it,
because I know you folks do a lot of that work and we would just proceed
with the steps that were previously outlined.

D. Bickler: Now manure removal could be a performance based type service
contract. Liz, how might that work?

L. McDill: What would be the result that you would want? You want the
manure removed. Do you want the corrals to be manure free at all times?
Or do you want the manure to be ‑‑

G. Moore: This is such a ‑‑

Caller: The result that we want is to have the facility in the same
shape as when we entered it as we leave it.

D. Bickler: You\'re renting the facility, right?

Caller: Yes, we are.

D. Bickler: Ok.

L. McDill: And you\'re hiring a contractor to come in and clean it up
after you\'re through or while you\'re renting?

Caller: The facility hires somebody to come in and do that.

G. Moore: Then, I don\'t think we care.

D. Bickler: That\'s just part of the rental of the facility, is the
cleaning of the facility. So would we be concerned about the labor
rates?

L. McDill: If it\'s part of the rental and the landlord is providing
that service, it\'s ‑‑

D. Bickler: To go back to one of your original questions, no, you don\'t
have to concern yourself with the labor rates because that\'s part of
the rental of the property opinion

Caller: Even if it\'s over \$2500?

G. Moore: Rental is not a contract. Rental is ‑‑ is its own type of
contracting. It\'s a leasing type thing. Their rules are very different
than ours. If we were contracting with a contractor and a piece of
equipment to come out and clean our corrals, which we do in other
facilities, that\'s a contract that we would have to get Davis‑Bacon
wage rates for and proceed, because we are in control of that contract.
But it sounds like you\'re leasing a facility, and as part much your
lease, the contractor must come in and clean up after we\'re finished.
But it\'s all part of the lease.

Caller: Ok. Thank you.

G. Moore: You\'re welcome.

D. Bickler: Ok. Are there any ‑‑ are there any other questions? Before
we ‑‑ before we move on. Ok.

G. Moore: Ok. Now that we\'ve completed our discussion on PBSC, let\'s
move on to construction. Gwen, this one is all yours.

G. Moore: Thanks. Ok. construction is defined as construction,
alteration or repair, including dredging, excavating and painting, of
buildings, structures, and here is the ‑‑ are the operative words, or
other real property. Some recent changes in construction contracts
are\... there\'s been a change in the bonding requirement for contracts
between \$25,000 and \$100,000. Those contracts require us to obtain
something called payment protection. That amount of payment protection
has now been raised to \$100,000. That is the simplified acquisition
process arena that is being accomplished, and we have to get payment
protection. It\'s now \$100,000 ‑‑ 100% payment protection. The payment
and performance bonds, which are required on construction contracts in
excess of \$100,000 remains at 100% each. Another change on IDIQ
construction contracts and those are indefer nut delivery indeaf it in
quantity contracts, many of those contracts also are option year
contracts and they run for up to five years. A base bid plus four option
years. The regulations now require an annual review of the Davis‑Bacon
rates prior to exercising the option. If the rates go up, if the rates
go down, and there needs to be an adjustment in the contract price, we
have to notify the contractor and make that adjustment in the contract
by modification. Did you have a comment, Liz?

L. McDill: I was going to say, so, in the past we didn\'t have to review
the Davis‑Bacon wage rates?

G. Moore: We didn\'t do anything. We just renewed the option. Now we
have to look at those rates, see if there is a change and go forward.
Very similar to the things we have been doing in the service arena and
Service Contract Act wage rates for many, many, many years. But best of
all, I\'ve saved the best for last, and that would be we no longer have
to go to the low bid on construction contracts. While sealed bidding is
still the preferred way to acquire construction, making an award based
on price and other factors is also an option for us, a new tool if you
will. This process is called best value award. And by the way, best
value awards are currently being made on many simplified acquisition
projects.

L. McDill: As well as service contracts.

G. Moore: That\'s correct. The solicitation is done as an RFP, or
Request for Proposal. An evaluation is done, firms are ranked on their
technical capability, including past performance. Then the firms are
ranked by price and the trade‑off begins. Can we afford the highest
technically rated firm? Or, is the price of a technically acceptable
firm more attractive? Is you wish to award a contract using best value
procedures, the process does take a bit longer, because we have to go
through the evaluation process, including negotiations. And you must
provide evaluation factors to include in the solicitation package
itself. You may also be called upon to help evaluate the proposal
materials. Best value may consider such things as the past performance
of a contractor, his technical capability, and we must consider price.
The Bureau of land management is currently in the process of
implementing more contracts using best value processes. But the
importance of past performance information in this process cannot be
discounted. It is critical in a best value award. So at the completion
of every contract, be it construction or service, the COR should be
completing a contractor performance profile and send that to the
Contracting Officer. The C.O. will then add their afternoon what was
going on and give the contractor a ‑‑ their opinion to what going on and
give a rate number. We want you to be honest in your evaluation of the
contractor\'s work, but always remember that negative comments are sent
to the contractor, and he is given an opportunity to rebut, give us his
side of the story, if you will. Then both sides of the story are
provided online. Now, the National Institute of Health has developed a
system to report contractor performance. This system is called the
Contractor Performance System, or CPS. And it\'s available to all
government agencies. This is the system that the department of interior
has elected to use. BLM is currently in the process of establishing
procedures for using this system. So you can be sure there will be more
to follow. Other Bureaus may be actively using it. So check with your
procurement office if you\'re not sure of whether that\'s available to
you yet or not. Now, using the push to talk, is anyone currently using
past performance to make best value awards on any of their contracts?
Also, I would like you to think about, would any of you be interested in
this process rather than having to make award to the proverbial low
bidder. Please share your stories with us.

Caller: This is HT. from Barstow. Is there a list of contractors for
this CPS that we can use now?

G. Moore: We don\'t have access to the CPS just quite yet because we
haven\'t developed the process yet, but we maintain a database in our
office, H.T., that\'s available to anybody regarding contractors that
we\'ve had, and our records go back ‑‑ Denise, what, back into the early
\'80s? So we have some old antique documents there that we can at least
give you an idea as to what kind of contractor you might be dealing
with, and we would welcome your calls.

L. McDill: There is a website, I don\'t have it here with me right now,
but if you will call in with your e‑mail number, I will find the website
where you can log on. It requires that your agency assign you a specific
log‑on name and password, and those are assigned by NIH through an
agency representative that we have. In the BLM, one of our agency reps
is Dave Wonder and once we obtain that log‑in name and password, then we
can access the information that\'s provided online. Contractors ‑‑ this
is a type of system where once again contractors may register, and then
they can obtain data, too, and they can input and make changes as they
see needed ‑‑ see fit. So give us your e‑mail number ‑‑ name and number
and I\'ll go ahead and send it out, or maybe I can obtain and it we can
put it on the site tomorrow.

D. Bickler: Gwen, one other thing I wanted to mention was on the past
performance profiles that the COR gives to the Contracting Officer,
again, if it\'s a negative performance rating, it goes to the contractor
for a rebut. The Contracting Officer looks at both sides and has the
final decision. I\'m not sure appear lot of COR\'ss know. The
Contracting Officer has a right to either disagree with you or disagree
with the contractor, but we have the final say on ‑‑ ultimately on a
negative performance rating.

L. McDill: Then as an aside to that, not only do we sign it as
Contracting Officers, but it also has to go to our boss who may very
well have a lot to say about why we\'ve changed the number. So it\'s not
‑‑ it\'s not that we can just sling mud at the contractor. We need to
justify, like everything else we, just have to justify based upon the
facts.

L. McDill: And it is based upon the facts. It should not be based upon
personal opinion.

D. Bickler: The reason I\'m saying that, I\'ve had a couple negative
performance ratings by the COR that once I got the rebut from the
contractor and I looked at both sides of the situation, I had ‑‑ I had
to change what the COR had said. I felt that it wasn\'t completely
appropriate and that maybe there were some personal ‑‑ I don\'t know. I
changed the final rating.

G. Moore: I had a negative experience and I agreed absolutely with the
COR. That contractor gave all of us a hard time.

D. Bickler: And one thing that helps the CO make that documentation is
the diaries.

G. Moore: Again, we need to know what is going on with our projects so
we can make informed decisions further into the process. If we have a
bad performance profile on a contractor, we\'re certainly going to share
with that you, because if that person is awarded another contract, we
want to give you fair warning, and that\'s how we use these tools. It\'s
not just because we like having all that paper work around our offices.

Caller: Dave.

G. Moore: Go ahead.

Caller: Hello, Gwen. Thank you. Under the best value award, we have
fence contracts that we let every year, and we have one contractor in
particular that does really good work. Can we go after him, then, with
this method?

G. Moore: I wouldn\'t exactly put it in those words, but, yes, we can
try and reach him by utilizing best value if he has a really good past
performance record and you want to use that as an evaluation factor,
along with his price. Now, always remember we always have to consider
price, but it\'s price and other factors and if past performance is
important to you, we can certainly use best value. In fact, early on in
the reorganization, or the redesign of acquisition, if you will, that
occurred back in 1996‑97, we took a couple of Idaho jobs, they had
recurring small fence jobs we were doing, it was one of the very first
best value buys I was ever involved in and we did exactly the process
that I outlined, and the contractor had that the best past performance
came out on top. That was the decision that we made, and we did not make
award to the low bidder.

D. Bickler: I want to take just one second, if you don\'t mind. The park
service bridge phone number is going to appear any moment on the bought
many your screen. That\'s for the park service folks to get their bridge
back. It\'s also in the manual.

L. McDill: Did they lose their bridge?

D. Bickler: We\'re going to leave that up ‑‑ are there any other
questions?

G. Moore: We have a fax coming in Denise.

Caller: Just a point of clarification on construction contracts. What
was the cut‑off for bonding?

G. Moore: There are two cut‑offs. For construction contracts between
25,000 and \$100,000, we require payment protection in the amount of
100%. That\'s given to us after we determine who the low quoter is. That
comes after the bids are opened or after the quotes are opened. 100% of
the low ‑‑ the contractor ‑‑ or the purchase order amount would be what
we would be getting. Over 100,000 dollars for ‑‑ which is the estimated
cost of the contract, over 100,000, we require payment and performance
bonds. And those are also 100%, and in addition to that, we require a
20% bid guaranty that the contractor must present to us with his bid
documents.

Caller: Does that mean that construction contracts under \$25,000 don\'t
require bonding?

G. Moore: That\'s correct. There is no bonding of any sort.

D. Bickler: We have a fax, Gwen and Liz. It\'s from Rick at Fort
Summter. I thought there were conditions under which you could reject
the low bidder.

L. McDill: That is the best value award.

D. Bickler: What he is talking about, there is always a way to reject
the low bidder, however, it may involve the small business
administration. And ‑‑

G. Moore: Do you want me to talk? If we have a low bidder that is not
responsible, we have reason to question his responsibility, we can write
up, based upon past history, past performance profiles, that sort of
thing, a recommendation, but that recommendation, if this contractor is
small business, that recommendation has to go to the small business
administration and we ask them for a certificate of competency, a COC.
We can recommend. We don\'t think this guy can do the job. But it\'s out
of our hands once it goes to the small business administration. They, of
course, want to go to their contractor and ask for his side of the story
and if they come back to us and say, he\'s competent, can he do the
work, then we don\'t have a lot of opportunity. So if you have work that
you think you\'re going to entice people that maybe don\'t have Sterling
performance records, you might want to consider going this best value
way.

L. McDill: Rick, why do you want to reject the low bid? Are you there?
Ok.

Caller: Emilio in Barstow. If small business comes back in his favor, do
we have to hire him?

G. Moore: Yes, we have no option.

D. Bickler: I don\'t want to disagree with you ‑‑

G. Moore: But you are going to?

D. Bickler: There is the opportunity for us to ‑‑

L. McDill: Counter.

D. Bickler: Counter or contest what the SBA said. The bottom line is it
can be a very long process. It takes time.

G. Moore: So if you have the time, we would be willing to do that, but
so many times, it\'s critical that we start our work for a variety of
reasons, and we just don\'t have that additional time.

D. Bickler: If we\'re going to take that route, we have to be sure we
have back‑up documentation. We have to be able to support our position
with the SBA or we\'re not even going to go there.

G. Moore: Back to performance track record, if we have a record about
this guy\'s abilities, we can do something about it.

D. Bickler: I have a little housekeeping item to take care of. There is
a BLM site that seems to keep dropping your bridge connection, and for
that site, if you would call the satellite help desk at 602‑906‑5629
during the break that we have coming up here in just a few minutes, we
can help you get that connection back up and hopefully keep your bridge.
Because we want to hear from you.

Caller: This is DEA from the BLM in Lakeview, and I was wondering if
construction best value awards need to be accomplished through a Request
for Proposal or can they be for a request for quote?

G. Moore: Absolutely either. But request for quote right now is the one
that we\'re most commonly using and, of course, that\'s for anything
under \$100,000. Between 25 and \$100,000.

Caller: I was curious between 2500 to 25,000.

G. Moore: It will work there, too. It will absolutely work there.

L. McDill: Gwen ‑‑

D. Bickler: Gwen, couldn\'t you do quotations up to 100,000?

G. Moore: That\'s. Quotations are anything in construction \$2,000 up to
\$100,000. That\'s all the request for quote world.

Caller: Thank you.

G. Moore: You\'re welcome.

Caller: This is Don in Casper. What is the difference between payment
protection and a performance bond?

G. Moore: Payment protection can be a payment bond, but it deals only
with protection for the people that are working on the job,
contractor\'s employees, and suppliers. Payment only applies to those
two elements. Performance ‑‑ a performance bond guarantees the
government that the contractor will perform. That is not one of the
elements that we require in the simplified acquisition process. So we
don\'t have that performance protection under \$100,000.

L. McDill: So, in other words, under \$100,000, all we\'re interested in
is covering the contractor\'s employees and suppliers.

G. Moore: That\'s correct.

L. McDill: Over \$100,000, we want to make sure the contractor performs
what we have contracted for.

G. Moore: As well as pays his bills.

Caller: Dan in Denver.

D. Bickler: Hi, Dan.

Caller: Does that also include first‑tier subs?

D. Bickler: Yes, it does.

Caller: Thank you.

D. Bickler: Ok. It\'s ‑‑ I can\'t hardly believe it, ladies, but it\'s
time for another break, and so before we go onto the next topic, we\'re
going to take our next 15‑minute break, and go stretch whatever needs to
be stretched and we\'ll see you in 15 minutes.

D. Bickler: Well, welcome back. We\'re going to pick wrap‑up we left off
and I believe, Gwen, you have caught your breath and are you ready to
COntinue?

G. Moore: Yes, I am. About but before we go into the next topic, we had
a question come in, what is JWOD and what is uniCOr. Liz?

L. McDill: I\'ll answer that. JWOD stands for the Javis Wagner O\'Day
Act. This is an act that provides a ‑‑ requires that the government
purchase certain supplies and services from a couple of sources. We used
to refer to them as ‑‑ you know, I can talk ‑‑ as NIB, which is the
national industry for the blind and NISH, which is the national industry
for the severely handicapped if that you go to their website,
WWW.JWOD.gov, it gives a LIS of COmmodities and services they provide.
The other is uniCOr, and uniCOr is what is known as the Federal prison
industries. They also provide a number of supplies and COmmodities,
including furniture. They are a required source of supply. We must order
certain COmmodities from them if it is at ‑‑ valued at \$25 or more, go
to their website, which is WWW.uniCOr.gov and you can look whop they
have available.

G. Moore: Thank you. One tool developed by the Bureau of Land Management
and available to all agencies on the Internet is something called the
buying made easy guide. The guide is located at the address shown on the
screen. And is included in your study guide. The buying made easy guide
will help you remember all the questions to ask yourself and prompts you
to make the appropriate decisions to develop your requirement. The guide
links to the mandatory sources such as uniCOr and JWOD, discusses market
research, commercial item buys, performance‑based contracting and many
other aspects that we will be covering in this training. It helps you
walk through the various alternatives to help develop your requirement.
Now let\'s move into some of the special programs. Special programs are
administered ‑‑ or several special programs are administered by the
small business administration,eer SD ‑‑ or SBA. There are 6 programs
that we are required by law to support in the contracting arena. These
special programs are small business set aside ‑‑ this is where the
government restricts COmpetition on contracts in support of small
businesses. The small business standards are determined by either the
number of employees a firm has or the average annual income for the past
three years for specific types of work. Most of our contracts are set
aside for small business. Under the small business, there is a program
called 8A and many of you out there are familiar with the 8A
contractors. Sometimes we have great results with them and other times
it\'s a little bit tenuous, but the 8A program is a nine‑year program
offering financial and technical assistance to an eCOnomically
disadvantaged firm. The SBA is helping a COmpany to become independently
COmpetitive. We have a program called woman‑owned and veteran‑owned.
Both of these deal with 51% of businesses being owned by either a woman
or a veteran. The veteran\'s administration establishes the standards
for qualifying as a veteran. We have something called the small business
disadvantaged ‑‑ small disadvantaged business program and this is any
small business that is socially and eCOnomically disadvantaged, again,
as determined by the small business administration. And the final
program that we are involved with is something called hubzone. Hubzone
is giving contracts to businesses located in a historically
underutilized business zone. These geographic areas again are
established by the small business administration. Each one of these
programs has a specific goal established for each Bureau. Everyone in
the procurement chain can recommend a contractor that qualifies for one
of these programs. All of us need to work together towards achieving the
goals established. The whole contract team must be involved in the
decision to use one of these special programs. BLM as well as other
agencies have met their goals in several programs. However, there is
still work to be done. Contractors will often market themselves to you
in your field offices. We need to be receptive to these contractors,
review their marketing information and if possible, give them an
opportunity to participate. Liz?

L. McDill: There are a couple other areas that I would like to discuss
before closing this segment of training. Since June 21st of 2001, the
government has been required to comply with the section 508
rehabilitation act. This applies not only to us internally within the
government, but it applies also to contracts. This act requires that all
new electronic information technology purchased by the Federal
government be accessible to people with disabilities. This applies to
software and operating systems, web‑based applications,
telecOmmunications products, video, multimedia products, desktop
portable COmputers and self‑cOntained products such as information
kiosks. Your requirements should include language that products
purchased will be section 508 COmpliant. The next topic is the greening
of the government. It does not mean money. It means products. This
interior ‑‑ this is the Interior Department\'s strategic plan for waste
prevention and recycling. This includes using environmentally preferable
products and services in our designs. Such products would include
materials with recycled COntent, energy‑efficient equipment such as
COmputers, water COnserving equipment, biobased products, and less toxic
materials. The list of recycled products available for the government
use is extensive, and here are a few of the items. Copy and writing
paper, rerefined oils. I believe there are several offices, in fact in
Reno, they talked one of their local suppliers into stocking rerefined
oils to be used in their government vehicles and they\'re saving a lot
of money because it costs lest than standard first‑run oil. Retread
tires. Binders. Trash bags. Pens. When I was at a seminar recently, I
was shown a pen that is made from COrnstarch, the outside of the pen is
actually COrnstarch. Feels like plastic. Looks like plastic. Is
COrnstarch that. What happens is when it goes to the landfill, it breaks
down and dissolves after time. Carpet, floor tiles, plastic fencing,
plastic lumber, which I believe is an oxymoron since lumber comes from
trees, but I personally have installed on my deck material called TREX
and it is made from sawdust and recycled plastic pop bottles. I
installed this decking in 1994. I have done nothing to it. I don\'t have
to clean it. I don\'t have to I will it. I don\'t have to do anything to
it and it looks as good as it was the day I installed it. It doesn\'t
get hot in the sun. It isn\'t slippery when it\'s wet. I love it.

G. Moore: Great choice.

L. McDill: Traffic COnes, those orange traffic COnes you see on the
street, many times are made out of recycled products and that garden and
soaker hoses. The general impression is that these items are more costly
and lower quality. However, with the increased usage in the market,
their prices are becoming more COmpetitive, and the quality is
COntinuing to improve. Please keep this plan in mind, the green plan,
when writing your specs or statement of work. Well, I think that\'s
about it for Developing Your Requirement.

D. Bickler: Ok. We received a fax. I believe from Rick at Fort Summter
and here is the question. Can you clarify the hierarchy in terms of
dollar amounts in purchase order versus formal contract, et cetera and
the different thresholds? Do I have a volunteer?

G. Moore: Oh, yes.

L. McDill: That will take all three of us.

G. Moore: Let\'s start with the small dollar contracts. Up to \$2500 for
services and supply and up to \$2,000 in COnstruction, we can do
micropurchase. It\'s where we use the credit card or COnvenience checks.
\$2500 or \$2,000 up to \$25,000 ‑‑ that\'s not right. Up to \$100,000
is simplified acquisition procedures. RFQ, request for quotations.
Anything over \$100,000 requires either an IFB, invitation forbid, or an
RFB, Request for Proposal.

D. Bickler: The exception would be commercial items, which is \$5
million.

L. McDill: Is the threshold.

D. Bickler: Is the threshold.

G. Moore: And up to \$5 million on a commercial item we use simplified
acquisition procedures. We may use and to use simplified acquisition
procedures.

D. Bickler: Go ahead, Rick.

Caller: Those are the exact answers to my questions. Could you just
repeat it, please?

G. Moore: Sure. See if I say it again. Up to \$2500 is services or
supply, and \$2,000 in COnstruction, that\'s considered micropurchase,
and you can buy things using a credit card or COnvenience checks. From
\$2500, or \$2,000, up to \$100,000, that is considered simplified
acquisition or ‑‑ or sap, simplified acquisition procedures. That\'s the
RFQ, request for quotation. That equates into a purchase order.
\$100,000 or more, you can go invitation for bid or Request for
Proposal. Either of those will result in a contract. Now, the exception
is commercial items. Their threshold is anything valued up to \$5
million can be procured or acquired using simplified acquisition
procedures. Now, did I say it twice correctly?

D. Bickler: Ok. Well, thank you very much, Rick. Appreciate that. Ok.
Thank you. That was a boat load of information. And I hope everyone can
remember all of that. This was probable eat most COmplex and involved
segment that we will cover during this course, so does anyone have
questions about the information that we just covered in Developing Your
Requirement?

Caller: \[ INAUDIBLE \]

Caller: I wanted to ask, when you ‑‑

D. Bickler: Someone chimed in first, park service.

Caller: Milwaukee, BLM.

D. Bickler: There we go.

Caller: If ‑‑ we don\'t have to use the CBD for anything over 25,000?

G. Moore: There is no CBD anymore.

L. McDill: Howie, there is no CBD anymore. Now you are required to
submit your synopsis through the GPD, which is FedBizOpps. The
requirement for synopsis still exists, it\'s just we don\'t send it to
the COmmerce daily. It\'s anything in excess of \$25,000.

L. McDill: Which is what it was before.

G. Moore: That hasn\'t changed.

Caller: Thank you.

L. McDill: You\'re welcome.

D. Bickler: Park service in Denver, you had a question.

Caller: Yeah, when you\'re establishing your evaluation criteria for a
best value, do you need to establish the weighting criteria you\'re
going to give in the solicitation, or how is that handled?

L. McDill: I\'ll get that one. You establish the weighting criteria. You
do not publicize the weighting ‑‑ the weights themselves. The criteria
are publicized, the weights are not.

D. Bickler: What you do have to tell the contractor is what is more
important, price or other factors.

L. McDill: And you rank them in order of priority or something but not
the specific weight.

G. Moore: Exactly.

D. Bickler: Does that answer your question?

Caller: Yes, thank you.

D. Bickler: Great.

Caller: This is Christine in Denver.

D. Bickler: Hi, Christine.

Caller: Can you use a best value award for services?

G. Moore: Absolutely. Absolutely. Would work exactly the same way.

Caller: Art in Milwaukee.

D. Bickler: Go ahead, Art.

Caller: Is it unusual to have the same contractor in a service contract
for over 20 years or is that just something that does happen often?

L. McDill: What was ‑‑ well there are several ways to answer that. Yes,
it does happen often. If you\'ve procured that service COmpetitively and
that contractor repeatedly is awarded the contracts, there is really
nothing wrong with that.

Caller: Thank you.

G. Moore: I think that must be a Guinness book of records, though, to
keep a contractor for 20 years.

D. Bickler: What one might want to do is be careful they\'re not writing
their spec to a particular contractor. Not that that\'s what you\'re
doing, but there may be an appearance of ‑‑ of some impropriety there, I
don\'t know.

L. McDill: Usually incumbent does have an advantage, though.

D. Bickler: For 20 years?

L. McDill: For a service contract, they know what\'s required, they know
how it functions. They definitely have an advantage.

D. Bickler: All right. Liz, have you caught your breath yet?

G. Moore: What do you mean, I\'ve been talking. How could I catch my
breath?

D. Bickler: You\'re up next for the final segment today, which is the
Purchase Request.

L. McDill: I know we\'ve reviewed a lot of material today, and I hope it
all makes sense to you. We\'re now on page 19 in your study guide, and
after we complete this section, you\'ll be able to reCOgnize a proper
electronic I.D.E.A.S. Purchase Request and understand how your role as a
requester assists the procurement team in getting what you need. In the
past, a 15 ‑‑ in the BLM a 1510‑5 or a 1510‑18 were the forms used to
start a procurement process. As we enter the electronic age of paperless
procurement, the Purchase Requests, or PR, must now be submitted to the
procurement office electronically through the I.D.E.A.S. Program. And I
believe this is the way it is done in other department of interior
bureaus also. The I.D.E.A.S. PR must contain the same information. All
this information is required by the procurement office in order to begin
the procurement process. Now,in the BLM most of the information on the
1510‑18 was included in the I.D.E.A.S. PR. However, additional
information from the 1510‑5 should be ‑‑ is necessary and will be
included shortly in as an attachment in I.D.E.A.S. On page 19 in your
study guide, there is a PR checklist that I\'d like to go over with you
now. This includes the important information, or the specific
information that we require in a procurement office in order to start a
procurement action. The first item is we need to know the COR and the PI
or task manager. We need their name, their phone number and their Field
Office. This information is necessary in case we have to contact you and
‑‑ regarding technical questions for the requirement. If this
information isn\'t provided, it can delay the whole project. The second
item is the place of performance. The city, COunty and state where the
work is going to be performed. This is required for a variety of
reasons. First, it is necessary for determining proper wage decision
when procuring a COnstruction or service ‑‑ services. Secondly, it is
used when completing reporting requirements. The third item is the
solicitation and project title. This will tell us how you would like
your project identified and referred to by the public. What do you want
it called? The fourth item is the acquisition strategy. This is where
you explain your strategy to us. In other words, do you want it to be a
request for quotation, a sealed bid, Request for Proposal, do you want
an IDIQ contract, is it going to be an 8A set aside, do you want a
hubzone set aside in hopefully you will have discussed your options with
your procurement office beforehand because we can help guide you in what
the strategy should be.

G. Moore: Also by like to interject f we are setting it aside for 8A,
hub zone, whatever, we oftentimes have to go to the small business
administration to tell them our intentions and sort of get permission
from them to utilize that contract. It\'s just a letter but it does eat
up some time.

L. McDill: They are required to respond within a matter of a week, I
believe it is. They rarely turn us down when we want a set aside.
Usually it\'s the other way around. The government estimate is another
item that you must include. This is the independent government estimate,
or IGE, for the acquisition. This information is used to determine
whether or not the prices offered by the public are fair and reasonable.
In the case of COnstruction, the IGE is used to state the magnitude of
the requirement in terms of an estimated price range, such as, is it
\$25,000 to a \$100,000 project and so on. I don\'t know what the other
ranges are off the top of my head.

D. Bickler: We just went over there.

L. McDill: We did in no, we didn\'t.

G. Moore: The ranges are established by FAR and they\'re very broad.

D. Bickler: It\'s ‑‑ I think ‑‑ \[ all talking at once \]

L. McDill: The IGE should be provided in the same form as the bid
schedule. That you provided in I.D.E.A.S. It should be identical to the
schedule the vendors will use to submit their pricing. Now, remember,
your schedule as provided in I.D.E.A.S. Is going to be included in the
solicitation. So, please, do not COmbine a lump sum estimate when using
a line item bid schedule. In other words, if you have a line item bid
schedule, make sure you provide an estimate for each line item. Another
item that we require is the funding data and cost COdes. FAR part 32.702
requires the government have certified funds available in the amount of
the IGE or estimate prior to making the requirement public or to state
that the requirement is subject to the availability of funds.

G. Moore: Liz, I have a question regarding funding. This past year we
seemed to have a tremendous amount of problems with the funding COdes
that the field was providing us to, and this was a tremendous problem at
the end of the year. Where does the field go when they have funding
questions? Budget object classes and project COdes seem to be the
nemesis of the Bureau of Bureau of Land Management this past year.

L. McDill: By suggestion is that the project office ‑‑ or the recommend
was acquisitioner should go to either their project office, their
procurement analyst\'s office, ask them, or they could go to their
budget office, they should certainly know the correct object classes and
COdes that go along with those, or they could contact the finance center
in Denver and ask them what those COdes are. And what works with what.

L. McDill: One of the problems that was recurring this past year was
there was a lot of paying from ‑‑ we had money left over in one pot and
we were adding it to another job and trying to use up these various dibs
and dabs of money, and the field people just didn\'t have a handle on
some of the changes that were being made. So the caution that I think we
need to just emphasize is, check your funding COdes completely before
you send them to us, because I.D.E.A.S. Doesn\'t reCOgnize it, we\'re
dead in the water until it gets fixed.

L. McDill: And what happens is we obligated an acquisition at the end of
the fiscal year, send it through to ‑‑ through I.D.E.A.S. To our finance
office thinking it\'s been obligated, it\'s done. At the 11th hour we
receive a phone call from them saying, object class doesn\'t work,
project COde doesn\'t work, we need a different one, and kit cause a
real panic at the end of the fiscal year.

G. Moore: Absolutely. So if the field could just help us with that
problem, we would sure be appreciative.

L. McDill: The basis for award is another item we need. This is
necessary because it informs the CO of how you would like the
requirement awarded. We already did this.

D. Bickler: No.

L. McDill: Yes. Is it an all or none or by schedule based on the
availability of funds. If you are going to award based on available of
funds ‑‑ excuse me ‑‑ remember to list the line items or schedules in
the order of priority, if you want line items. If 1, 2 and 3 are the
most important ones, list them 1, 2, and 3. If you only have funds
available for 1 and 2, that\'s what we\'ll award. We can\'t skip around.
The requested start date is another item. The CO needs to know if you
have a specific desired start date in mind so that work on your project
can be COordinated. When establishing your start date, remember, the
procurement lead times are generally an RFQ takes 30 to 45 calendar
days, it\'s 60 to 90 calendar days lead time for an IFB and an RFP
usually needs 90 to 120 calendar days from the time of receipt until we
award a contract.

D. Bickler: Now, something here that I think is important, because it
was a problem for me, is if you have a project that you\'re sending in,
say, mid‑summer or early fall that you don\'t plan on starting until the
following summer, you need to let us know that, because that is
information that must be included in the solicitation, and I lost a
project last year because that wasn\'t real clear to me and it wasn\'t
included in the solicitation. After opening, we discovered the problem
and I had to can sell the project. So that\'s another area where this ‑‑
the requested start date is very important.

G. Moore: To reiterate what you just said, if you have a need to start a
project in the following COnstruction season, and we\'re putting it out
‑‑ we\'re putting the project out at the end of the summer or perhaps in
the fall, knowing that we\'re going to not start work until spring,
that\'s pretty ok. But I recently had a request to make an award and we
didn\'t intend to actually begin the work for two more years. That\'s
probably a little bit out of reasonable, and I didn\'t allow those folks
to do that. And you know who you are out there when you called and asked
me that question.

L. McDill: Damages\... the COR must indicate whether actual or estimated
damages are appropriate. If you choose liquidated, you must provide
supporting data for the amount to be assessed. In the BLM this
information is provided on the statement of liquidated damages document.
Site inspection tours. We need to know the hour and the meeting place.
We will establish the date for the site inspection tour because it
depends on when we actually get your solicitation out on the street.

G. Moore: And please understand that we don\'t just arbitrarily set that
date up. We coordinate it with our CORs, because we don\'t know what
your schedule is any more than you know what ours is. So we are talking
to you before those dates are actually established.

L. McDill: Site inspection tours are strongly suggested for COnstruction
and service projects. It helps the potential contractors see what a site
actually looks like, find out what the COnditions are, and make a more
educated proposal or guess on what it\'s going to cost. Also include any
specific information about your site visit that the prospective
contractor must be aware of, such as are there special vehicle
requirements? Lunch? Water? Overnight acCOmmodations? If you\'re doing a
COnstruction site visit and you need a four‑wheel drive vehicle to get
to the site, they need to know that. They don\'t want us to show up in
their pinto and not be able to get up there. The number of solicitations
must also be provided. This is the number of solicitations that you
require for your local distribution needs. Be sure to forward the
address, name and phone number of the contractors that you have
distributed these documents to because the CO needs to know so we can
add to it our plan holders\' list in case we issue an amend the at a
future date. All contractors or potential contractors must receive the
same information and if we don\'t have the names and addresses of
potential contractors that you\'ve given COpies of solicitations to,
they will not receive amendments and it can actually cancel an entire
procurement.

D. Bickler: We almost had that in our office earlier this year.

G. Moore: We certainly did.

L. McDill: I think it\'s a COmmon problem. It happens frequently.

G. Moore: Please be diligent. If you give out a package, make sure you
let us know exactly who you gave it to. You can do that by fax. You can
do it by e‑mail. You you can do it by telephone call. It all works. But
we do need to have that information.

L. McDill: The notice to proceed is another item that we need. How many
days after issuance of a notice to proceed do you wish work to start?
Generally in COnstruction the start date is 10 days after the notice to
proceed is issue. In service contracts the start date can either be
after the notice to proceed is issued or specify a designated period of
time such as 10/1/01 through 9/30/02. In supply contracts, generally
performance begins after receipt of award and no notice to proceed is
issued. One more item is any special considerations or instructions.
This is where you would supply special information that may impact
performance of the contract work in that could include such information
as deer migration time, spawning season for fish, spring runoff or
seasonal activities such as hundredthing season. Now, this is critical.
We had an incident with one solicitation that we received a call from a
potential contractor. He was concerned about what he anticipated the
start date would be on a project. After some discussion with the
contracting office, we decided if that everything proceeded in a timely
manner, we would be awarding the contract and they would be starting
work during deer hunting season. We can\'t have someone out in the field
doing a COnstruction project in the field where there are going to be
hunters with guns shooting at them because our contractors could be shot
and killed. So you must consider this.

G. Moore: Another instance I have been involved in is Lamming season for
the bighorn sheep. The wildlife biologists determined that equipment,
noises, would interfere with the care and keeping of the Lams, and so we
were required to shut the contractor down for a substantial period of
time, 60 days or something, during the Lamming season so that the mother
sheep, the EWES could take care of the babies. Well, our COnstruction
contract ran over two different COnstruction seasons. We had to shut the
contractor down twice. He was not a happy camper, as you can well
imagine. But the Lams were thrilled.

D. Bickler: In our line of work in COnstruction, of course, where all of
our sites are, mostly nowhere, out in the middle of nowhere, in the
mountains we have all kinds of environmental concerns with spring runoff
‑‑ my project up for the bridge repair, there is a very specific time
frame they were allowed to work in the river because of the runoff and
other environmental concerns with the equipment in the river. So very
COmmon.

L. McDill: Snow depth is another thing that kills us.

D. Bickler: If you can\'t get to the job site.

G. Moore: In Alaska they have a very short COnstruction season. They
also have light 24 hours a day. The COnstruction contracts that come
from Alaska frequently will remind us, don\'t say contractors allowed to
work half an hour before sunrise to half hour after sunse. Doesn\'t
happen up here. So these are just reminders and things that we need to
have you help us incOre operate into our projects so our contractors do
have a good idea of what exactly will be expected of them.

L. McDill: Thank you. Another bit of information that we need is
suggested vendors. This is short and simple. If you know of contractors
who might be interested in your project, please provide their names and
their addresses, but try to limit it to ten or less. Sometimes we
receive lists COnsisting of 30 or 40 potential contractors and this can
get out hand. Well, that about covers Purchase Requests. So I\'ll hand
it over to Denise.

D. Bickler: Thank you very much, Liz. Are there any other questions out
there? Or any questions out there? Daal Don from mount raw near. ‑‑
mount rainier. Is an RFP required if we select a vendor through GSA?

L. McDill: You\'re going to be placing a delivery order against a GSA
contract?

Caller: Yes.

L. McDill: An RFQ can be used but depending upon the type of work and
the dollar amount, you usually, if it\'s over \$2500, you still must do
some sort of minimal COmpetition, and if it\'s over even more than that,
there are some requirements like on the BPAs, you must COmpete it among
three contractors. You can\'t just go sole source, but you can do an
RFQ. It works fine.

G. Moore: And the COmpetition would be under contractors already
established by GSA. So you\'re limiting your field.

L. McDill: You don\'t mix and match.

D. Bickler: But each Federal Supply Schedule will identify those
requirements, right? If the ‑‑ if there are special requirements?

L. McDill: Yes, they do.

D. Bickler: Thank you, Don. Any other questions?

L. McDill: Now, one advantage to using the GSA schedule contracts is you
are no longer required to synopsize a GSA schedule buy. So for over
\$25,000, you to not have to issue a synopsis before obtaining the
COmpetition.

G. Moore: And they goes back to using those already established
contracts. Just helps you folks save time. That\'s the whole crux of
using those existing contracts. The competition is part has already been
done for you.

L. McDill: Any more questions?

D. Bickler: Guess not. Well, we are almost at the end of today\'s
broadcast. So let\'s quickly review the topics that we covered. We
started with teamwork, then e‑COmmerce and I.D.E.A.S., Prompt Pay,
Developing Your Requirement, and we just finished with Purchase Request.
So, if ‑‑ does anybody have questions on any of the topics that we\'ve
covered today? Ok. Well f you think of any questions after today\'s
broadcast is over, please fax them with the number you were provided in
your study guide that\'s showing on your screen right now. We will get
to them tomorrow. Thank you all very much for your participation today.
It was great. And we look forward to hearing from you and talking with
you tomorrow. Good‑bye for now.

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