**Contracting Officer's Representative (COR)**

**Refresher Training**

A Telecast Originating from the BLM National Training Center

December 2, 1998

(Day 1 of 2 days)

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

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

The Bureau of Land Management Satellite Network Presents Live from the
BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona, \"New Rules‑new Tools,
Contracting Officer\'s Representative Refresher Training.\" An Update of
Acquisition Regulations and Procedures to Improve Contract Performance.
And Now, the Host of Your Program, Peggy Dabb.

Dabb: Good Morning. Welcome to Our Refresher Training for Contracting
Officers Representatives or COR For Short. The Department of the
Interior Requires Agencies to Certify That Individuals Working on
Contracts Are Trained to Be a Representative for the Contracting
Officer. The Department Requires CORs to Receive 24 Hours of Initial
Training and 8 Hours of Refresher Training Every Three Years. You must
Attend this Satellite Course in its Entirety and Pass The Test in Order
to Be Recertified. Joining Us for this Presentation Are Julie Lewis,
Procurement Analyst from the Idaho State Office, and Dave Williams of
the National Procurement Institute, Or NPI. Good Morning, Julie.

Lewis: Good Morning, Peggy.

Williams: Good Morning.

Lewis: I\'m Excited to Be Participating in this Satellite Broadcast. For
Those of You Who Don\'t Know, Peggy Was the Procurement Analyst for New
Mexico until About a Month Ago When She Transferred to the Forest
Service. I Would like to Thank the Forest Service and Peggy for Her
Continued Participation in Our Broadcast.

Dabb: Good Morning, Dave.

Williams: Good Morning, Peggy. How Are You?

Dabb: I\'m Fine. Thank You. Thank You Both for Taking the Time to Be
Part of this Training. Throughout this Course, You\'ll Be Given
Information, Helpful Hints, Exercises and Even Some \"Think Points.\"
Pay Close Attention. You Never Know\... One of These Points Just May Be
an Answer on The Test. We Hope You Will Be Able to Apply the Ideas and
Concepts You Learn from this Training into Your Everyday Work
Assignments. For Those of You Viewing the Training for Reference
Purposes Only, Don\'t Worry, the Test Doesn\'t Apply to You. I Would
like to Mention That Along with All of You BLMest in Attendance, We Have
Invited Other Interior Agencies to Participate in this Session. We Look
Forward to Hearing from All of You During the next Two Days. We Have
Specific Time Set Aside For Telephone and Fax Questions, But If You Have
a Question During Any of the in Struck ‑‑ Instructional Segments, Please
Feel Free to Call or Fax. We\'ll Do Our Best to Answer Your Question
Right Away. When Faxing, Please Use the Fax Form Provided with Your
Written Materials, and Include Your Name And Office Location. Any
Questions Not Addressed During the Course Will Be Answered via E‑mail.
At the End of Today\'s Broadcast, All Downlink Sites Should Fax The
Attendance Roster That Was Sent to You with the Course Materials. A Copy
of the Roster Is Available at www.ntc.blm.gov/ce‑062.html. Included with
Your Written Materials and Available on the Web Is a Course Evaluation
Form. Please Take the Time to Complete This Form. Your Feedback Is Very
Important To Us. This Telecast Is Available for Realtime Viewing at the
BLM Internet at Web.tc.blm/stream/index.htm. This New Technology Allows
Offices with Multi‑media Pcs to Watch Our Training Live Today on The
Internet. And If You\'re Watching this Course on the Web, Please Also
Fill out a Roster and Evaluation. Now, Let\'s Get Started. Joining Us
Live from Washington, D.c., Through the Use of Video Conferencing
Technology, Is Joe Federline, the Bureau Procurement Chief. Hi, Joe, How
Are You?

Federline: Fine, Peggy. Thank You for Giving Me the Opportunity to
Discuss Improvements That We Are Making To the BLM\'s Acquisition System
And All the Change Practices That Are Coming About. Certainly the
Contracting Officers, Contracting Officer Representatives and Anybody
That\'s Involved in the Acquisition Process Can Benefit From this
Training. Let Me Take a Few Minutes to Talk about the BLM System. Last
Year the Bureau of Land Management Did about \$260 Million in
Acquisition of Goods And Services to Support its Mission. That\'s over
25% of Our Budget. Over the past Few Years, We\'ve Had Several
Legislative Changes In Acquisition Reform, Such as The Federal
Acquisition Streamlining Act, the Federal Acquisition Reform Act, the
Federal Information Technology Management Reform Act, Known as The
Clinger‑cohen Act and the Electronic Commerce Act. These Acts Really
Made Sweeping Changes and Allowed Us to Simplify the Acquisition Process
And Improve the Quality of the Goods and Services That We Receive. One
Major Change from this Legislation Was Increasing Simplified
Acquisitions to a Threshold of \$100,000. The BLM States and the
National Interagency Fire Center Now Have This Increased Authority to Do
Acquisitions Simply. That\'s at a Level Closer to the Field and Closer
to the Work. Over the past Four Years, the BLM Contracting Officers
Workforce Decreased about 28% From about 215 to about 150. At the Same
Time, Our Acquisition Obligations Have Been Steadily Increasing. So in
1997, We Looked at the Situation and Produced an Acquisition Redesign
Report That Recommended Various New Tools to Help Us Do Our Job Smarter,
More Efficiently, to Produce Quality Results for Our Customers. You as a
Contracting Officer Representative Is a Vital Member Of the Team to
Acquire All These Goods and Services. Some of These Tools and Practices
I\'ll Mention Right Now To Give You a Little Flavor of How We\'re Trying
to Improve the Acquisition Process, and We\'ve Been Very Successful Thus
Far. The First Is We\'ve Had the Purchase Card Ever since it Was Piloted
by Commerce in the Late \'80s. That Is an Excellent Redesigned Tool for
All of Our ‑‑ All Employees to Acquire Goods and Services less than
\$2500. We Are ‑‑ We Just Recently, Two Days Ago, Began Implementation
Of the next Generation Web‑based Mastercard Where Your Statements Will
Be Received Through the Eagles Website from Nations Bank. I\'m Sure We
Have to Take a Few Steps Backward Before We Move Forward, Because
Interior Is the ‑‑ Probably the Only Agency in Government That\'s Taken
Such a Drastic Step Forward to Have an Integrated Card That Accomplishes
Purchases under \$2500 Where You Pay for Your Travel, You Purchase Gas
for Your Fleet, for the BLM\'s Fleet, And to Make Uniform Related
Purchases. The Other Tool That We\'ve Done Is for Anybody Who Doesn\'t
Accept the Purchase Card, We\'ve Got Convenience Checks. That\'s Been a
Useful Tool. We Piloted That Last Year for Emergency Incidents, and it
Was Very Successful and So We\'re Using That as a Tool for Those Who
Don\'t Accept Purchase Cards Under \$2500. For over \$2500, That\'s
Where We Need Your Help. Some of the New Tools and Practices That Really
Allow a Lot More Flexibility for Us, First of All, Is Buying Commercial
Items. When You Buy Commercial Items, It\'s Different than the Way You
Do Things in the Past. Previously, You Would Write the Specification or
Prepare the Statement of Work and Then Solicit Contractors for
Competition. Right Now You Do Market Research, the First Step Is to Work
with the Contracting Officer to Do Market Research to Find out What\'s
Available Commercially, Both in Goods and Services, and Tailor Your
Specifications and Work Statement Around the Commercial Practices and
What\'s in Industry. This Really Saves Time and Improves Efficiency. The
next Important Tool Is Performance‑based Contracting For Services. The
Bureau of Land Management Does over \$100 Million in Contracting for
Services. As We\'re Move to Go a Perform Based Organization, We Want to
Apply That Same Methodology to Our Contracting. Instead of Just Buying
Labor Hours for Our Contracts, We Want To State the Performance
Standards, List the Outputs and Outcomes, Develop a Quality Assurance
Surveillance Plan Rather than the Methodology to Do the Work. The
Competition Will Result in The Best Methodology to Do the Work and Get
the Best Value for The Government. The Omb Claims That this Can Save up
to 15% of the Contract Price, and They\'re Allowing You To Keep That ‑‑
Those Funds for Other Important Mission‑related Projects. The next Item
We Have Is We Looked at Our Repetitive Goods And Services That We Buy
and We Established in National Contracts That Were Ordered in The BLM\'s
National Business Center from Which All the Field Can Order under That.
That Saves a Lot of Time Because We Don\'t Have to Issue Repetitive
Solicitations. We Can Order off Those Contracts. We Save Even Greater
Money When We Order with Our Purchase Cards. The next Item Is Focusing
on Contractor past Performance. Our Employees More Often than Not Were
Frustrated When We Had To Award Low Bid. Now We Have an Option to Focus
On Contractor past Performance And We Don\'t Have to Award Low Bid, and
We\'ve Got Those ‑‑ Those Are Very Important Tools Where We Have it Not
Only for Major Contracts, but We\'ve Developed a Simplified Acquisition
Clause So That We Can Include That in Selection of Our Contractors. The
next Important Tool Is Electronic Contracting. The Bureau of Land
Management Should Complete Implementation On the Interior Department
Electronic Acquisition System by The End of this Fiscal Year. We Have
Already Implemented it In the National Business Center In Colorado. And
Just Completed Implementation in Oregon. The Simplified Acquisitions
Through I.d.e.a.s. Will Go Through the Web, Known as Electronic
Commerce. Will Issue Requests for Quotes And We\'ll Get the Quotes Back
From the Contractors and We\'ll Make the Award Through the Web. We Also
Established a Web‑based Planning Document So Our Employees Can Plan for
Procurements Through the Web. That\'s Really Increased Our Planning
Capability to Efficiently Plan Work and We Can Increase Also Our
Business with Small Minority and Women‑owned Businesses That Way. The
Department of the Interior Will Take over Hosting That Web‑based
Advanced Procurement Plan in Fiscal Year 2000. So the Entire Department
Can Get The Benefits from this New Tool. The Last Items We Had Were
Guides and Help for Our Employees. All Too Often They Don\'t Want to
Wade Through Regulations. They\'d Rather Have Simple‑to‑use Guides. So
We\'ve Developed Guides Known As a \"Buying Made Easy Guide\" That Is an
Interactive Simple to Use Guide That\'s Available on The Web. It Has a
Decision Tree. It Really Helps You ‑‑ Employees Know What to Use
Procurement People, When They Can Use Their Card, and it Really Helps
Them In Buying Decisions. We Also Have a \"Guide to Agreements\" on the
Web. We Have Information on about 27 Different Types of Agreements to
Help You Select the Appropriate Type Agreement. Lastly, but Not Least,
We Have a Purchase Card Training and Check‑writing Training Package On
the Web. These Are All Accessible on www.blm.gov/natacq. I\'m Very Glad
That I Had the Opportunity to Tell You about Some of These New Tools
We\'re Trying to and Are Continually Improving, and I Think with the Use
of These New Tools and Your Help as Part of the Acquisition Team, I
Think it Will Help You Make Your Jobs Easier and Produce Quality Results
for Your Projects. Again, Thank You Very Much for Allowing Me a Few
Moments to Tell You about the Improvements In Our Acquisition System and
The Tools That We\'re Using.

Dabb: Thank You, Joe. We Appreciate You Taking Time Out of Your Busy Day
Back There. All Right. Sounds to Me like We Have Some Useful Tools That
Will Help Both Our Internal Customers as Well As Our External Customers
as Well. Right?

Federline: Yes.

Dabb: Ok. Thank You Very Much. Over the next Two Days We Will Be
Covering Many Major Topics. Today We\'ll Be Covering Changes That Affect
the Overall Acquisition System, Including Teamwork and Customer Service,
Standards of Conduct, Performance‑based Contracting And Indefinite
Delivery/indefinite Quantity Contracts, Commercial Item Acquisition,
Methods of Acquisition and Performance Evaluations. Tomorrow We Will
Continue with Topics Specific to COR Duties And Responsibilities During
Contract Preparation and Administration. These Include Authority and
Delegation, COR Responsibilities, Prework and Other Meetings,
Documentation, Shutdown and Suspension of Work, Inspection and
Acceptance, Contract Modification and Alternative Dispute Resolution.
During this Broadcast, We Will Present Informational, Instructional
Segments, Do Small Group Exercises as Well as Some Group Discussion. And
Most Importantly, Get Feedback from You, Our Audience. We Will Have a
Short Ten‑minute Break Each Morning and a 30‑minute Break Later in the
Day. Now, I Would like to Turn Things Over to Dave Williams, Who Will
Address the Course Materials and Summarize the Overall Objectives For
this Training. Dave?

Williams: Thank You, Peggy. It\'s a Real Pleasure to Be Here. In Terms
of Course Objectives, Peggy Has Identified We\'ve Separated into Two
Different Days, and of Course, Day One Is New Tools and New Rules and
Day Two Is Focused on the Refresher Aspects of It. The First Day, Some
of the Things That You Should Expect to Pick up out of this Session
Today Are a Better Understanding Of the New Tools and How to Work With
Your Acquisition Organization, How Those Tools Can Be Used for Your
Accomplishment of Work. Secondly, We Want to You Get a Better
Understanding of Importance of Teamwork and How Your Teamwork Can
Promote Quality Contract Administration. And, Then, Thirdly for Today We
Want You to Begin to Utilize Some of Those New Tools by Taking about
Them in \"Think Points\" and Putting Them into Practice Starting
Tomorrow. For the Refresher Section, the Specify ‑‑ Specifically the
Responsibilities Would Be for You to Know Your Rights and
Responsibilities under the Contract. You Are an Important Representative
of the Government, and You Need to Know What You Can Do. Secondly, We
Want to Emphasize And Help You Understand the Importance of
Documentation. Three Key Words in Contract Administration, Document,
Document, Document. And Then the Third Major Point For this Second Day
Refresher Is To Help You Effectively Perform Your Contract
Administration Duties. Part of What You Have in Terms Of Materials Sent
to You, You Should Have a Course Manual, and That\'s Available Primarily
for Your Reference after the Training Session. We\'ll Refer to a Couple
Things In the Appendix During the Broadcast. You\'ll Need That for Those
of You That Are Taking the Final Examination. It Will Help You Find Some
Answers to the Quiz. So That\'s Important for You. Also, with Those
Materials You Should Have Received Two Large Paper Clips. Keep Those
Handy. We\'ll Use Those in One of the Exercises a Little Bit Later
Today. If You Don\'t Have a Couple of Them Now, You Might Find a Couple
Paper Clips. And Then You Also Received a Tele‑lesson Plan, and If
You\'ll Use That, That Will Be the Guide To the Two‑day Broadcast. The
Tele‑lesson Plan Includes The Visuals That We\'ll Have on The Screen and
There Is a Place On the Right‑hand Side for to You Make Notes, to Put
down Those Important, Useful Thoughts That You Have and Serve as a
Reference Later on for You. There Are Some Folks That Were Registering
in this Class as of Monday and So Materials Had Been Shipped to Them.
If, in Fact, You Have Not Received Your Course Material or Tele‑lesson
Plan, It\'s Not Critical. You Can Still Listen to the Broadcast, Make
the Notes. When You Receive Your Materials, You\'ll Be Able to Fill Them
in And They Will Fit Well for Taking the Final Examination. With That,
I\'m Pleased to Be Here, and We May Pause a Few Seconds after Some of
the Slides So You Can Finish Taking Your Notes, and We Have the Panel
Here That May Want to Jump in And Ask Me a Question. So with That I
Would like to Transfer over to Julie. Jewel, Good Morning.

Lewis: Thank You, Dave. From Time to Time During this Training We Will
Be Showing Some Points to Ponder, or \"Think Points.\" We\'d like to You
Reflect on Them And How They May Affect Each of Your Situations in Doing
Your Day‑to‑day COR Responsibilities. Our First \"Think Point\" Is
Teamwork Is Each Person Doing Their Job for the Good of All. Keeping
this Thought in Mind, Let\'s Get Started. The New Acquisition System
Provides for the Improved Cooperation and Working Relationship Between
the Various People Involved in Contracts, Including Program Personnel,
Finance Personnel, Contract Specialists and Other Necessary Technical
and Professional Personnel as Required. As We Begin this Satellite
Training Course, it Is Important To Focus on Some Key Portions of The
Regulations. Dave?

Williams: this First Segment Relates to Teamwork and Customer Service
and Part of What Joe Emphasized Is the Need for Working Together, to
Deliver on A Timely Basis, the Best Value Products and Services to the
Customer. That Secondly, We Need to Work Together as a Team. These New
Guiding Principles Are Somewhat of a Replacement to What Existed in the
Federal Acquisition Regulations Previously. We Looked at Them as Being
Fairly Restrictive and They Contain an Awful Lot of Policy And Direction
and Procedures That Sometimes Kind of Tied Our Hands in Contracting.
With the New Federal Acquisition System and Streamlining, What We Have
Are Guiding Principles, Things That Help Us Accomplish Our Job. They\'re
a Series of Tools and We Can Utilize Now, as Joe Indicated, Other than
Low Price. Now the Government Can Actually Begin to Buy in Terms of
Quality And We\'ll Pay a Fair Price for That Quality. You Know,
Sometimes When You Need to Acquire Goods or Services, Price Might Be
Most Important. There Are Other Times When You Really Are Looking for
Quality And You\'re Willing to Pay Somewhat of an Increase in Price To
Get Quality Performance. The Third Thing That We Want to Emphasize Is
this Idea of Teamwork. So with You Working with Your Contracting
Personnel, Program Personnel, Unfortunately If You Get into Litigation,
the Solicitors, but There\'s All Kinds of Folks That Can Be Part Of this
Team. If, in Fact, You Could Function As Well as Some of the Basketball
Teams, If, in Fact, They Were Playing Today, We Might Find That We Have
Players And We Have Coaches and We Have Subs, and We Have Trainers, and
We Have Medical Folks, and Somewhere along the Line We Probably Have the
Statistician And, You Know, When You Get in The Critical Game and It\'s
down To Crunch Time and the Game Is Tied and There\'s Only a Couple
Seconds Left, it Might Be That The Two Most Important People Are the
Strategist and the Person That Can Shoot the Ball. So We Don\'t Always
Get to Shoot The Ball. We Don\'t Always Get to Make the Decision. But
We\'re Part of the Team and We Need to Carry Our Share of The Load and
Work Together. In Terms of Part of the Direction for this New
Acquisition System, We\'ll Also Find That There\'s an Attempt or Desire
to Maximize the Use Of, And in this Case You\'re Going to Have to Fill
in Your Blanks as I Fill in this Blank on the Tele‑lesson Plan. New Key
Word. \"Commercial.\" What We Want to Do Is Maximize The Use of
Commercial Items in The Conduct of Government Procurement. To the Extent
We Can Find Commercial Items and Then We Want to Focus on the Quality of
The Contractor. So Now All of a Sudden Again as Joe Indicated We Want to
Begin Using Contractors That Have a Track Record of past Performance.
There\'s Too Many Cases We\'ve Heard about When People Are Dissatisfied
with What\'s Happening with the Contractors That Are Late, and Quality,
and What I Keep Hearing from Folks When I Do Classes Is That You Don\'t
Have Time Any Longer to Administer or to Help Those Marginal Contractors
and It\'s Time for You to Go for Quality And It\'s for You to Get Jobs
Done on Time. So If We Promote Competition and Use Some of These New
Tools, Then Maybe There\'s an Opportunity for to You Accomplish Those
Objectives. Now, I Have Another Visual for You That I\'ll Put on the
Elmo, Because Part of What We Want to Do Here in Terms of Exercising
These New Kinds of Initiatives, We Still Are Wanting to Minimize Our
Administrative Costs. There Are Some Things We Need to Do to Reduce, Joe
Indicated a Reduction in Staffing, but the Second Thing We Still Have to
Keep in Mind Is That since You\'re Spending Federal Dollars, It\'s
Important for You to Conduct Business with Integrity, Fairness and
Openness. Those Are All Part of this Concept of Working Together
Effectively under the New Guiding Principles to Do the Job. So Somewhere
We Need the Marketplace, Those Folks Are Important, but They Have to Be
Treated Fairly, and They Have to Be Treated Openly and You Have To
Maintain Integrity in the System. Then the next Slide That We Have On
the Elmo, Which Will Be Different from Most of the Things You\'re Going
to Be Seeing In the Broadcast, We Still Find That Even with All Kinds of
New Guiding Principles We Have to Follow Some Things That Existed For a
Long Time. We Still Have Some Rules and Regulations, and So the next
Fill‑in for You Is We Still Have Things like the Service Contract Act.
We Still Have Application of the Buy American Act. We Still Have a Whole
Series of Environmental Rules and Regulations. And Then We Also Have an
in Addition to That a Whole Host of Social Requirements That Get
Included in Federal Contracts. So as a Part of this Contract Management
Team of Acquiring Goods for Services for the Federal Government, It\'s
Important for to You Work Together. It\'s Important to Know That You Do
Have Some Flexibility for You To Make Independent Judgments And Work
Together, but There Are Still a Series of Rules That You Have to Follow.
So We Find That Even Though You Are a Member of this Team, It\'s
Necessary for You to Exercise Some Personal Initiative and Some Sound
Business Judgment, And That Differs with What Your Role Is. Your
Judgments as the Contracting Officer Are Probably Different than the
Judgments as The COR. But You Are Going to Be Confronted with Various
and Sundry Situations. You Get the Opportunity to Make Judgments. And
the System You Have Right Now, You Also Get to Be Held Responsible for
the Judgments That You Make. So Exercise Good Judgment, and Always
Remember That When You Work for the Government, It\'s Really Necessary
That You Consider the Government\'s Best Interests. You Know, You Are
out There Trying to Work Together Positively with Your Contractor. That
Doesn\'t Mean That You Give Up Rights of the Government. On the Other
Hand, That Doesn\'t Mean That You Do Unreasonable Kinds of Things. So
Remember Who Pays Your Bill. Remember Who Sends You a Check Every Couple
Weeks. But Also Remember That the Other Party to Your Contract Has
Rights. When We Think about Rights and Responsibilities, Somewhere Along
the Line We Really Kind of Need to Think about Planning and We Need to
Plan for Contract Administration and Team Members, All of You, Are
Required to Use Some Form of Planning. We Would Hope That Contractors
Plan Their Work. We Would Hope That They Produce Their Work in an
Orderly Manner. By the Same Token, Maybe It\'s Important for You to Have
Your Inspection Plan and Then Joe Touched on the Idea of an Acquisition
Plan. As Someone Outside of the Government Working for a Contractor, it
Always Seemed Strange to Me That We Have Plans Such As, You Know, the
Land Management Plan, Which Belongs To the State Director, or Maybe We
Have the Wild Horse and Burro Plan Which Belongs to the State Director.
Or Maybe We Have Some Kind of a Land Exchange Plan. We Have Various and
Sundry Management Plans That Are Related to Resources and Those Kind of
Always Come Across as Being Manager\'s Plans, and Yet When We Put
Together an Acquisition Plan, It\'s Like, That Belongs to Acquisition. I
Would Suggest, Really, That Those Are Manager\'s Plans Also And They
Simply Have a Workforce Of Contract Administration Personnel That Help
to Carry out Those Duties. So What We Might Suggest Is That The Key Is
to Plan. Or, on the Other Hand, Some of You Might Be Able to Think about
Things like Maybe the Plan Is to Key. Or Maybe We Have to Develop a Plan
So We Have the Key to Success. So with That Much of an Introduction, I
Am Going to Turn It Back over to Julie and I Think She Probably Has a
Second \"Think Point\" for You.

Lewis: Good Point. Thanks, Dave. Our Second \"Think Point\" of the Day
Is One That Affects Not Only Contracting but Many Aspects of BLM. What
Can You Do to Improve Customer Service or Eliminate a Poor past
Practice?

Lewis: Does Anyone Have an Idea to Share on a past Practice That Could
Be Improved? Or a Better Way to Serve Our Customer. Please Jot it down
and Fax it In. We\'d like to Share Any Ideas You May Have. Remember,
Your Participation in This Training Is Key to its Success. One of the
Areas We Are Constantly Trying to Improve Is Early Planning and
Solicitation Of Projects. Waiting until the Last Minute Causes Stress
for Government Staff and Contractors Alike. It Usually Increases the
Price, Too. Peggy?

Dabb: Now We\'re Going to Have An Exercise ‑‑ No, Just Kidding ‑‑ We\'re
Going to Give You a Few Minutes to Think of Three Positive Aspects of
Teamwork and Three Areas of Teamwork That Need Improvement. Please Call
Us with Your Answers As Soon as You Are Done. Of Course, We Aren\'t
Going to Have You Do this Without Some Motivation. So for the First
Three Callers, We\'ve Got Something Very Special Just for You. So Get
with It! Call In. We Want to Hear from You.

Dabb: Ok. We Have Some Callers on the Line. Our First Caller Is from
Wilma In Reno. Hi, Wilma.

Caller: Hi.

Dabb: How Are You?

Caller: Good.

Dabb: Could You Go Ahead and Give Us Three Positive Aspects Of Teamwork
and Maybe Three Areas of Teamwork That Need Improvement.

Caller: We Have Came up with Three Areas of Positive. Greater
Creativity. Better Solutions. And Better Acceptance by Everyone
Involved.

Dabb: Thank You, Wilma. We Appreciate That Very Much. We Have a Call on
‑‑ Another Call. It\'s Carl in Idaho. Hi, Carl. Could You Possibly Give
Us Your Thoughts on What\'s ‑‑ Positive Aspects of Teamwork.

Caller: I Think a Better Overall Knowledge of the Problems or Challenges
You\'re Facing. Overall I Think Ability to Service Your Clients Better.
And Then I Think Something That\'s Already Been Discussed, And That\'s
Finding Better or New Approaches.

Dabb: What about Something That May Be an Improvement?

Caller: Three Things That We Came up with Here, Documentation,
Communication, And Planning. Thank You So Much, Carl. Appreciate That.

Caller: You Bet.

Dabb: We Also Have a Call From Randy in Kanab. Hi, Randy.

Caller: Hello.

Dabb: Thanks for Calling In.

Caller: What Do You Want to Know?

Dabb: Could You Give Us Three Positive Aspects of What You Consider to
Be Real Key to Teamwork?

Caller: Sure. You Get More than One Point of View. There Is Synergism by
the Team When They Have More than One Person Working on the Project. And
There\'s an Opportunity to Share Responsibility.

Dabb: Ok. And What about ‑‑ One Thing, Just One Thing, That May Need
Improvement?

Caller: Let\'s See. I Got Three. Let Me See Which Is the Best One.
Probably Better Support from Your Upper‑level Supervisor and Removing
Belligerent And/or Frustrating Contractors.

Dabb: Oh, Great. Thank You So Much. Appreciate That a Lot. We\'ll Talk
to You Later.

Caller: Ok. See Ya.

Dabb: We Did Get a Whole ‑‑ Looks like a Good Listing over There of Some
Positive and Some Items That Need Improvement When We\'re Talking about
Teamwork. Thank You Very, Very Much for Participating. We Really
Appreciate That. Teamwork Is an Important Part of Any Organization. So
Let\'s Accentuate the Positive And Eliminate the Negative. Let\'s Move
on to Standards of Conduct. Julie?

Lewis: Part of the Acquisition Streamlining Legislation Eliminated the
Certifications Which Were Associated with the Procurement Integrity Act.
That Does Not Mean That It\'s Now Proper to Accept Gifts, Gratuities,
Provide Proprietary Information or Have Improper Relationships with
Current or Prospective Contractors. The Course Manual Provides a Listing
of Those Specific Statutes Which Should Be of Concern to Contract
Administration Personnel.

Williams: as an Employee of The Government, There Are Some Rules of
Conduct That You\'re Expected to Follow. Some of Those Are Prohibited
Conducts. You Know, It\'s Difficult to Define All the Things You Can Do.
So We Tend to Write the Rules of Things You Cannot Do. So You\'re
Prohibited from Accepting Bribes or Gifts or Gratuities, and So That\'s
Significant. You Cannot Solicit. You Cannot Receive. And So in Terms of
What You\'re Doing, Be Very Careful about What Might Be Offered to You
or What You Might Solicit in Terms Of a Gift or Gratuity. If There Was
Any Kind of a Bribe Or an Attempt to Bribe You, Keep In Mind You
Probably Really Should Promptly Report That Through Channels up to I.g.
or Someone Else to Investigate. So Be Alert to Those Kinds of Things.
Hopefully It\'s Not Happening Within the Organization, but it Can Be
Critical. You Probably Don\'t Want Your Name and Picture on the Front
Page of the Local Newspaper. Not Only Are You Guided by the Gifts Rules,
but There Are Some Other Requirements in That You Are Precluded from
Participating Personally in Any Matter That May Have a Financial Impact
on Any Person with Whom You May Be Seeking Employment. Maybe That\'s
More Critical for Those of You That Might Be Looking for Jobs. Hopefully
Some of the Downsizing Has Ended and There\'s Not Tom of You in the
Marketplace Looking For Work. But Be Careful. If You Have Had Previous
Government Work, it May Have Some Limits in Terms of What Can You Do in
Terms of Seeking Outside Employment. Be Careful. Even after You Leave
the Government, There Maybe Some More Restrictions That You\'re Going to
Be Confronted with and In Those Kind of Cases, There Are Some
Limitations on Who You Might Be Able to Represent and Some Clear
Represents on Post Employment. So If You\'re out There with Your Hand
out Saying \"Hire Me,\" Remember, Maybe They Want to Hire You Because
They Think You Come with Information and Information Is Power and They
Really Just Want to Know What You Can Bring to Their Firm from The
Government. So If There\'s Any Doubts at All, Be Careful to Check with
Your ‑‑ Be Carb Us and Check with Your Personnel Office. See If There
Are Actually Any Limitations You Should Be Aware Of So You Can Be on Top
of and It Not Get Yourself in Trouble. In Terms of Gifts and Gratuities
Or Employment, There Are Some Other Things That Maybe You Need To Be
Concerned About, and That\'s the Release of Information. You Know, If it
Happened That You Were Serving on a Technical Proposal Evaluation
Committee, You May Come Across Proprietary Information. Or in the Review
of Contract Work, it May Well Be That You Learned Something about Your
Contractor, Their Financial Capabilities, the Extent of Their Debt and
Things of That Information. So Just Be Careful If You Have Proprietary
Kinds of Information. Be Careful What You Divulge and Who You Divulge
That Information To. Just Another Caution. Again, as I Indicated, They
Can\'t Write the Rules of What You Are Permitted to Do. So the Policies
Tend to Say These Things You Are Prohibited From Doing. Then There\'s
Another Area of Regulation That You Ought to Be Concerned about and
That\'s That Prohibits the Use of Non‑public Information. Again, That
Might Be Information About a Contractor or Things That Are Not Public
Information Available under the Freedom of Information Act and If You
Divulge That Kind of Information For Your Own Personal Gain, Again, You
Could Have Some Serious Problems. So Personal Gain, Proprietary
Information, it Really Is Something That You Need to Be Seriously
Concerned About. Unfortunately, There Are People That Are Always Looking
for Inside Information, Looking for That Edge, an Opportunity to Figure
out How to Beat out the Competitor, and No Doubt That\'s A Part of Our
Society and a Part Of the Marketplace. You Just Want to Be Careful You
Don\'t Get Caught up in That Opportunity. Don\'t Get Caught up in the
Activity. Then Although There Are Some Changes, You Have to Remember
There Is a Procurement Integrity Act and You May Not Have a Signature
That You Have to Sign Any Longer That Says You Know And Understand the
Procurement Integrity Act, But, on the Other Hand, it Does Place
Limitations And as Julie Indicated, There Are a Number of Things That
Are In Our Course Manual, There Are Some Criminal Sanctions That Apply
So When We Look Anywhere And You Find a Title Which Says 18 Us Code,
Then You Can Be Assured That\'s Probably Something the Department of
Justice Knows about Because Those Are Normally Criminal Sanctions and
Those Are Subject To Not Only Fines but Possible Imprisonment. And So I
Guess Maybe in One Sense, Kind of the Parting Comment, or an Idea to
Think About in Terms of Gifts or Gratuities Is, Just Because It\'s
Proper to Accept It, Because There Are Some Dollar Thresholds Where
Things Can Be Accepted, So Just Because a Gift May Be Accepted, it
Really Doesn\'t Mean That You Should Take It. So, You Know, Maybe You
Ought to Go Ahead and Wear Your Own BLM Cap and Maybe the Contractors
Can Give Their Caps to Someone Else. Might Be Just a Little Item, But,
on the Other Hand, it Conveys an Image, and It\'s That Appearance of
Conflict That You Have to Really Be Careful B So, Julie, with That We
Have Kind of Hit Some of the High Points About Standards of Conduct and
Ethics.

Lewis: Ok. Dave, at this Time We Have Another One of Those \"Think
Points\" That I Believe We Should All Consider. How Do You Maintain an
Arm\'s Length Relationship with Contractors Who Perform Your Work?

Lewis: What Kind of Relationship Do You Have with Our Contractors? You
Can Be Friendly Without Being Friends. And Some of Our Smaller Towns,
Everyone Knows Everyone. Everyone Watches Everyone. There Could Be an
Implied Preference Just by Have Gone Lunch with Someone. You Just Need
to Be Aware, Especially If You\'re Working on A New Project or If Your
Office Has a Solicitation on the Street. Peggy?

Dabb: Thanks, Julie. Thanks, Dave. We Have a Really, Really Special
Treat Today. Our Deputy Director, Nina Rose‑hatfield and Russ Todaro
Wanted to Participate in this Training and Give Us Their Thoughts on the
next Subject, Prompt Payment.

Todaro: Hello, There. You Know, I Was Just Going over These Numbers with
Prompt Pay. You Know, We\'ve Come a Long Way, But We Still Have a Ways
to Go. We Did Produce a Video to Explain What it Takes for Prompt Pay.
And If You Haven\'t Seen it Yet, Contact Us and We\'ll Send You Out One.
We\'ll Give You More Information On this Later. Now Nina Rose‑hatfield,
Our Deputy Director, Is Going to Give Us Some More Information on Prompt
Pay.

Rose‑hatfield: Thank You, Russ. It\'s Always a Pleasure to Have An
Opportunity to Talk about Why It\'s So Important for the Bureau To Pay
its Bills on Time. I Became Interested in this a Couple Years Ago When
the Department Came to Me and Wanted To Talk about the Progress That We
Were Not Making in Terms of Paying Our Bills on Time. As a Matter of
Fact, at That Time ‑‑ at That Point in Time, We Had about a 10.7%
Interest That We Were Paying. It Came to My Attention That Not Only Was
the Department Looking At the Bureau\'s Performance, but Omb Was Also
Looking at Our Performance and Both the Department and the Office of
Manage Ment and Budget Were Looking at this as a Key Indicator as to
Whether or Not The Bureau Was in a Strong Financial Position and Had
Good Financial Management. Now, It\'s Very Important to Us As We Have
Earned a Clean Audit Opinion That We Be Able to Maintain That Opinion.
In Addition This, Year, for the First Time, We\'ve Told Congress As a
Part of Our Annual Performance Plan That We\'re Going to Be Within the
Goal of Not Paying More than 3% in Terms Of Prompt Payment Interest.
Now, this Is Such an Important Accountability Issue with the Bureau That
It\'s Something That I Personally Track Every Month, And Not Only That,
to the Extent Appear State Doesn\'t Meet That 3% Goal, I Will Pick up
the Telephone and Talk to Either the Straight Director or Associate
State Director, Because It\'s Something That We Can Do Within The
Bureau. I Know That the Finance Center And the States Have Worked Very
Hard over the Last Couple of Years to Try to Improve the Processes So
That Achieving a 3% Goal Is Doable. This Last Year We Had a Little Over
4% in Terms of the Interest That We Paid. So We Have to Work Just a
Little Harder in Order to Meet the Goal. And Be Accountable to the
Citizens and to the Congress. The Bottom Line to Me Is That It\'s Just
the Right Thing to Do. In Our Private Lives, Our Creditors Expect, and
We Expect, To Pay Our Bills off Within 30 Days. And Why Should Our
Creditors Expect Any less of Those Who Work for the Federal Government?
So I\'m Looking Forward to You in This Conference, Talking about The
Process, Making the Process Work Better, So That We in the Bureau Can
Meet That Goal.

Todaro: You Know, Paying Our Bills on Time Is Still Our Main Focus.
It\'s All about Credibility. If You Want Information on What Can You Do
to Reduce Prompt Pay Interest, or Get a Copy of the Video, or Even Find
out about Some of the Regulations, Be Sure To Visit Our Website.

Lewis: Thanks Nina and Russ For Taking the Time out to Talk With Us
about Prompt Payment. Meeting the 3% Goal Will Take All of Us Working
Together to Submit Payment Packages Timely This. Starts with the CORs
Sending Their Invoices to the Contracting Officers Without Delay.
Picture for a Moment If 3% of Our Workforce Did Not Receive Their
Paychecks on Time. Well, We\'ll Have More on this Subject Tomorrow from
the Denver Payments Team. Now Let\'s Move on to Performance‑based
Contracting. As an Attempt to Streamline Acquisition, Keep Government
Acquisition More in Line with Commercial Practices, and Reduce Costs,
There Has Been an Increased Emphasis on the Development of
Performance‑based Statements of Work When Acquiring Goods and Services.
The Goal Is for the Agency to State What They Want in
Performance‑related Terms and Then Allow Prospective Vend Oars Or
Contractors to Meet Those Needs Using Methods Which Are Most Convenient
to Them. The Person Responsible for Drafting the Requirements Document
Can Focus on What Is to Be Done, Not How it Is to Be Done. Dave?

Williams: for Some People, You Know, this Section, Performance‑based
Contracting, Performance‑based Statements of Work Is Really Difficult to
Understand, and It\'s the Kind of Thing That If We Haven\'t Worked With
it Regularly, It\'s Kind of Brand‑new and So How Do We Apply It? So
There Really Are Three Elements to this Statement of Work. The First One
Is What Is Required? What Do You Need? What Are the Requirements of Your
Job? The Second Portion of this Statement of Work Is an Assessment to
Assess Work Against Measurable Standards. So If We Want Work Done, What
Is To Be Required? The Second Question Is How Do We Assess That Work?
How Do We Assess Performance? The Third Aspect Is to Develop Incentives
or Disincentives. Sometimes We\'re Pretty Good About Making Deductions
When Work Is Not Met to Standards, Not Produced to Standards but
Performance‑based Contracting Allows People to Earn Bonuses For Work
That Is Done Well. So this New Term about Requirements Document, That\'s
Something New. Many of Us Are Used to the Term \"Specifications.\"
Requirements Documents Probably Comes from the Military, but If We Look
at it in Terms of What Are Your Requirements, What Are Your Needs? We
Used to Talk about Known Needs and Known Needs Led Then To Development
of Specifications. So Now What We Are Trying to Focus on Are: What Are
Your Requirements? What Is the Standard to Which Work Can Be Done? And
Then How We Assess and Reward or Adjust Payment as a Result of That?
Some Examples ‑‑ an Example We Might Use for That Last Slide, For Those
of You Looking at the Tele‑lesson Plan, You Will See That the Sow Part
Was Not in the Center of That Slide. As I Was Kind of Preparing and
Looking at this Lesson Plan, I Said, If the Task to Be Done Was Simply
to Say Depict Three Elements of a Statement of Work, There Wasn\'t
Anything That Said That the Sow Wording Needed to Be in the Center.
Thank Goodness the One on the Screen Is on the Center. But the One in
Your Handout Isn\'t. So, You Know, If We Were Measuring My Performance,
We Might Adjust it Because it Wasn\'t Lined Up. So Then We Have
Something We Can Look at in Terms of the Elmo, Give Us a Different View
in Terms of Requirements for How We\'re Going to Define Work. Again,
We\'re Used to Defining All the Details of Work. Now Our Objective Is to
Define What We Want. Define the Work in Terms of What Is to Be
Accomplished. Maybe We Might Say What Is. Rather than How. So We\'re
Moving Away from What And We\'re Move to Go How. So If We Begin to Think
about What it Is That We Want Done, I Identified Three Examples That You
Might Newt Your Notes and Then You Can Think about How They Apply to You
and Your Future Work. But Maybe One of Our First Chores in Terms of What
Is Required, Maybe We\'re Looking For Hourly Shuttle Service from The
Airport to Our Office Complex. Ok, So That\'s the Job to Be Done. Maybe
in Another Situation Our Job to Be Done Is to Reseed 100 Acres with Rye
Grass Seed. Or Maybe We Have an Objective Which Is Probably Mine at this
Point and That Is to Be a Part Of Presenting an Eight‑hour COR
Refresher. That\'s the What Is to Be Done. And Then Maybe You Have One
Other That Fits with Some of the Agencies We Work With, like You Or Fish
& Wildlife and Others, But Maybe the Requirement Is That We Have to Shoe
100 Government Horses. And So We Define What it Is That We Want Done.
The Second Step, Then, Once We Define What We Want Done, Is We Want to
Enable Some Kind of an Assessment, the Assessment of Work, and What We
Want to Do Is Measure Performance, Performance Against Measurable
Performance Standards. So We Begin to Focus on What Is It That We Want
Done and Then We Focus on What Is the Standard to Which We Want the Work
Done. It Might Be If We Went Back and Reflected on Those Four Examples I
Gave to You Earlier, We Might Say That the Standard for Our Shuttle
Service Is That You Cannot Be Late by More than Five Minutes Once per
Day. Remember, Our What Was Hourly Shuttle Service from the Airport To
the Hotel or to the Office. A Second One May Be in Terms of The
Measurement We\'re Looking For the Area to Be Reseed to Do At Least 90%
Coverage. So That Means We Want All 100 Acres Reseeded but it Doesn\'t
Mean That Every Acre Is Going to Be Reseed to Do 100%. It Just Means
That We Want it to At Least 90%. Ok, Those of You That Think Our Work
Has to Be Perfect, Remember Back to What Just Nina Had Commented On, and
That Is That, You Know, 3% Interest Is an Acceptable Level. All of a
Sudden We\'re Finding Standards. The Third One That I Would Reference
Would Be That Maybe The Goal for Presenting this Session Is That 90% of
Those That Attend and Take the Final Exam Should Be Able to Pass. Again,
a Measurable Performance Standard. And Then the Last One, We Maybe Could
Say in Terms of Measurable Standard, Is That 95% of the Horses Should
Retain All Their Horseshoes for at Least Three Months. No Horse Lose a
Shoo‑in Three Months. So That Could Be Some Performance Standards That
You Might Start to Measure. When You Begin to Write Performance‑based
Statements of Work, There Are Four Really Key Elements That You Need to
Consider. The First One That You Can See On the View Graph or the Screen
Is Output Description. What Is it That You Want Done? The Second One,
Which We\'ve Been Kind of Talking About, and That Is a Measurable
Performance Standard, to What Standard Do You Want it Accomplished? And
Then the Third One, We Have An Acronym, Aql, Again, Some New Things We
Kind of Keep Throwing In, but That Talks about the Acceptable Quality
Level. Doesn\'t Mean Necessarily That We Want to Have 3% of Interest on
All of Our Payments as Being Late. On the Other Hand, We like to Have
100%. But We\'re Willing to Take an Acceptable Quality Level of
Something Less. So less than Perfection Doesn\'t Mean That It\'s Wrong.
I Think the Point the Government Is Finding Is You Cannot Afford
Perfection. And Then the Fourth One and this Is a Word That Joe Used in
His Introduction and That\'s a Surveillance Plan and \"Surveillance\" Is
a Word That\'s Really New to Us and It\'s Difficult for Us to Understand
Because Kind of like Requirements Documents, it Probably Comes from the
Military, and We Think of Some Kind of Evil Surveillance under Way.
Maybe We Ought to Think That About Being a Monitoring Plan. What We Are
Try Due Asking Trying to Figure out a Way to Evaluate What Is Happening
with Contract Performance. In Terms of the Positive or Negative Aspects
of Reward in Terms of the Contractor Performance, That\'s the next One
That\'s a Little Difficult for Folks to Understand. So Aql, Acceptable
Quality Level, Is ‑‑ Provides a Contractor with an Opportunity To Win a
Bonus or Maybe Get Some Deduction. In Terms of Our Shuttle Service,
Maybe the Contractor Would Win a Bonus If They Were Never Late, They
Never Had Any Breakdowns of Equipment or They Never Received Negative
Customer Satisfaction Reports. In That Case, That\'s Pretty Doggone Good
Service. That\'s Better than Required. Maybe They Ought to Earn a Bonus.
Again, Those Bonuses Are Predetermined as a Part of the Solicitation. So
as a Contractor, I Have an Idea What I Might Earn. By the Same Token, If
I\'m Late In Pickups by X Number of Times, Maybe If I\'m Late More than
Twice During the Course of the Month, or Maybe If I Have Equipment
Breakdowns or If Somehow I Have a Series of Negative Customer Reports,
Then There Ought to Be a Deduction to My Earnings. So I Provided a
Standard of Work. I Provided the Possibility for Earning Bonuses and the
Opportunity for Having Reductions for Quality. So If You\'re Concerned
about This Whole Idea of Beginning to Apply Performance‑based Statements
of Work, Then What You Might Want to Think about Is That, You Know, You
Have Some New Tools on How You Select Contractors and If You Use
Competitive Negotiations, and When It\'s Appropriate, it Doesn\'t Fit in
Everything, Just Like Every Other Tool, Not Every Tool Fits for Every
Situation, But When It\'s Appropriate and When You Can Use Negotiation
and Best Value, Maybe All of a Sudden We\'ll Start Selecting That Bus
Contractor and We\'ll Use past Performance as One of The Measures of How
Much We\'re Willing to Pay. We Don\'t Want Somebody That Has Difficulty
in Performance and Poor Equipment and Breakdowns. Or Maybe We\'ll Begin
to Look at What Are Some of Those Other Nonprice Factors, like Customer
Service. All of a Sudden If We Think About Applying the New Kinds of
Contractor Selection Procedures, Along with Performance‑based Statements
of Work, You Really Can Say, I Want 95% of the Work Done and Actually
Get 100% of The Work Done If You Get a Quality Contractor. And All of
this Can Be Done for A Fair Price and I Think Reduce Contract
Administration. So with That, Julie, It\'s Going To Give Us a Little
Coverage on What Some of the BLM Policy and Practice Is about
Performance Based Contracting.

Lewis: Thanks, Dave. Yes, Us in BLM Should Be Using This New Method of
Procurement. It Is BLM\'s Policy to Ensure That Performance‑based
Contracting Methods Are Used to The Maximum Extent Practicable When
Acquiring Services. Using Performance‑based Service Contracts Should
Save Money Through Reduced Contract Prices And Increased Satisfaction
Through Improved Contractor Performance. For Fiscal Year \'98, Our Goal
For the Number of Performance‑based Service Contracts over \$100,000 Was
70%. The Goal for this Fiscal Year For the Number of Performance Based
Contracts over \$25,000 Is 70%. Training Is Being Offered Through the
National Training Center for CORs and Cos, There Are Some Models of
Performance‑based Work Statements Posted on the BLM National Acquisition
Web Page. There\'s No Reason to Reinvent The Wheel. Sharing Is So Much
Easier. So Use the Models. We Are Required Also to Report Our
Accomplishments to the Office of Management and Budget. It Is Here to
Stay, but the Concept Isn\'t New, as You\'ll See In Our next Segment.
Dave, You Have an Exercise.

Williams: Yeah, this Is Going To Be a Challenging One for You, I Think.
You Need to Find Your Paper Clip, the First of the Two Paper Clips Which
Have Been Provided, And I Think Julie Is Going to Follow along with
This, So We\'ll See How it Goes. When We Think about Performance‑based
Statements of Work, If We Tell Somebody What We Want Done and Not How to
Do It, Then That\'s What I Want to Try to Emphasize with This. So We\'re
Going to Have You Take That First Paper Clip, and I Want You to Form
Something. So Follow These Instructions. Your Paper Clip Has Been Formed
From a Single Piece of Wire. It\'s Approximately Six Inches in Length.
Now, I\'m Going to Direct You Step by Step, and I Want You to Convert
the Paper Clip into a Picture Hanger, One That Could Be Hung on a Nail
on the Wall With a U‑shaped Section Which Would Then Be Available to
Hold The Wire on the Back of the Picture Frame. There\'s Going to Be
Four Basic Steps. Everybody Ready? The Steps Are Going to Be Bend,
Rotate, Twist and Bend. So Follow Each Step Exactly. Hold the Paper Clip
Between the Thumb and the Forefinger Every Your Left Hand. Make Sure
That the Wire Ends Are Pointing Downward. And the Outside Wire End Is on
The Right. Holding the Paper Clip Between Your Thumb and Forefinger, Use
Your Right Thumb and Forefinger To Bend the Top Half of the Paper Clip
Away from You Approximately 90 Degrees. Still Holding the Base of the
Paper Clip Between Your Left Thumb and Forefinger, I Would Like You Now
to Rotate Your Wrist and Fingers in a Clockwise Manner So That the
Previously Bent Section Is Pointing to the Right. Hold the Horizontal
Wire Between Your Thumb and Forefinger and Twist Upward Approximately 90
Degrees.

Lewis: I\'m Sorry, What Was That Again?

Williams: Approximately 90 Degrees.

Lewis: Hold What, Though?

Williams: We\'re Going to Find Out in a Minute. Still Holding the Base
with Your Left Thumb and Forefinger, Now Hold the Newly Formed Section
Between the Right Thumb and Your Forethinger and Bend it Downward 90
Degrees. Note This, Might Take Both Hands.

Lewis: I Got Lost.

Williams: at this Point Julie Says She Got Lost and That May Be Some of
You in the Audience Also. But the Result, If You Were Able To Follow
Each of the Steps Is That You Would Have Formed an Item Which Can Be
Used to Hang Over the Nail on the Wall to Provide a U‑shaped Section and
Have the Picture in the Back. Now Maybe I Might Demonstrate For You, and
We\'ll See How it Goes. I Would Hold it this Way, Bend One Half and Then
I Would Rotate It Upwards and Then I Would Bend This Down, and Using Two
Hands, I Now Have Something That Can Hang on the Wall and Something That
Will Hold the Picture Frame. That\'s What We Would Call a Design
Specification and They Are Terrible. On the Other Hand, If I Had Asked
You to Take this Second Paper Clip and I Gave You a Performance‑based
Statement of Work, Then What I Might Ask You To Do Is to Take That
Second Paper Clip and Shape it So That It Can Be Used as a Picture
Hanger. And Then If I Gave You Just a Little Bit of Time, You Could
Probably Accomplish That. Now, We Have One Other Exercise That We Need
You To, If You Would, These of You ‑‑ Those of You That Have Your Course
Manual Handy, Look at the Appendix on Page A‑9 and A‑10. This Is a
Portion ‑‑ It\'s Actually Almost the Whole Contract, but It\'s a Couple
Pages of a Contract That Was Probably Made with the Wright Brothers in
about 1907 and this Contract Was for the Creation or Manufacture of a
Heavier than Air Flying Machine. And What I Wanted to Point out With
this One Are about Three Different Things. I Would like to ‑‑ If You
Follow Along, I Will Give You Paragraph Numbers and Can You Highlight or
Underline the Kinds of Information That I\'m Going to Point out to You.
So What I Will Do on the First Page Is Identify Some of the
Performance‑based Items That Were a Part of this Contract. So If You
Look at Number 2, it Says That ‑‑ the Dedesirable Requirement Is That it
Be Designed This, Air Graft Be Designed So it Can Be Quickly And Easily
Assembled. So That\'s an Objective. Taken Apart and Packed for
Transportation in an Army Wagon. And Then Third Line, about an Hour.
Those Are Performance Requirements. The Second Performance Requirements
I Found Is in Number 3. We Say That this Machine must Be Capable of
Carrying Two Persons. Two Persons Have That a Combined Weight of 350
Pounds and Then it Also must Be Able to Have Sufficient Fuel for a
Flight of 125 Miles. Again, What Is to Be Done, Not How It\'s to Be
Done. And Then on the First Line of Number 4 You Find That There\'s
Another Performance Requirement, And That\'s That the Machine Is To Be
Designed to Have a Certain Speed. So We\'re Looking for a Speed. Then If
You Look at the next Page, Which Would Be Page A‑10 In the Appendix, on
Item Number 6, You Will Find in the First Line That the Requirement Is
That a Flight of at Least One Hour During the Test Period. Then the
Second Line, it must Be Able to Stay Continuously in the Air. It Says
Without Landing. On the Third Line, It\'s Got to Be Able to Return to
the Starting Point Without Having Significant Damage When it Lands. And
Then Kind of the Last One in Some 6 Is it Has to Be Able to Be Steered
in All Directions. Then Dropping down to Number 8 We\'ll Find That this
New Aircraft That the Wright Brothers Are Going to Manufacture for Us Is
Supposed To Be Designed to Ascend into Any Country, Whether Going ‑‑
Where They Are Going to Encounter Certain Kinds of Field Conditions. The
Second Line Is to Have a Starting Device That\'s Simple And
Transportable. Probably Means the Co‑pilot out Front Turning the Prop.
It\'s Also Supposed to Be Able to Land in a Field Without Any Specially
Prepared Landing Time. And Without Sufficient Damage. All Performance
Requirements. And Then a Couple More. Number 9, They Have to Have Some
Kind of Device That Permits a Safe Assent. Well, That Might Be the
Initiation of a Pair Chute. Then Number 10, It\'s Got to Be Simple in
Construction So That An Intelligent Man Can Become Proficient. That\'s
What it Said in the Original Wright Brothers Contract. We Would Have
Probably Changed That Language Today. And Then Finally the Last One,
Number 13, Is That the Contractor Is Required to Provide Instruction to
Two People in the Handling and Operation of the Machine. So All of a
Sudden We Have Performance‑based Statements of Work. Then Without
Spending Time on It, If You Just Turn Back to A‑9, under Number 4,
You\'ll Find There Was a Bonus Created. If They Were Able to Sustain
Better than the Required Speed, They Received a Bonus. If They Fell
below the Desired Speed, There Was Some Adjustment With Price to a Point
Where Below a Certain Speed Unacceptable Work. Then in the next
Paragraph, Number 5, it Talks about How They\'re Going to Measure, and
That Was the Test Flight, and That Carries on to Item Number 6, the
Testing. So I Guess the Point That I Would Make to You Is That If You
Are Beginning to Be Challenged By Performance‑based Statements Of Work
Writing, Somehow I Wonder If it Could Be Done Successfully in 1907,
Isn\'t it Possible for it to Be Done in 1998? Not Easy, but Possible. So
with That, Let\'s Turn it Back Over to Peggy.

Dabb: Thanks, Dave and Julie. That Was Really an Effective Way To
Demonstrate How Performance‑based Specifications Work. Well, We Have Bob
Heaton on the Phone. He Is the Contracting Officer at The Oregon State
Office. Let\'s Get Him on Here. Hi, Bob.

Heaton: Hello.

Dabb: Thanks for Calling in This Morning. Bob, Can You Tell Us or Share
With Us a Little Bit about Some Of Your Experiences with
Performance‑based Contracting?

Heaton: I Can Tell You We Have Been Using it in Oregon for Quite Some
Time. Before it Was Called Performance‑based Service Contracting.
Different Elements of it Usually Applied to Different Contracts. Some
Had a Self‑inspection Program. Others Had Incentive Payments. Usually a
Deduction from Payments Based on Inspection Results. And We\'ve Used
Them for a Variety of Types of Projects, Tree Planting and Thinning,
Brushing, Brush Piling, Prescribed Burning and Most of Our Other
Reforestation Related Projects.

Dabb: Bob, Did You Find That It Was Hard for Your Customers To Develop
Those Requirements, Though? I Mean, Was That Quite a Challenge for You?

Heaton: it Was at the Beginning Because Our Customers, Being the
Requisitioners, Were More Accustomed to Writing Exactly What They Want
Done Rather than the Objective. When We Got Them Trained into How to
Write What the End Result Was Supposed to Be, They Found Out it Was a
Lot Easier to Write That Kind of a Spec than it Was A Design Spec.

Dabb: How Was it as Far as The Inspection Part or the Monitoring Part?
How Did They Do on That?

Heaton: They Found in That Spec Shun Went a Lot Smoother Because They
Could Turn a Contractor Loose on Their Units And Then Go Away. We Would
Arrange the Sequence of Units to Be Worked, Go out and Visit the Site,
Frequently at The Beginning of a Project, and Then less Frequently as
Work Went On. Then the Inspectors Could Go off And Inspect Other Jobs or
Other Units and Come Back When the Contractor Told Us That the Work Was
Done. So it Really Gave the Inspectors More Flexibility in Deciding
Where They Could Go Rather than Remaining on Site to Make Sure That the
Contractor Did the Work In Exactly the Sequence That We Thought They
Should.

Dabb: Did You Find the Quality Increased Somewhat?

Heaton: it Did, and the Reason That it Did Is Because of The Contractor
Self‑inspection Program. The Contractors Employed Their Own Inspectors
and Used a System To Inspect the Work That Was in Almost Every Case
Identical to The BLM Method with One Difference ‑‑ They Were More
Stringent in How They Inspected Their People Because They Wanted To Make
Sure When That the Government Inspectors Came in Later on That They
Would Get the Higher Payment for Higher Quality Work. So it Did Work out
Quite Well From a Quality Standpoint.

Dabb: Wow, That Sounds like That\'s Really Effective. And You Do Have
Some Models or Samples, I Guess, on Your Web Page, Right? So Again, What
Julie Had Mentioned Earlier about Not Reinventing the Wheel, We Could
Certainly Utilize Some Things You\'ve Done.

Heaton: Absolutely. At Web.or.blm.gov/or 952 We Have A Document Library
with Specifications That Relate to Service Contracts, Performance‑based
Service Contracts and Can You Work Your Way Through That Library for a
Great Number of Samples.

Dabb: Ok. Thank You, Bob. Did You Have Anything You Wanted To Add, Dave,
Julie?

Williams: It\'s Always Good to Hear Some Success Stories, Because We Can
Build on Those.

Dabb: True. Yes. Ok. Thank You Very, Very Much for a Great Discussion,
Everyone, on Performance‑based Contracting. Especially You, Bob, for
Your Input from Oregon.

Heaton: Thank You Very Much.

Dabb: Before We Have a Short Break, Julie, Did You Have Any Kind of a
Thought to Share with Us?

Lewis: Thanks, Peggy. Yes, I Had a Couple of Thoughts About This. We
Should All Consider These. Where Could You Use a Performance‑based
Approach? And What Do You Think of this Approach?

Lewis: So Did You Think of Any Service Type Contracts Where You Could
Use a Performance‑based Approach? Or Maybe a Combination of
Performance‑based and Design Specifications. What Do You Think about It?
Send Us Your Comments. For So Long We Insisted That Your Specifications
or Statements of Work Should Be Detailed and Specific. Now We\'re
Suggesting That Maybe You Don\'t Have to Be Quite So Specific. Peggy?

Dabb: Thanks, Julie. We\'ve Covered Quite a Bit of Information So Far,
and You ‑‑ Are You Guys Ready for a Break? I Know We Are. But Wave Go to
Break, Remember, Send Your Questions, Comments or Ideas to Us on the
Last \"Think Point\" or Anything Else for That Matter That We\'ve
Covered So Far Or Anything That You Have a Question On. We\'ve Left a
\"Think Point\" on The Screen for to You Reference And When We Get, ‑‑
Get Back, We\'ll Address Your Questions. See You in Ten Minutes!

Dabb: Hi. Welcome Back. We Have Received Several Calls And Faxes During
the Break. Thank You So Much. Keep \'Em Coming. We\'re Going to Go Right
to a Phone Call. We Have Jim from Worland on the Phone. Hi, Jim.

Caller: How Are You? Peggy Dabb I\'m Fine. How Are You? Did You Have a
Question?

Caller: These Performance‑based Contracts, Are These Strictly for
Service Contracts or Do They Also Work For Construction?

Lewis: You Know, We Have a Roof Repair Job That Was Construction and We
Used Performance‑based on That to Write the Specs, but Generally They
Are for Service Contracts. Generally They Don\'t Work as Well for
Construction Because in The Construction Contracts You Know You Have the
Very Detailed Specifications.

Williams: and I Guess the Other Thing I Might Add Is That The Department
Recently Issued a Guide, a Pamphlet, on Performance‑based Service
Contracting, and They Typically Say They Want to Exclude Construction.
That Certainly Makes a Lot of Sense, I Think, for Brand‑new
Construction. Architects, Designers Life to Have Specification. As Julie
Indicated, I Think as After Experience Doing Performance‑based Standards
of Work, Some of Those We Might Call Services, Repairs, Reroofing,
Technically They\'re Construction but They\'re the Things That Probably
Could Be Performance‑based but They\'ll Probably Come in Phase Two.

Caller: Thank You.

Dabb: Ok. That Answered Your Question, Jim?

Caller: Yes, Ma\'am.

Dabb: Thank You Very Much for Calling In. Bye. We Also Got a Couple of
Faxes Here. Let\'s Do ‑‑ Let\'s See, Linda From St. George, Utah. Do We
Have to Use Performance‑based Contracting?

Lewis: Well, You Know, the Department Has Goals as Well as The Bureau in
Their Strategic Plans with Regard to This, and So in Trying to Meet
Those Goals And Now this Year as I Mentioned The Goal Is at 25,000 and
Higher, That 70% of Our Service Contracts Will Be Performance‑based. So
We Do Need to Start Using These.

Williams: the Point I Might Add to That One Is Even Looking At it above
the Departmental Level, the Government Performance Results Act Is
Beginning to Compare Agencies And Departments and Organizations, How
Well Do They Accomplish Their Jobs According To Plan, and One of the
Things That Omb Is Looking for Is, Are You Using Performance‑based
Specs? They\'re Convinced They Save Money and If the Department of
Interior and the Bureau Chooses Not to Use Those, You Know, Getting Your
Budgets Through the Examiners May Become More Difficult.

Dabb: All Right. We Have One More Fax Here. It\'s from Ernie in Denver.
How Do You Provide Bonus on Fixed Price Contracts?

Lewis: the Bonus Incentive, I\'m Assuming That\'s What He Means. With a
Fixed Price Contract, You Don\'t Have Any Incentives or Ductives. It\'s
Fixed Price for What You\'re Doing. So You Need to Have ‑‑ If You Wanted
to Do Bonuses, You Would Want to Set it up That Way in The Beginning in
the Solicitation Process. In Fact, Use the Incentive and Incentive‑type
Contracts.

Williams: and Also Maybe Even With the Wright Brothers it Was Probably
Fixed Price in Terms of The Performance for the Specified Work, but
There Was an Opportunity to Earn a Bonus. Those of You Might Remember
There Was a Freeway That Collapsed in Southern California Not Too Long
Ago after the Earthquake, and There Was a Lot Of Publicity When the
Contractor Earned a Couple Million Dollars Bonus for Early Performance.
So Done Properly up Front as Part of the Planning Process, Those Things
Can Work Together.

Dabb: Here\'s One More Fax Here. Doing Things by Team Seems to Take So
Much Time. Do You Have Any Suggestions on Speeding up the Process?

Williams: I\'ll Go First this Time, Julie, All Right? You Know, When I
Spent Time in The Government, it Seemed like It Was Constant Meetings,
Right? We Go to Meetings All the Time. And Somehow, Have We Progressed
To Where We All Have to Get Together to Do Something. So I Guess My
Concept of Teamwork Is Really That We Meet Together to Plan, and Then We
Make Assignments, and We Don\'t Spend Time Together Doing All The Work.
We Spend Time Together Coordinating Our Individual Work Activities and
Our Individual Work Activities Collectively Are The Plan. So Teamwork,
You Know, a Loft You Had Some Real Positive Items About Teamwork,
Coordination, Communications, We\'re Working on The Same Track, Going
along the Same Way. So it Does Not Have to Be Wasteful. You Have to
Manage Your Time in Meetings Just like You Have to Manage Everything
Else You Do.

Lewis: I Think Sometimes We\'re on So Many Teams We Can\'t Keep up with
it All. So it Can Be Trying.

Dabb: We Received a Comment On a Fax Here and this Is Directed to You,
Dave. It Says ‑‑ Check Samuel Been Nets History of Steam Navy of The
United States ‑‑ Samuel Been Et Cetera History of Steam Navy Of the
United States. The Navy Was Using Performance‑based Contracting by The
1840s. So the Wright Brothers Were Well After the Development of
Performance‑based Statements of Work. If You Have Better Examples, Send
Them In. We Love to Have Them.

Dabb: One Last Fax Here. What Are the Things I Need to Do To Move Toward
a Performance‑based Statement of Work and How Is it Different Than What
I Have Done in the Past?

Williams: Let Me Jump in Again. One of the Things I See Working With a
Loft Organizations, a Lot Of Agencies, Is That We Start to Start to Try
out Using New Tools, but What We Don\'t Realize Is the Mark Place Is Not
Ready Yet and Somehow If We Want to Start Using Some of These New
Procedures, Performance‑based Specifications, Bonuses, Deductions,
Describing What Rather than How, We Really Need To Step out There in the
Marketplace and Find out Whether Or Not There Are Contractors That Are
Prepared to Address Those Kinds of Things. They May Not ‑‑ They May Not
Know How to Write Proposals. They Don\'t Know What Some of Those Their
Cost Figures Are. So We Have to Develop the Process. We Are Not Going to
Jump from Where We Have Been Historically To Where You Should Be Moving.
It\'s Going to Take a While to Get That. So One Step at a Time. Gather
Data. Develop the Marketplace. Develop What You Want. Think about a
Fairway of Measuring. And One Point Maybe to Keep in Mind Is That, You
Know, Maybe If You Just Said What You Wanted, You Might Ask Contractors,
Prospective Contractors, to Tell You in Their Proposal How Would They Do
the Work, What Kind of Equipment Would They Use, So They Can Give Allot
of Information to Make Those Choices. So Use the Industry to Accomplish
Your Goals.

Dabb: Thanks for All the Responses Throughout. Please, Please, Please
Keep Them Coming. You Know, When They Come In, it Keeps Us on Our Toes.
One of the Areas in Which BLM Has Been Making Changes Is the Use of
Indefinite Delivery/indefinite Quantity, or Id/iq Type Contracts. From
What I\'ve Seen, These Have Been Really Effective. Julie?

Lewis: Thanks. Many Acquisition Organizations Are Beginning to Look More
Closely at the Benefits Derived From Id/iq Contracts. These Contract
Opportunities Can Take the Place of Entering into Numerous Small
Transactions. Id/iq Contracts Permit the Contracting Agency and You
Others to Place Delivery or Task Orders under the Contract. A Listing of
Id/iq Contracts for The BLM Is Included on Page A‑5 Of Your Course
Manual. Most Agencies Have a Variety of Id/iq Contracts, Many of Which
Can Be Used by Other Federal Agencies. When Goods or Services under the
Contracts Meet Their Needs.

Williams: the First Slide We Have in this Segment on Id/iq Contracts
Shows the Three Types Of Id/iq Contracts Which Are Available for Use,
and I\'ll Try To Describe Each One of Those And Then We\'ll Go to a
Second Slide. The First One Is Definite Quantity Contracts. In Terms of
If We Are Going to Buy 100 Units Every Something During a Contract
Period, Maybe One Month, One Year, Whatever The Period of Time Is, and
We Contract for All of Those Items, That\'s a Definite Quantity
Contract. We Will Buy That Quantity over The Fixed Period of Time. We
May Order a Few Units Today. We Might Order a Few Units Tomorrow, next
Week We\'ll Order A Few More but We Have a Definite Quantity Which We
Will Buy. In That Case the Contractor Knows How Much They\'re Going to
Sell. They Just Don\'t Know Exactly When the Orders Will Come In. So
They Have to Be Prepared to Meet Your Definite Quantity Requirements.
The Second Type of Indefinite Quantity Contract That\'s Shown On Your
Slide Is the Requirements Type Contract. When We Look at Requirements,
What That Means to Those of Us In Procurement, Is That All of Your
Requirements Will Be Ordered under this Contract, and The Legally
Binding Aspect of All Requirements Is That You May Order Zero, and If
I\'m the Contractor, I Take the Risk How Much You\'re Going to Order.
The Only Thing I Know for Sure As the Contractor Is That All of Your
Requirements Will Be Placed With Me. So We Have Definite Quantity and
Then We Have Requirements Where Any of Your Requirements Are Placed with
Me. Then the Third One, Which, You Know, That\'s Left of Our Choices, Is
the Indefinite Quantity Contract. In That Kind of a Case, We Don\'t Know
How Much We\'re Going to Need, We Still Would Have Some Fixed Period of
Time, it Could Be One Year, or it Might Be Even Be Multi‑years, If We
Have That Authority and What We Do Is to Say That When We Have Needs, We
Will Go to You, the Source of Supply. In Indefinite Quantity Contracts
We Can and Really Are Encouraged To Make Multiple Awards. So Actually If
You Were Back to Oregon Talking with Bob Heaton About Some of the Kinds
of Things That Might Happen up There, Say, in Tree Planting, They Might
Actually Have a Multiple Award Tree Planting Contract. The Prices Could
Be Established. It Might Well Be That for a Certain Standard of Planting
on 14 by 14 Spacing There Is a Fixed Price per Acre. A Different Kind of
Spacing, Another Fixed Price. So When They Have Need for Goods Or
Services, They Either Place The Order with the Single Contractor That
They Have or If There Are Multiple Contractors, They Could Get Quickly
Competition Amongst Those Three. Or You Could Design it Where You Simply
Rotate Your Work Against Qualified Contractors. Because Id/iq Contracts
Don\'t Have a Fixed Quantity, We Don\'t Know How Many We\'re Going to
Buy And It\'s Not a Requirement to Buy All of Our Needs, in an Id/iq,
Indefinite Quantity Form, We Have to Put in Some Kind of a Guarantee, a
Minimum Amount of Orders That Will Be Placed. It Doesn\'t Have to Be
Huge Dollars, but it Really Has to Be Something More than Nominal. So
Your Contracting Folks Can Help You Determine What Would Be The
Appropriate Kind of Indefinite Quantity/indefinite Delivery Contract
That Might Be Available for Your Use. The Uses for Id/iq Contracts, You
Know, Vary Wherever You Go. Different Organizations Have Different Kinds
of Needs. If You Were Having Printing Done, Then Maybe You Don\'t Know
How Many Volumes Somebody Is Going to Produce or When, and So You Enter
into an Id/iq Contract For Printing on an As‑needed Basis. Then When the
Orders Come In, You Simply Write the Purchase Order Against the
Contract. Or Maybe It\'s Vehicle Repairs And Maintenance. You Have Some
Idea What the Size Of Your Fleet Is, but You Don\'t Know for Sure How
Many Repairs You Will Need During a Given Period of Time. So You Arrange
a Source of Supply, It\'s an Id/iq Contract, And Then You Place Orders
under That Contract. You Might Have it for Equipment Rental or Maybe
Sign Manufacturers. There\'s All Kinds of Things That You Might Use
Id/iq Contracts For. As a Part of this Whole Purpose, You Would Begin to
Think about What Are Your Historical Buying Experiences? If I\'m Going
to Compete for Your Id/iq Contract in Terms of a Vendor, I Need to Have
Some Idea What You\'ve Done Historically. So If We in the Training
Business We\'re Looking to Put in Prices For, Let\'s Say, Gsa Had a
Contract out for Training, We Might Want to Know, How Many of These
Courses Have You Offered In the past Year? If We Become the Successful
Contractor or a Successful Contractor, Then We Want to Have Some Idea of
the Opportunities That We\'ll Have to Put on Training Classes. So a
Minimum Guarantee, Either That or It\'s All Requirements. So Somehow We
Have to Communicate and We Do That by Historical Information. This Is
Probably the Other Area Where Your Acquisition Plan Comes in Real Well.
Trying to Tie Acquisition Planning with Your Program Budgets and Your
Long‑term Plans And Goals and Objectives Really Does Make That Part of
the Management Plan. If I\'m in Acquisition, I Can\'t Really Enter into
an Id/iq Contract to Fit Your Requirements If You Can\'t Give Me Some
Prediction of What Your Requirements Are. So I Can Help You. I Can Use
New Tools. But It\'s That Teamwork. You Have to Be Able to Give Me Some
Prediction, Not a Guarantee, Not a Warranty, but Just a Prediction. And
So If We Have Those Predictions and We Have Some Future Notes, Then
Maybe We Can Go Ahead and Enter into Some Id/iq Contracts That That Are
Beneficial. In Terms of Some Advantages, and Some of Those Things Have
Been Mentioned out of Oregon as an Example, Because They\'ve Used Some
of Those Contracts Previously, but the Thing it Does Is You Don\'t Maybe
Have to Have That Huge Supply of Materials Available That You Bought
Once a Year N Stead of Buying the Year\'s Supply of Fence Posts, We
Simply Order Fence Posts Against the Contract When We Have Need. Or
Maybe Instead of Worrying About All These Minimum Requirements, We
Establish Something in There That Limits The Government\'s Obligation to
Some Minimum Quantity. And it Lets Us Have Faster Delivery When We
Actually Have The Need. There\'s Some Real Advantages to Contractors
When We Begin to Look at Id/iq Contracts. Because as a Contractor We
Look At Possibility of Total Sales, Not Transaction by Transaction. And
Maybe Somewhere along the Line as We Begin to Think about This Whole
Concept of Id/iq Contracts, Wonder, Where in the Heck Do They Fit in
This? As a Part Every this Total Acquisition Plan, as a Part of Getting
the Job Done, Us in Procurement Applying the Tools To Accomplish
Management Jobs, If We in Some Cases Look and Say, Well, You Know,
There\'s a Lot of Small Transactions Which Could Be Done and Those Get
Done By People Now Having Micropurchase Authority, They Can Buy up to
\$2500 in Supplies And \$2,000 in Construction. Then We Take Care Every
Those Large Complicated Projects by Handling Them with the National
Business Center or to Warranted Contracting Officers That Have
Sufficient Dollar Authority. And Then All Those in Between, Those
Regular Recurring Needs That You Have, Let\'s Enter into An Id/iq
Contract. And Then If I\'m Your Contracting Officer, I Have Turned Loose
of The Small Jobs to You. I\'ve Saved the Large Ones for Me. And the
Routine Kinds of Tasks We\'ve Arranged a Source for and You Simply Place
Orders When You Have the Need. So We Work out the Arrangements And
You\'ve Able to Accomplish Them on an As‑needed Basis. Give You Maybe
One Clue, since I Did Have a Little Bit of a Preview of the Test and
That\'s That, You Know, When You\'re Looking at Id/iq Contracts, Just
Because You Have One Available, It Doesn\'t Mean That\'s What Is On That
Contract Will Meet Your Needs. An Id/iq Contract, Maybe It\'s Like a
Committtee. It Meets Whatever the Needs Are In That Contract. But If You
Have Special Unique Needs, They May Be Greater in Complexity, They May
Be Less. So it Is a Source of Supply. It Is a Possibility. It Is a Tool
That You Can Use. It\'s Not a Guarantee That Everything Will Go Well.
It\'s One of the Many Tools That You Have in this New Bag of Tricks We
Call Acquisition Reform. So Then Somewhere There Is Probably a Challenge
for You, And the Question Is Whether or Not You Can Combine All These
Kinds of Things into One. Well, Certainly There Are Benefits for the
Contracting Officer Not to Have All These Numerous Small Projects to
Have To Deal With. And It\'s Probably Beneficial for The Program Manager
to Get Their Needs Met Faster. And Then, by the Same Token, it Really Is
Valuable If the Contractor Have Some Idea of Future Needs and They Have
Some Idea What Their Volume of Business Might Be. And So it Benefits
Everybody If You\'re Able to Put Together a Good Id/iq Contract. So with
That Kind of Overview And Maybe a Little Better Understanding of Where
These New Tools Might Fit in Your Acquisition Program, We\'ll Turn It
Back over to Julie, and She Can Share with You Some Id/iq Information
That\'s BLM‑specific.

Lewis: That\'s Right B a Year Ago BLM Wanted to Take Advantage Of the
Points That Dave Just Made, and We Formed the Acquisition Strategies
Team. We Wanted to More Efficiently Acquire Goods and Services We Bought
Repetitively Throughout BLM. We Looked at Reports of Previous
Procurements and Developed a Priority List That Was Dubbed \"The Top
14.\" The List Is a Living Document Posted on the BLM National
Acquisition Web Page at Web.blm.gov:80/natackq. As Contracts Are
Awarding for Certain Items, New Items Will Be Added to the List. Some of
the Items That Appeared On the First List Were Cattle Guards, Fencing
Materials, Plastic Pipe, Vault Toilets, Computer Equipment, Radios and
Dam Inspections. Some of the Solutions That Have Already Established,
Are Additional Discount, Blanket Purchase Agreements Against Gsa
Schedules, Some of Those Are for The Pcs, Negotiating Regional
Indefinite Delivery/indefinite Quantity Contracts for Both BLM And Other
Federal Agency Use and Issuing Instructions to BLMers To Place Orders
Against a Contract Already Awarded by Another Agency, for Instance, Our
Vault Toilets. If You Find Yourself Writing Specifications Repeatedly,
Either Month after Month or Year After Year, Maybe It\'s a Good Prospect
for an Id/iq Contract. Check with Your Procurement Office. And Now We
Have Another \"Think Point\" to Consider. What Projects Do You Work on
Where You Could Use Id/iq Type Contracts?

Lewis: Well, Did You Think of Any? If Did You, Send Them In. We Would
like to Share Those. These Types of Contracts Are Meant to Make Your
Life Easier As Well as Be Cost Efficient. Wouldn\'t it Be Easier to
Write An Order Against a Standing Contract than to Start with the
Statement of Work and the Solicitation Each Time You Have A Need? Now
We\'ll Move into Another Closely Related Subject, Commercial Item
Acquisition and Market Research. A New Part Has Been Added to the
Federal Acquisition Regulations Or the F.a.r., to Provide Policy And
Guidance on the Acquisition Of Commercial Items. It Is Now Possible for
the Government to Make Purchases Using Methods and Procedures Which More
Closely Resemble the Practices Used in Business and Industry. There\'s a
Very Broad Definition Of Commercial Items Which, Based Upon Market
Research, Permits a More Streamlined and Quicker Method of Acquisition.
Market Research Permits Members Of the Team to Perform Surveys And to
Accumulate Information on Practices, Terms, Conditions and Other
Performance Factors. Some of the Flexibility for Use Of Commercial Item
Authority Is Shown by Examining the Definitions of What Is Commercial.

Williams: the Newest Part of The F.a.r. Federal Acquisition Regulations
Really Deals with This Issue of Commercial Item Acquisition and There Is
a Whole New Part of F.a.r. It\'s Called Part 15, and That Deals with
Commercial Item Acquisition. Then Also We Have the Definitions in Part
2. I\'m Going to Go Through Some of The Definitions Fairly Quickly And
Then We Will Try to Leave Some Time for Some Discussion And Try to
Understand What They Mean. But the First Part of the Definition Says ‑‑
Any Item, and Then We\'re Talking about Customarily Used for
Nongovernment Purposes. So a Pretty Broad Definition of What Is a
Commercial Item. Then We Go Secondly to Another Part of That Definition,
and it Talks about Any Item That Has Evolved from the Item That Was
Described in the Previous Slide, The One We Just Talked About. So Any
Item, and Then Any Item That Has Evolved. In One Sense We Might Say the
Hand Truck Evolved into the Semi Truck. Or If We Had Different Visuals,
We Might Same the Stone Somehow Evolved into the Wheel. Or We Might Say
That the Calculator Has Evolved into the Computer. So this Idea of
Evolution. In ‑‑ Then We Go to a Third Part Of this Definition. It\'s
Any Item That Would Satisfy The Criteria That I Just Got Through
Expressing. Except For, You Know, Maybe Customary Modifications, Things
That Vendors Are Used to Doing Or Minor Modifications. Now All of a
Sudden We Have Some Definitions That Really Cover Three Pieces of This.
We\'re Talking about Any Item. We\'re Talking about the Evolution of an
Item and Then We\'re Talking about Any Item That May Modified or Tail
Tailored to Meet Your Needs. Those Focused on Items Being Items of
Supply. The next Item Enough Your Tele‑lesson Guide Is a Slide That
Deals with Commercial Services and Here We\'re Talking About
Installation Services. They Might Include Services That Are a Part Of,
When You Buy the Copy Machine, We Install the Services and Then We Do
Some Work That\'s Related to Maybe Services on Our Computers. Or We Need
to Buy Training Services That Are a Part of a New System That We Just
Bought. So under That Part of the Definition it Talks about Services in
Support of an Item. So Any Time We Have a Service That Supports the Item
We Bought, That Can Be a Commercial Item. So We Have Again a Fairly
Brought Definition of Commercial Item, Services or Others. And Then When
We Get to That Point All of a Sudden We Say, Wow, Commercial Really Is
Pretty Broad and So During Part of the Preparation, I Begin to Think
About How Much of this Definition Is Necessary for Us To Understand What
Really Is Commercial? So One of the Things That I Started Thinking about
Is, I Said, Well, You Know, after Just Going Through the First Four or
Five Slides, I Might Ask Julie And Peggy, Is this Stuff about As Clear
as Mud?

Lewis: Dave, it Is. The Definition Goes on and on And I Don\'t Think
You\'re Done Yet, Are You?

Williams: Unfortunately There Is Still a Little Bit More. And this One
for Some of You ‑‑ I Mean, I Think We Can Relate to Commercial Items
Pretty Well. We Can Talk about the Things That You or I Buy. We Can Talk
about Things That Have Been Modified to Fit Our Needs. We Can Talk about
Services That Are in Support of When We Buy The Printer, Somebody Also
Does The Services for a Two‑year Period of Time If There\'s Maintenance.
We Can Relate to Those. But the Catch That Applies to The Government on
Those Services Is That it must Be Done by the Same Organization, Same
Part of The Vendor\'s Organization That Does the Private Work. When That
Part of the Legislation Came into Being, it Really Caused Some Large
Business Firms like Maybe the Ibms of the World That Used to Have a
Government Sales Department and a Government Service Department, All of
a Sudden for Their Sales and Services of Equipment to Be Commercial,
They Had to Change The Makeup of the Organization And Use the Same
People to Do The Training and Repairs and Maintenance on Federal Work
That They Did on Private Work. That Kind of Gives Us the Item Supply
Part of the Definition, And it Gives Us the Services That Are Related to
Item. Then the next Slide Is the One That Begins to Introduce Maybe Some
More Confusion in this Whole Process for Agencies or Bureaus like You
Where We\'re Looking at Services of a Type, And Then We\'re Saying
Offered And Sold Competitively, and We Say in Substantial Quantities in
The Commercial Marketplace Based On Established Catalog and Market
Prices. All of a Sudden, That\'s the One That Begins to Require Us to
Step out into the Marketplace And See What\'s Available:when I Start to
Think about That, it Might Be That Tree Planting Services in Oregon
Could Well Be Determined to Be Standard Commercial Procedures. On the
Other Hand, When You\'re Down Here in the Deserts of Arizona, You Know,
Probably You\'re Not Going to Find Tree Planting as a Standard
Commercial Activity, at Least The Kind of Planting You Do. And So
Commercial Items, the Definition of it as it Relates To Service, Is the
Kind of Thing That You Have to Make the Decision Based on Your Local
Marketplace.

Dabb: If I Wanted to Buy a Security System for My Building Where I Work,
Would That Be a Commercial Item Acquisition? And Would There Be a
Performanced Based Contract Stuff in There as Well Maybe?

Williams: Well, I Think it Could Probably Be Both. It Could Be a
Commercial Item And You Can Be Performance‑based. Because You Want That
Little Bell to Ring Somewhere, I Bet, When the Alarm Goes Off. I Don\'t
Know If You Want to it Ring in Your Case in Downtown Albuquerque or
Whether It\'s Ok If it Rings in Los Angeles. And If You\'re Looking for
Results, Then All of a Sudden You Say, Maybe, What Are the Results That
I Want Achieved? But Can You Still Combine Results‑oriented Statements
of Work with Commercial Item Acquisition. So It\'s Possible to Begin to
Mix And Match. The Thing I Think Where People Are Going to Find
Difficulty in Doing the Market Research Is That in Some Communities, You
Know, Again, like Phoenix, It\'s Probably Pretty Clear We Could Go out
and Find Standard Commercial Services, Janitorial. But, You Know, If
You\'re in Clamato, New Mexico, You Are Not Going to Find Commercial. In
Fact, You Will Be Lucky to Find Somebody to Do the Janitorial Work. So
Market Research Is Is a Key When it Comes to Finding Commercial
Acquisition. There Is a Worldwide Market When It Comes to Items but the
Acquisition of Commercial Services Has a Different Kind of Definition.

Lewis: One of the Things You Mentioned Was the Standard Catalog Price.
When We Started Working on a Project, I Think it Was for Archaeological
Services, We Thought, Oh, this Can\'t Be Commercial and Yet When We
Contacted the Vendors, They Said, Oh, Sure, We Have Standard Catalog
Prices for All of Our Services. No Problem. So You Really Do Have to
Check The Marketplace.

Williams: That\'s True. And When Vendors Begin to Realize That If They
Want to Make Sales to the Government They Need to Have Standard Catalog
Market Pricing, You Know What? There\'s a Booming Business Going On out
There Flinting Industry Because They\'re Now Printing Catalogs with
Standard Market Price Information. So If You Give the Vendors an
Opportunity to Respond, I Think In Time They Will Respond for You. There
Are Some Things, Though, That Maybe Market Research Has Created Some
Confusion, Though, And That\'s These Things like a Nondevelopmental
Item. I Mean, What It\'s If One, Well, We\'ve Never Used, It\'s Not
Developed, It\'s Not Normally Modified. If It\'s Nondevelopmental, it
Wasn\'t Developed at Federal Government Expense, That\'s Ok. It\'s Still
Commercial. So We\'re Back to Some of That Commercial Item Definition.
Another One We Had That Fits Along the Same Lines Is Market Research and
We Begin to Say, What\'s Necessary in Terms of Market Research? And the
Extent Depends on the Dollars Involved and the Competition. If You Only
Have a Few Hundred Dollars, You Probably Don\'t Want To Spend a Lot of
Time out There Checking the Marketplace. Maybe You Don\'t Need to Go
Outside Your Local Area. If You\'re Spending Hundreds of Thousands of
Dollars, Then Maybe It\'s Important for You to Do More Market Research.
So It\'s a Proportional Kind of Decision. Market Research Depends upon
the Volume, the Complexity and What Is Your Marketplace. Then There\'s
One Other Item That I Kind of Want to Address There. Seems to Be Some
Confusion That Flows From, Well, What\'s the Job In Terms of Market
Research of People in Acquisition and What\'s The Job of People in
Administrative or in Program and Technical Kinds of Functions? So in
That Case, We\'ve Got Program Officials That Are Involved Doing Certain
Kinds of Things in Market Research, and In Terms of Things like That ‑‑
It May Be Capabilities of the Marketplace. Maybe They\'re Looking at
What\'s Standard Modification, the Need To Tailor Items. We Just Have to
Be Careful We Don\'t Start out Doing the Wrong Kinds of Things in Market
Research. It\'s Not Me as a Program Person Rushing out and Finding Some
Vendor That I like and Negotiating a Deal and Brig it Back in for
Someone in Acquisition to Sign. I Mean, If All That Was Necessary Their
Signature, You Know, I Would Suggest as an Outsider You Can Probably Buy
a Rubber Stamp for a Lot less Money than You Are Paying Them. There Is a
Role for People in The Program Area and There Is a Role for People in
the Acquisition Area. And That Comes Back to Teamwork, Working Together.
We Don\'t Want to Duplicate. On the Other Hand, People in the Technical
Areas Typically Are Not Going to Be Talking about Terms and Conditions,
and under Commercial Item Buys, Those Are Negotiable. There Are Things
like If It\'s Standard Practice in the Industry to Make Advanced
Payments, If That\'s Standard Practice, and That\'s What Market Research
Shows, Then Somehow We\'re Going to Have to Convince The Finance Folks,
You Know, We Really Can Pay in Advance. So There Are Lots of New Rules
In this Whole Concept of Commercial Item Acquisition. The Best Set of
Advice I Have For You Is, I Think, Contact Your People in Acquisition.
We\'re All in a Learning Mode. There Are Lots of Issues. There\'s Lots
of Opportunity. But We Have to Learn What the System Is All about and
We\'ll Try and it See What Goes on and Hopefully It\'s Going to Work
Well for Us. Then I Think Julie Again Is Going to Give Us Some Ideas or
What Some of These Commercial Item Tools Are All About.

Lewis: That Was Quite a Discussion. But this Is Something Entirely New
to Us. There Are So Many Opportunities To Make Common Sense Purchasing
Decisions, We Want to Make Sure You\'re Aware of this New Tool. Thinking
for Just a Moment What Items or Services Do You Use Which Could Not Be
Provided for Using the Commercial Item Acquisition Process?

Lewis: Well, Were You Able to Come up with Any? Let Me Know. We Haven\'t
Been Able to Think of Any. So, Peggy?

Williams: One I Might Mention On That, I Remember the Subcommittee That
Worked on That For Congress and They Said, You Know, They Could Think of
a Couple Items That Were Not Commercial. One of Those Was the Seawolf
Submarine and the Other Was the Stealth Bomber, but Other than That,
They Said Everything Was Probably Commercial.

Dabb: Well, Thanks Dave, Julie. Commercial Item Acquisition and Market
Research, They\'re Both Very, Very Important Areas. To Help Us
Understand the Commercial Item Acquisition Process, Let\'s Go to
Colorado And Listen to John Sherman, the Nas Business Center Procurement
Analyst, as He Visits with a Local Contractor.

Sherman: I\'m John Sherman. Today We\'re in Greely, Colorado At the Firm
of Big R Manufacturing, Who Produces Cattle Guards. They\'re One of Our
Current Suppliers of Cattle Guards Within Our Bureau. We\'re Going to Be
Talking in a Moment with Tom Selderrs, the Vice‑president of Big R,
Specifically about Commercial Practices. We Are Going to Talk about Our
Our Market Remuch and Negotiations Affected the Blanket Purchase
Agreement Specifically as Far as Efficiencies Gained in the
Manufacturing Process as Well as What We All Want, Additional Discounts
and Better Terms and Conditions Against Their Current Gsa Schedule. So
If You Could Come on with Me, We Will Go on N‑right Now and Talk to Tom
about Commercial Items.

Good to See You. Thanks for Allowing Us to Come Out and Visit with You.

Sure. We\'re Always Happy to Have You Come By.

I See We\'ve Got Some Cattle Guards out Here

Yeah, We Do. We\'re in the Cattle Guard Business. Make a Lot of Them.

We Wanted to Talk to You About Commercial Items. That\'s What this
Training Is About. We\'re Putting on a Satellite Broadcast for Our
Contracting Officer Representatives, and I Wanted to Discuss
Specifically What Impact Our Market Research Had in Negotiations with
Your Firm Regarding Our Current Bpa.

What We Found, John, Is We\'re Selling a Lot of Cattle Guards To the
BLM, but Found That They Were Being Sold at Maybe Two Units at a Time
and Maybe Two Units to One Location and Two Would Go to Another Location
50 Miles Away. Maybe the next Month. And the Month Following, Two More
at Another Location Maybe Another Hundred Miles Away. And over the
Course of a Year\'s Time, That Added up to a Large Volume. But it Was
Kind of Spread Out. We Learned, You Know, We Were Just Selling Them on
Kind of a Piecemeal Basis Throughout the Year.

So You Had to Start up and Teardown Production and it Was Hard to Get
Any ‑‑

Yeah, We\'d Make Cattle Guards For a Couple of Weeks, Maybe Be In
Production and Then We Would Shut down and Wouldn\'t Be Making Them
Anymore for Another Couple Weeks, and That Sort of Thing.

and What We Had Established, I Think, Through That Market Research and
Negotiations Was That We as a Bureau Would Try Our Best to Consolidating
Our Orders Bian Annually. That Way You Could Try to Have a Better Order
or a More ‑‑ More Efficiencies Gained, More Consolidated, Could You Map
out Shipping and Deal More Efficiently with Your Suppliers?

Yeah, That Makes a Big Difference to Us If We Can Schedule Our Material
Flow and Schedule Our Welders, Our Production, Our Manpower. You Know,
If We Know That There\'s a Large Order or Large Volume That We Can Put
Together, Then We Can Line up All the Materials for It, Get it All
Staged, Bring in Our ‑‑ the People That Are Actually Going To Do the
Welding and Get Them Scheduled So They Are Spending a Much Longer Period
of Time on One Task or One Set of Materials. Also Makes a Big Difference
for Us in Terms of Shipping. If We Can Ship like a Whole Truckload of
One Product. In this Case, Cattle Guards. You Can Build a Very Efficient
Truckload of Freight by Making All Cattle Guards as Opposed to A Couple
Cattle Guards and the Balance of the Truck with Some Other Product like
Culvert. Well, If Can You Make it All Cattle Guards, it Makes it a Lot
More Sense. We Can Provide Better Service And We Can Provide Better
Scheduling and So Forth Doing it That Way.

So These Cattle Guards Then Stack and Weight Versus Volume Would Be
Pretty Much Maximized?

Right. When You Can Fully Load a Truck From a Volume Standpoint, You\'re
Also Pretty Much at its Maximum Weight Limitation. So it Just Makes an
Efficient Shipping Arrangement for Us.

Great.

Another Thing, John, I\'d Mention Is That the Blanket Purchase Order Is
Really Helpful Because it Allows Us to Create Those Efficiencies I
Discussed. We\'re Standing Here at a Green Cattle Guard, Which Is a
Forest Service Design and this Is Actually Seven Feet Nine Inches
Across. On the Other Side of the Room Is A Bureau of Land Management
Guard, Which Is Painted Yellow, And It\'s Eight Feet Across. That
Difference Is Only Three Inches. And So the Two Agencies Are Using Very
Similar but Just a Little Bit Different Cattle Guards, and One Thing
That We Might Consider Doing in Time to Come Is Some Consolidation and
Some Standardization Between the Agencies.

So Is There a Different Jig For Each ‑‑ Different Cattle Guard?

We Have to Use a Different Jig for the BLM Guard than We Do For the
Forest Service Guard. And We Have to Inventory Some of The Materials ‑‑
Some Are a Little Bit Different. They\'re Very Close in Sizes and
Weights, but Just Enough Different That We Have to Have An Inventory of
Extra Materials For the Two. So That\'s Something That We Might Pursue
in Time to Come. Also the Departments of Transportation in Colorado,
Wyoming and Other States Around The West Have Yet Another Cattle Guard
Standard. So I Think Everybody Would Benefit If We Could in the Future
Standardize That So We All Use the Same Design.

Great. Well, I See We Have a Good Start, and from Your Latter Comments
There about the Standardization, We Still Have a Little Way to Go.

We Do. We Do

Commercial Items Is, I Think, A Way of Working Back and Forth Between
the Bureau and Industry And Just Bouncing Things Back And Forth Between
Each Other.

And, Again, John, I Just Want To Say We Certainly Appreciate The
Government\'s Business. The Gsa Contract and Now the Blanket Purchase
Order We\'ve Had In Effect for a While Has Been Very Good for Us. It\'s
Created a Wonderful Business Opportunity. So We Appreciate the
Government\'s Business, and We Hope That We Can Continue to Provide
Materials and Provide Good Service. That\'s One of Our Goals of Our
Company, to Always Have the Satisfied Customer. So We Encourage Your
Folks to Always Let Us Know If They Have Questions or Concerns or Any
Kind of Problems at All, We\'ll Do Our Best to Take Care of Your Needs.

Great. And We Appreciate the Additional Discounts off the Gsa Schedule
And the Shipping Requirements to The Western Portion of the States.

Sure, We\'re Happy to Do That Because of the Efficiencies We Realized
Through the Bpa. If it it Weren\'t for and That We Were Still at the
Situation of Shipping the Two Guards to One Location, Two to Another
That I Mentioned Earlier, If We Were Still, There We Just Couldn\'t
Offer That Additional Discount. But with the Bpa and the Consolidation
That Is a Result Of That, It\'s Really Helpful and We Can Offer the
Discount. We Also Offer Visa, Government Credit Cards and a Lot of Your
Agencies Are Using That. We Welcome It, Encourage its Use At Any Time.

Great. Thanks Again for Have Gone Us Out.

My Pleasure, John.

We Appreciate It.

Good Deal.

Ok. I Think That Was a Real Good Discussion We Had with Mr. Celledders
of Big R. Sounds like We Have a Good Start On Incorporating Commercial
Item Practices with this Firm. The. We Still Need to Follow Occupy
Specifications, However. As Tom Mentioned, There\'s at Least a Couple
Different Specs Currently Being Used, Thus Causing this Manufacturer to
Have to Retool and Set up Each Time They\'re Going to Produce a Cattle
Guard. What I Would like to Speak to You about next Is the Use of
Functional Requirements. Functional Requirements Mean Putting Together
Your Specifications and Telling Potential Offerors What You Want To by
but Not in Specific Terms. It Doesn\'t Mean You Have to Throw out What
Regulatory Requirements, Safety Issues and Things of That Nature, but by
Describing Your Needs in Functional Terms, You\'re Going To Find out
That Commercial Firms or Vendors Might Have an Item or a Service That
You\'re Not Even Aware Of. I Could Give You an Example of a Procurement
I Did about Two Years Ago in New Mexico. It Was for Pelleted Herbicide
Applications. In Our Current Specs Back Then We Had Use of Flag Persons
to Physically Describe or State Where the Drop Zones Were Going To Be.
Well, When We Were in the Solicitation Phase, I Got Calls From Two
Separate Vendors and They Proposed Use of the Global Positioning System
for Locating Those Drop Area. As it Turned Out, the COR Wanted To Wait
until Award Was Made With Use of the Flag Persons to Ensure That the Gps
Worked. And the Contractor Who Was Awarded Was Actually the Same One ‑‑
or One of the Two That Proposed Use of Gps. They Showed the COR How the
Gps Worked and I Think from Now on That COR Is Using Gps and Has
Rewritten His Specifications to Not Include the Use of Flag Persons.
That\'s One Example of Use of Commercial Practices That We Found out by
Having Some Dialogue with Our Vendors That Saved Time, and I Would
Suspect Also Saved Money. We Have Some Other Examples Within the Bureau
of Use of Commercial Practices. We Also Worked on a ‑‑ a While Back on
Well Plugging. One of the Items We Do in the Bureau Quite Frequently. In
That Case We Invited an Industry Representative to Come And Meet with Us
During a Week\'s Time Frame, and During That Week\'s Time Frame, We
Showed This Representative What Our Current Specs Were And, of Course,
Again, They Were Very Detailed, They Were Very in Depth and What this
Representative Stated to Us Is That, Yes, They Were, in Deed, Very
Detailed and Very in Depth, And They Didn\'t Necessarily Coincide with
Their Commercial Practices. What They Were Doing Commercially Was Using
a Specific Type of Procurement, And That Was Called Time and Materials.
After That Meeting with the Representative, We Tried a Time And
Materials Type Procurement. And the Results of That Was Pretty Amazing.
For That Time Period, Our Government Estimate on Well Plugging for this
Specific Type Was Approximately \$50,000. Bids Were Coming In, I
Believe, At \$100,000, and When the Time And Materials Contracts Were
Put Into Place and They Were Closed, The Average Cost of That Effort Was
\$35,000 with No Sacrifice to Quality I\'ve Been Told. Ok. So We Have a
Couple Examples So Far and I\'m Sure That You\'ve Got Some Current
Projects You\'re Working on Now, Ones That You\'ve Worked on in the
Past, That I Am ‑‑ I Hope That Your Thinking Will Be Applicable and How
You Might Be Able to Use Some of These Examples and Some of the
Discussions That Have Come out In the Training So Far. Another Example
with Use of Commercial Items Is Our Steele Fencing Requirements. We Went
out Last Year and There\'s Another Tool to Newt Your Bag in the
Contracting Officer with a Request for Information to Industry, along
With That a Draft Solicitation, And What We Wanted to Do Was to Find out
If What We Were Procuring, the Specs We Currently Had in Place, Were
Truly Commercial. Well, We Found out That Essentially They Were Pretty
Commercial. We Found out Packagingwise That They Were Shipped Just like
the Commercial Vendors and Practices Were Lined up to Do. What We Did
Find Out, However, Is Something That I Never Would Have Thought of and
this Was After the Follow‑up Discussions On Responses to That Rfi and it
Had to Do with Our Contracting Strategy. I Had Been Told That There Were
Large Fluctuation Ins Steel Prices. But Wanting to Do a Long‑term
Contract, Potentially Five Years, I Thought Maybe We\'re Going to Have
to Use a Steel Index Clause Included in That Solicitation. Well, after
Following up with The Rfi with a Few Vendors, I Got down Really to the
Nitty‑gritty and I Found out That T Posts, Which the Fencing Materials
Are Primarily Made of That Holds the Barbed Wears Along with the Stays
and Clips, Those T Posts Were Essentially Tied to Not a Steel Index like
The Automobile Industry, but to The Price or the Amount of Used Railroad
Rails That Were Available. So What I Did Was I Backed off Our Five‑year
Potential Period Of Performance to Three and Looked at the Availability
of Used Railroad Rails and Things Of That Nature. And Last of All, and
this Is the Most Current Example, It\'s the Awards We Just Made for Our
Uniform Contract. We Have a Couple of Contracts in Place Now That Went
Out, Commercial Item, and They Have Off the Shelf Items That They Called
For. They\'re No Longer Going to Be Carrying Inventories, These Firms,
That Awards Were Made, Which Could Become Obsolete and Cost the Bureau
Additional Money. We\'re Going to Be Making Use of A Purchase Card That
Has Draw‑down Capability. So Each Uniformed Personnel Will Have, Let\'s
Say, \$400 They Could Draw down Annually, and That\'s Another Example of
What We\'re Trying to Do to Incorporate Commercial Item Practices.

Dabb: We Hope That Video Helped You Understand the Benefits of Using
this Process And What Is Available for Your Use. We Need to Begin
Looking at Areas Where We\'re Spending a Lot Of must Not Ee and Learn
the Importance of Becoming Commodity Experts in Those Areas. Thanks to
John for Taking the Time to Prepare the Video. The next Segment Is
Methods of Acquisition. Dave?

Williams: the Government Contracting System Is Based on Statutes and
Regulations Which Evolved over the Years and They\'re in a Fairly
Complex Series of Rules and Procedures And They\'re Actually Combined in
What We Would Call the Federal Acquisition Rules. So That\'s the Guiding
Principles That I Referred to Earlier. This First Visual That We Have In
this Segment Deals with the Three Methods of Acquisition That Are
Available. The First Method People Are Probably Most Familiar with Is
One Called Sealed Bidding. We Also Used to Call That Formal Advertising.
In Terms of Sealed Bidding, We Have, You Know, Public Bid Opening, and
We Go on Typically Low Price and So Those Are Some Of the Elements of
Sealed Bidding. A Second One Which Has Been Around for a Few Years, but
Not Nearly as Long as Sealed Bidding And That\'s the Use of Negotiation.
And So We Begin to Use Negotiation When We\'re Looking For Other than
Price and We Want To Put Some Relative Weights on Factors That Are Other
than Price. So We Have Negotiation Which Lets Us Talk to Vendors,
Receive Proposals and Do Some Things Other than Low Price. So Those Are
the First Two. Those Two Methods of Negotiation And Sealed Bidding Are
Being Used Now for Transactions over \$100,000. And So That Dollar
Threshold Was What Was Raised a Couple of Years Ago in the Fasa/fera
Time Frame. The Third Method Is Called Simplified Acquisition.
Simplified Acquisition Are Those Transactions That Are under \$100,000
and We Utilize Those When We\'re Buying Goods or Services, We Want to
Use Simpler Procedures and We Find That We Can Use Quality, We Can Use
past Performance, We Could Use Simply Low Price. So If It\'s Needs under
\$100,000, The Objective Is to Use Simplified Acquisition Procedures. If
It\'s More than \$100,000, Then The Acquisition Folks Select the
Appropriate Method. If You Want to Buy Something on The Basis of Price,
They Would Use Sealed Bidding. If You Believe That Negotiation Or
Factors Other than Price Are More Important, like Quality, Past
Performance, Things of That Nature, Then Would it Lead Them Towards
Choosing Negotiation. So Those Are the Three Basic Methods, Then, That
Are Available for the Acquisition of Goods or Services. In Terms of the
Federal Acquisition Regulations, They Now Provide Us with Just Guidance
in Terms of Not the Same Kind Of, Quote, Policy Which Is Rigid, 1600
Pages of Rigid Policy, Which Has Been Developed over Years and Years,
And Yet, on the Other Hand, Government Contracting Really Is Based on
Statutes and Regulations and They Have Evolved and to Some Extent They
Are Fairly Complex and They Are A Set of Rules and Regulations And
Procedures and Those Things Have Been Combined in the 53 Parts to
F.a.r., Federal Acquisition Regulation. That\'s Where Your Contracting
Officers Have Their Expertise. If You\'re a COR, You No Doubt Have
Expertise in Some Functional Area, Whether It\'s The Use and Application
of Cattle Guards or Whether It\'s Planting Trees or Buying
Archaeological Kinds of Services. Whatever Your Technical Needs Might
Be, You Have Expertise There. Your Acquisition Folks Have Expertise in
Buying, Expertise In the Marketplace, Negotiating And So Working
Together, the Team Can Meet Your Needs Using Either Best Value or Low
Price Or Some Combination, Whatever Is Appropriate. One of the Most
Familiar Methods Of Acquisition as I Mentioned Early on with the First
Slide Is That of Sealed Bidding. That\'s the Kind of Thing Where We
Typically Have a Scheduled Bid Opening, Everybody Shows up At 2:00 P.m.
in Some Designated Room and We Open the Bids at a Set Time and a Set
Place. The Continuing Aspects of Sealed Bidding Are We\'re Basing it on
What\'s Called Definitive Specifications, Absolute Kinds Of
Requirements. These Are the Minimums. This Is What must Be Provided. So
We Have Very Clear, Precise Specifications. Then We\'re Going to Make an
Award Based on Price to a Firm That We Would Say Is Responsible And the
Prices Are Typically Firm, Fixed Price Contracts. Either the Price of
the Work Is Fixed or the Unit Prices of the Activity Is Fixed. So
Contracts Awarded on the Basis of Price. The Extent That We Begin
Looking At Negotiation, the Second Method of Acquisition, And, Again,
over \$100,000, Because We Don\'t Want to Use Simple Procedures for ‑‑
or We Don\'t Want to Use Complicated Procedures for Simple Transactions.
We Want to Use the Simplist of Procedures. So under Negotiation, We Have
Maybe a Cut‑off Date, a Common Cut‑off Date for Receipt of Proposals.
The Award Might Be Made on the Basis of Best Value or Sometimes It Might
Be Made on the Basis of The Lowest Priced Technically Acceptable
Proposal. Those Are Two Different Things. If You\'re Working with
Evaluation Factors and You\'re Working with Your Acquisition Folks,
It\'s Really Important That You Decide Early On, Are We Buying Best
Value or Are We Going Through a Process of Evaluation Where We Look at
Who Is Technically Competent, and Then We Select the Slowest Priced
Technically Competent. So, Again, the Procurement Folks Bring You a
Choice of Tools, Acquisition Practices Which Can Be Used to Suit and Fit
Your Needs. If You\'re Not Good about Identifying Your Needs and
Clarifying What Your Needs and Being Early in Your Planning and Open and
Optimistic And, You Know, Fully Committed to the Program, It\'s
Difficult for Program People in and Acquisition to Work Together. So
Working Together Means That Sharing and Caring of Information. The Other
Part of Negotiation Is That with Negotiation it Really Is Subject to
Negotiation. We Can Have Some Discussion. We Can Actually Sit down and
Talk with a Contractor. When We Do Business by Sealed Bidding, We Take
Price and Then We Find out Afterwards at the Prework Meeting What Kind
of Job They\'re Going to Do. In Negotiation, We Can Have Those
Discussions Before We Award. And So When We Have Awards Based On
Evaluation Factors and They\'re Weighted Being More Important than
Price, We Involve Technical Proposal, Evaluation Committees, We Evaluate
Offers, We Look at Technical and Then We Look at Price and Then We Make
The Award That Best Suits the Criteria We\'ve Established. And So Then
That Leaves That Third Remaining Simplified Acquisition as the Process
That\'s to Be Used When It\'s Under \$100,000. So, I\'ll Give You Just a
Few Moments to Think about this True Or False Question. I Don\'t Know
How Many of You Might Have Thought about That And Said That it Was True,
Well, What I Want to You Remember Is That the New System Says That
We\'re to Use the Simplified Procedures and What I Want to Emphasize,
Especially for Those Of You That Have Small‑dollar Projects, It\'s Not
to Say That Your Project Isn\'t Complicated, Because They Certainly Are.
Getting Some of Your Contractors To Do Some of Your Work in Rural Areas
and All Those Kinds of Things Is Challenging and it Is Complicated. So
What the System Is Saying Is That Why Don\'t We Choose the Least
Complicated Method to Acquire Those Goods and Services When They\'re
Small‑dollar Value. So We Have a Simplified Procedure, Simplified
Methods, Not Simple Procurements. And Then the Other Element That We
Have in Terms of Simplified Acquisition That Sometimes Gets Lost Maybe
in the Transition Is That Even When You Pick up the Phone and Call Some
Vendor Locally and You\'re Talking About, You Know, the Price of
2‑by‑4s, It\'s Important If I\'m The Vendor for Me to Know, Are You
Asking Just for the Price? Am I Giving You a Price with the Idea That
You\'re Going to Award On Price? Or If Delivery Is as Important As Price
and You Want Not Only The Price but You Want Performance Tomorrow, Then
I Might Have to Give You a Different Price. So Somewhere When We Do Work
Under Small Purchases, Simplified Acquisitions Threshold, If We\'re
Doing Business Other than Price, We Really Need to Tell the Vendor What
Are the Factors, and it Doesn\'t Have to Be Formal, but We Might Simply
Say, Look, Price Is Always Important with Us, but If You Can\'t Get this
Job Done By next Week, We\'re Looking for Someone Else. If We Want to
Use past Performance, We Can Certainly Use That in Terms of Small,
Simplified Transactions. But We Just Tell the Vendors up Front the Basis
for the Award. And Then We Follow That. So That\'s Part of this Process
Of Simplified Acquisition. Tell the Vendor What We\'re Going To Do. And
So There\'s the Opportunity We Have, Then, with All of These New Tools
and New Rules and the Acquisition Process That We Can Look at Price and
Other Factors And We Can Look at Quality and We Can Look at past
Performance, And They\'re a Whole Range of Things That Can Be Utilized.
So If You Are Able to Give Me Your Full Description of Needs, Then Maybe
I\'m Able to Use the Simplist Method of Acquisition Possible. And That
Really Ought to Be One Of the Goals. So with That, Let\'s Transfer Back
to Peggy and Let\'s See If She Has Some Overview of Acquisition Methods.

Dabb: Well, I Don\'t Know If I Have Overview or Not. It\'s a Little Bit
Overwhelming, I Think. I Guess I Just Wanted Us to Add One Small Little
Thing, and That\'s to Reiterate, I Guess, What You\'re Talking About,
Simple. You Know, in Our Day‑to‑day Lives Because We Are Doing a Lot
More with Less, We Have less Contracting People, We Have less Customers
on the Resource Side And Our Projects Are Becoming More and More, it
Does Seem to Be a Little Bit Overwhelming, But If I Think We Stop and
Think About What We\'re Doing and We Have All These New Tools We Can Use
and Take into Consideration What We\'re Talking about Today, I Think
That Will Help Us All in Our Everyday Jobs. Thank You, Dave. Well, That
Concludes Our Morning Session. We\'re Going to Take a 30‑minute Break.
During this Break We\'ll Be Showing the Many Different \"Think Points\"
from this Morning\'s Segment. I Would Really Appreciate it If Would You
Chat about These Points and See What Kind of Ideas They Generate. Right
Before We Come Back We Will Give You a Cue to Start Calling with
Questions or Comments about the \"Think Points\" Or, Again, Any Other
Questions You Have So Far and Then We\'ll Just See You in a Bit.
Bye‑bye!

Dabb: Hi. Let\'s Go Ahead and Get Started For the Afternoon. We Hope You
Enjoyed Your Break. Thanks for Coming Back. We\'ll Start off this
Afternoon\'s Session by Responding to Your Questions and We Got ‑‑ or We
Have a Phone Call Right Now. It Is Chip from Phoenix. Hey, Chip, How Are
You?

Caller: Really Good.

Dabb: I Understand You Have a Couple of Questions on Bpas and Id/iq S.

Caller: Yes, We Were Having a Discussion at Our Site and Everyone Was
Talking about the Fact That Bpas Have Been Around For Years and We
Wanted Some Clarification in Terms of Anything That\'s Different
Specifically about Id/iq S and Also Some ‑‑ There Was Some Confusion
about Bpas Versus Task‑order Contracts. Thigh Everyone Is a Little
Confused on the Differences.

Dabb: Ok.

Williams: Maybe I\'ll Touch on That a Little Bit to Begin With, Chip N
Terms of Bpas, a Lot of Organizations Have Begun to Phase out Bpas
Because with the Advent of the Purchase Card, and Many of You Having the
Ability To Acquire Goods or Services up To \$2500 or \$2,000 for
Construction, You Don\'t Need Those Bpas, You Simply Walk in The Store
with Your Credit Card And You Walk Away with the Merchandise. So We
Don\'t Have All the Complications of Authorizing People to Buy under
Bpas. From the Standpoint of a Bpa, There Was Never Any Obligation For
to You Buy. If You Pick Some Id/iq Kinds of Contracts Where They\'re All
Requirements, Then You must Buy From That Vendor. So There Are Some
Similarities And Probably If You Look at Id/iq as Being Kind of an
Established Source of Supply, The Terms and the Conditions Have Already
Been Agreed To, it Saves Advertising, You Can Go to Higher Dollar
Authorities, and The Task Order and Delivery Order Are the Things That
Are Placed under Id/iq Contracts. Under a Bpa, Primarily They Were
Oriented Towards Walking into The Store, Buying Supplies, Getting a
Billing Once a Month. So Similarities but Yet Difference. Higher Dollar
Value, More Recurrent Needs, Moving Away From the Simple Day‑to‑day to
The More Routine or Repetitive Higher Dollar Contracts. I Don\'t Know If
That Helps You Or Not, Chip.

Caller: it Sure Does. We Also Had Another Question Here at this Site. We
Were Wondering If There\'s Still a Minimum Required Order On an Id/iq
Contract in Terms of Dollar Amount?

Williams: You Know, Probably The Best Example That Most of Us Could
Relate to on an Id/iq Contract Is the Gsa Kind of Supply Questions
They\'ve Had Over the Years and You Can Have Negotiated in a Contract a
Minimum Order Quantity So If That It\'s like under \$300, You Have the
Freedom to Go out and Just Buy It. Or You Could Negotiate it into The
Contract or Enter into the Contract a Requirement That the Contractor
Get First Chance at Those Small Dollar Orders. So it Can Be ‑‑ the
Contract Can Be Written to Address Small Quantities in Any One of
Several Ways. So, Again, If You Know That and You Know You Might Have
Small Quantities, Then It\'s Ideal for You Working with Your Acquisition
Folks to Design Your Contract So That You Spell out What Are the
Requirements, Small Quantities, Large Quantities, Do You Get Competition
or Prices Fixed, Can You Get Reduced Price For Volume. All Those Things
Are Possible in Id/iq Contracts.

Caller: Ok. Thanks a Lot.

Dabb: Thank You Very Much, Chip. Bye‑bye.

Caller: Bye.

Dabb: We Have Some Faxes Here, Too. Let\'s Address Them. From Carmen in
Medford, Oregon, Can You Explain More about National Contracts?

Lewis: the National Contracts That We Have Set up Are Some of The Ones
That John Sherman Talked about and We Continue to Work on Those. So Keep
in Mind If You Have a Need, Let Us Know. The National Contracts That We
Have for Pcs, for Instance, We Have Three Accounts Set Up, One With
Gateway, One with Micron And One with Dell Computers Where We Can Place
Either Consolidated Orders Throughout The Year or Individual Orders at
Reduced Prices Even Lower than The Gsa Discount Pricing. The National
Contracts Are Simply There to Help All of the Offices Be Able to Make
Quicker Buys at Reduced Negotiated Prices.

Williams: Sounds like a Terrific Idea, Right?

Dabb: Where Do They Get the Information for Those National Contracts?

Lewis: Those Are the Ones That Are Listed on the National Business
Center National Acquisition Home Page at the Website That We Gave You.
It\'s Web.blm ‑‑ It\'s www.blm.gov/natacq.

Dabb: Do They Go Right Through Denver? Does it Take Any Longer?

Lewis: No, Each One of the Contracts Indicates How Orders Can Be Placed.
Some of Them Can Have Individual Orders Placed by Individuals With Their
Own Visa Cards. Or the Local Office Purchasing Agent Can Place Orders.
Generally, We\'re Trying to Get Away from Having All of the Orders Have
to Be Placed by the Denver Contracting Officer Who Negotiated the
Contract. That Just Helps Spread out the Work a Little Bit.

Dabb: Ok. Thanks. Here\'s Another Fax We Have. Isn\'t a Typical
Construction Contract a Performance‑based Contract? The Technical
Specifications Tell the Bidders What the Government Wants and Let\'s the
Contractor Determine How the Project Is Did.

Williams: I Guess, Peggy, I Would Look at If We Call the Typical
Construction, That\'s Probably the Almost the Purest Of Design
Specifications. We Say We Want a House Built and We Want 2‑by‑6 Studs
and We Want Them 16 Inches on Center and 5/8ths Inch Sheetrock and the
Kinds of Nails and the Spacing Of Nails and We Have Every Detail of the
Design to Be Done. Now, Certainly the Contractor Has the Choice Do They
Pound With the Right Hand or with the Left Hand or Do They Do the
Landscaping First and Then Put Up the Building. But I Think If You
Looked at Construction and Performance‑based, What Would You Probably Do
Is Say, What We Want Is a Three‑bedroom, Minimum 1500 Square Feet of
Space, One And a Half Bath, Carpeted, We Spell out the Requirements and
We Say it Shall Meet Fha Standards and in That Case We Get a Price for
the End Result We\'re Looking For. So It\'s Trying to Design What We ‑‑
Define What We Want, Not How. I Think the Detailed Construction Are the
How to Do.

Lewis: Usually with the Construction We Have Drawings That Show Where
All Trees Are Planted and Where All of the Grass Goes. So We Usually
Tell Them Pretty Much Exactly How We Want it Done.

Dabb: Ok. Here\'s Another Fax. Let\'s See. With Such a Large Captive
Audience, Please Go over Positive Procurement of Recycled Products.
There Was an Instruction Bulletin out a Few Years Ago as Relates to BLM.
Please Review this Policy and Whether We Can Procure Commercial Recycled
Items at a Higher Market Price. Also I Would Remind Participants To
Purchase Only What Will Reasonably Be Used as it Relates To Hazardous
Materials.

Williams: Ok. You\'re Looking at Me, Peggy.

Dabb: That\'s Because You Can Answer It.

Williams: Again, the Section In F.a.r. That Deals with Requirements,
Needs or Your Requirements, One of the Things That We\'re Encouraged to
Do Now Is to Buy Recycled, Remanufactured, Energy‑efficient And So All
Those Kinds of Things About Recycled and Energy‑efficient,
Environmentally‑sensitive Products Is Certainly One of the Things
You\'re to Look at When You Decide What Your Needs Are. Look First at
Those Kinds of Choices. So to the Extent You Have These And There\'s
Something out There Available in the Marketplace, That\'s Your
Preference. And I Think in Terms of the Haz‑mat Kind of Don\'t Buy More
Than You Need, That Probably Kind of Fits in a Lot of Other Areas, Too.
Why Should We Buy 10,000 Posts And Put Them in Our Store Yard When We
Can Get 500 at a Time When We Need Them? So Don\'t Buy Any More of What
You Need than You Have Necessary. Because You Have Warehousing and
Handling and Safety and it Just Brings with it Other Complications. So,
You Know, I Think All Those Are Perfectly Good Programs. We Need to Be
Aware of Them. Unfortunately, Within the Organization Some People Have
More Commitment than Others. But One Thing We Know for Sure Is That
There Are Either Executive Orders or Statutes That Require Those Things
to Be Done. So We Ought to Be Doing That Because it Makes Good Sense.

Dabb: We Have One More Fax. This Is from Reno, Nevada, from Susan
Skinner. She Has a Bpa Question and It\'s Somewhat Related to What Chip
From Phoenix Had Asked Us Earlier. Interim to Our next State‑wide
Emergency Contract We Are Using Bpas. With Corporate Mergers and One
Company\'s Potential Environmental Compliance Problems, We Are Now
Reduce to Do One Local Contractor Being Available. This Has Happened in
Just the Last Three Months. Can We Still Use a Bpa When Mergers
Eliminate Locally Available Contractors?

Williams: Sounds to Me like This Is a Procurement Analyst Problem That
Julie Ought to Address.

Lewis: Wow! Can I Look at That a Minute?

Williams: You Know, Maybe Touch on One Thing While Julie Is Kind of
Looking at That Question, but Sometimes, You Know, We Really Just
Outsmart Ourselves. We Go out Here and We Establish This One Huge Id/iq
Contract and Pretty Soon We Find out Nobody Is out There to Meet Our
Needs Anymore and the Price Goes Sky High and Then We Look Back and Say,
You Know, That Was Really Not Very Smart. So Sometimes We Have to Look
Broader than What Our Current Needs Are. So in this Same Kind of
Situation, Maybe We Were So Smart We Have Established All Our Needs,
We\'ve Met with Other Agencies, Other Organizations, We Come up with a
Single Contract and Now When You Have Some Kind of Small Contract, You
Don\'t Have Anybody That\'s Willing to Meet Your Needs. So Somewhere
There Has to Be an Answer to Your Concern and I Don\'t Know Whether I
Have One Today, but I Guarantee You I\'d Be Happy to Try to Find You an
Answer and I Think Others Will Be, Too.

Lewis: Oh, Sure. If the Point of the Question, Though, Is There\'s Only
One Source Can We Go to That One Source, Sure, If There\'s Only One
Source You Can Go to One Source. Sometimes the File Needs to Be
Documented. The Bpa Is Just a Method of How You Buy and Pay for the
Goods. As Dave Said Earlier, When ‑‑ With the Use of the Convenience
Checks and Visa Cards, a Lot of The Bpas Have Gone Out. But the Sole
Source and the Bpa, Yes, You Can Have Bpas If That\'s The Best Method
and for Sole Source, it Can Work.

Dabb: I Just Have One More Comment on That. Could We Not Go Outside of
Reno Proper, Maybe Because There Isn\'t Anybody There on a Local Basis,
Could We Not Go Ahead and Extend That Radius out a Little Bit? I Bet You
Would Probably Get a Good Price If You Were to Go Outside That.

Williams: That\'s Always a Consideration, Whether or Not We Can Step
Outside Our Local Marketplace to Get Adequate Competition. Again
Sometimes We\'re Looking at What\'s a Fair Price over Time And So, You
Know, If the Local Market Doesn\'t Meet Our Needs, Then Let\'s See If We
Can\'t Expand It. This Is One of Those Where If We Had the Person on the
Phone as Compared to the Fax, Maybe We Could Get Some Additional
Information and Try and Sort Through Exactly What the Situation Is.
That\'s Why Procurement People And Program People, When You Sit Down
Across the Table from Each Other, You Can Start Raising Questions and Be
Coming One Some Answers and See If You Can\'t Start Finding Some
Solutions. So Good Luck to You.

Dabb: Before We Go to Our Next Segment, I Do Want to Say And Acknowledge
the Three People Who Won Our Exercise Contest, Per Se. Wilma from Reno
and Carl from Boise and Randy from Kanab. We\'ll Be Sending Your Prizes
out To You Right Away. Thank You Very, Very Much to All Of You. Keep
Calling. Keep Have Gone the Questions Come In. We Love It. Ok. One of
the Questions That Does Keep Coming up Is How Does past Performance
Affect the Award of Your Contracts? Hmm\... Our next Segment Will
Address Performance and Performance Evaluations with Respect to Your COR
Duties. Julie, Take it Away.

Lewis: it Has Always Been Important to Compare a Contractor\'s
Performance with The Requirements of the Contract. The Basic Task of
Contract Administration Is to Monitor Performance, to Be Sure That the
Government Receives What the Contract Requires. Using past Performance
as a Factor in Future Awards Makes The Task of Documentation Even More
Critical. It Is Also Important to Realize That Using past Performance as
An Evaluation Factor Is Different from Judging the Prospective
Contractor\'s Ability To Perform under Part 9, Contractor
Responsibility. The Awarding Contracting Officer Can Distinguish Between
Capacity To Perform as Compared to Previous Performance. But Factual and
Accurate Documentation Is Critical. Dave?

Williams: You Know, this Traditional Method of Determining
Responsibility That We\'ve Used over the Years Really Was Pretty Much
Based on What We Would Call Capacity and Credit. We Look at the
Contractor\'s Capacity to Perform the Job or The Ability to Acquire It,
or We Look at Their Credit, Do They Have the Financial Capability or The
Ability to Acquire It. And to the Extent We Ask Those Kinds of
Questions, We Were Pretty Well Stuck with a Contractor That Said, Well,
I Can Perform, I Have the Capability, I\'m Going to Borrow The Money.
I\'m Going to Rely on Something. We Are Kind of ‑‑ We Were Force To Do
Believe and That the Contracting Officer Said, I Really Don\'t Believe
You, Then If the Firm Was a Small Business Firm, it Would Require the
Contracting Officer to Go to Small Business Administration And Ask for
What\'s Called a Certificate of Competency. Soap, Number One, Delayed
the Process, but Very Likely Sba Would Look at and That If They Issued a
Certificate of Competency, Then All of a Sudden The Contracting Officer
Made the Award, Typically to That Low‑price Firm and with Doubts About
Their Ability to Perform. So Part of What We Wanted to Overcome with
this New Technology in the Acquisition Area and New Rules and New
Procedures Is to Begin Utilizing Past Performance as a Factor, Just like
You or I Do. I Mean, If I Go to a Restaurant And I Get Lousy Service, I
Probably Don\'t Go Back. Now, If I\'m Looking for Cheap Service And, I
Could Care less About the Quality, You Know, I Go Where It\'s Cheap. So
Somewhere past Performance in Our Own Lives Is Very Important And We
Choose to Decide Whether Or Not to Evaluate past Performance or to
Simply Go on Price or to Go on Other Kinds of Things. So Where We
Historically Use What We Call Traditional Evaluation or Traditional
Responsibility Factors, We Can Now Start Using past Performance As a
Factor. That\'s What Julie Just Touched On. So the New Guiding
Principles Help Us. But in Terms of Doing That, There Are Four
Well‑established Factors That Need to Be Included Or Considered When You
Are Using Past Performance as a Factor. The First One Is like Schedule
Or Quality. Did They Do the Job on Time? Did They Meet the Quality
Requirements? We\'re Kind of Familiar with Those. The Second Thing That
We Can Begin to Evaluate Is Their Add Minute Stray Aspects. This Could
Well Deal with the Submittal of Their Schedule of Work. It Might Be with
the Submittal Of Items Which Required Approval. It Might Be Submittal of
Drafts. So the Administrative Aspects of The Performance Could Be
Evaluated. The Third Thing That We Might Start Looking at Is the
Business‑like Aspects of the Firm. In Part, That Gets Back to a Little
Bit like Capacity and Credit, but the Business Aspects Of the Firm. And
Then, Four, We\'re Looking at Things like Are They Reasonable And Are
They Cooperative? What I Want to till up Front Is That Doesn\'t Mean
They Do Exactly What You Tell Them to Do. That Doesn\'t Mean They\'re
Reasonable and Cooperative Just Because They Respond to Your Direction.
So Somehow We\'re Talking about Reasonable and Cooperative as it Relates
to the Requirements of The Contract. And So with this New System, You
Really Are Entitled to Get Quality. The Thing about It, Though, Is You
Have to Be Prepared to Pay For Quality. Now, When You Think about the
Transaction Costs, Maybe the Total Cost Will Be less If You Paid a
Little Bit More for Service and You Didn\'t Have to Do Quite So Much
Administration. So this Is Where We Begin to Start Looking What\'s the
Total Cost of this Job to Be Done. And Where You Have Fewer and Fewer
People, If You Go to Performance‑based Statements of Work, Where You Let
the Contractors Decide How Instead Of Telling Them How, Then All of A
Sudden We Start Building in Past Performance as a Factor, We Begin to
Change the Way in Which We Do Business and We Begin to Change the Way in
Which We Select Contractors. In Terms of Performance Evaluations, Those
of You That Might Have Been in Classes with Me Before, I Think That
Somehow If We Can Relate These Things to Something That\'s Closer to Us
More Personal, It\'s Helpful. So If You Kind of Think about How Would
You like Your Performance Rated, Then Let Me Share with You What I Think
You Want to Know from Your Boss, You Know, What Are the Performance
Elements That You\'re Going to Judge Me On? Is it Showing up for Work on
Time? Or Is it Simply Producing Work? Is it Being Kind and Courteous?
What Are the Objectives or What Are the Performance Elements That Are in
My Individual Development Plan? And Then, Secondly, Some of Those
Elements Are Probably Critical. You Know, Maybe If I\'m at the Certain
Job I Need to Be More Responsible in One Work Activity Than I Do in
Another. And So Depending on the Performance Elements, Some Are Critical
and Maybe Some Are less Critical. Somewhere Between the Boss and I We
Agree upon Some Kind of a Rating Guide So That We Know, You Know, If I
Do Outstanding, I Get a 5. An and Outstanding Translates Into Something.
Then as an Employee, I Think We Would like to Have a Periodic Review. We
Want to Find out What the Boss Thinks about Our Performance and You
Know, If We\'re Really Brave We Might Suggest to the Boss If They Did A
Little Rescheduling on Their Own, We Could Be More Effective. That Might
Be Hazardous to Your Career but It\'s Worth Thinking About. The Idea Is
We\'re Going to Have Some Communication and Discussion. We Have
Elements, We Have Critical Elements, We Have a Rating Guide, We Have
Some Periodic Review, We Talk about It and Somewhere We Finally End Up
with a Rating. And So If You Begin to Think About That, Let\'s Maybe
Think How That Might Fit in Terms of a Contractor. So Maybe If We\'ve
Identified in Our Contract One Item Which Deals with Quality, We Might
Be Talking about ‑‑ Let\'s Go Back To an Example I Use, Because Maybe
We\'ll Pick the Difficult Ones Like, Hoofing ‑‑ or Shoeing Horses. Maybe
One of Those Contractor Evaluation Items in Terms of Quality, We Have
Three Items and Maybe One of Those Is Hoof Preparation. Might Be
Important How Well Have We Prepared the Hoof. The Second One Might Be
the Shoe Selection. The Third Item Might Be How We Attach, What Is the
Kind of Nails, the Size of the Nails, The Way in Which We Attach, but
The Idea of Attaching. If Shoe Selection Is the Critical Element in
Those Three, Then Maybe If I\'m the Contractor I Ought to Know That in
Terms of My Performance, I\'m Expected to Shoe Horses and There Are Some
Quality Standards and My First Quality Standard, I\'m Going to Be Judged
on How Well I Shaped And Prepared That Hoof. Secondly I\'m Going to Be
Judged On Whether I Selected the Right Shoe. If I Know That\'s Critical,
I\'m Going to Be Pretty Conscious of That When I Select Shoes and When I
Prepare the Hoof. Then I F‑i Go to the Third One, The Way in Which I
Attach It, Especially If We Went Back to That Early Thought about the
Hoof Has Stay Attached for at Least Three Months, Then it Becomes Maybe
More Important for Me to Make Sure It\'s Attached Properly. So If I Had
Those as Quality Standards, I Might Have Some Other Requirements like
Care and Handling. Care and Handling of the Stock. And Then Maybe My
Last One Is That I Still Operate in a Business‑like Manner. So If Those
Became the Performance Elements That We Have, Just like You or I in Our
Own Performance Rating, Then the Next Thing I Want to Know Is Which Ones
Are Critical. And I Know That Now, What Item Is Critical. I Know I\'m
Going to Be Judged on That. The next Thing I Want to Know Is, Well, How
Am I Going to Be Judged? What Do We Mean by a 1, and What Do We Mean by
a 3 and What Do We Mean by a 5 in Our Rating Scheme? And Then Somehow
Through That Periodic Monitoring, Then I Have The Opportunity to
Periodically Monitor Myself, Quality Control On the Part of the
Contractor, Or, on the Other Hand, You Can Do Some Monitoring and See
What\'s Happening. And When You Begin to Find Defects in My Work, You
Communicate Those to Me and When You Tell Me I Have an Opportunity to
Correct the Way I\'ve Done, and If I Respond Well, Then When You Come up
with Your Performance Rating, You Probably Indicate That, You Know, Dave
Had Some Problems in Performing the Work, but He Responded Well to
Direction, We Got the Job Done Correctly. He\'s Learned, And, You Know,
Performance Turned out to Be Really Quite Well. So Somehow All These
Elements That Are Important to You or I About Judging Our Performance
Are Equally Important When We Start Working with Contractors. What Are
We Documenting? What Are We Telling Them? And What Are the Factors. So
Those Are Critical. Now, How about Documentation? For Sure There Is a
Requirement That If It\'s Formal, over \$100,000, Then in That Case the
Process Is Really Quite Formal. You Have to Document That and There Are
Some Forms That Julie Will Touch on Late or and Tell You about That. But
It\'s Important to Document Formally over the \$100,000. You Know, If
You Think about the Lively Who Had of the Business, If You\'re Dealing
with a Huge Transaction and All of a Sudden You Don\'t like What I\'m
Doing, It Involves My Livelihood and I Need to Know Whether or Not My
Ratings Are Good. Under \$100,000, We Can Be a Little Bit More Informal,
but Still Somewhere We Need to Collect Relevant Information. It Ought to
Conform to the Contract Requirements, Not Just Like, You Know, \"I
Don\'t like The Way You\'re Dressed Today.\" If That\'s a Critical
Element, That\'s Great. But If It\'s Not a Critical Element, How I\'m
Dressed Is Not Very Important. It\'s What I Do, the Quality to Which I
Perform, the Timeliness In Which I Perform and the Other Critical
Elements. So When We Start Thinking about Contractor Performance and
Things of That Nature, Formal, Documented, Informal, We Still Need to
Document to Some Extent And We Ought to Share Because We Need to
Communicate That. So in Terms Of, Then, on Contracts Where There Are
Formal Procedures, If You Really Get Involved in That Kind of a Process,
Then You\'re Expected to Share the Results with a Contractor. What That
Means Is That You Have To Let Them Look at What You\'ve Rated, and You
Have to Give Them The Opportunity to Put a Written Response There. They
Are Allowed 30 Days in Which to Submit Comments, and You Retain Their
Comments in the Evaluation File. And the Comparison, I Guess, Would Be
That If You Have a Credit Rating and You Disagree With Some Creditor
That Has Put A Blemish on Your Credit Rating, You Have the Right to Go
Back And Say \"Wait a Minute, I Don\'t Agree. They Provided Me with
Lousy Service, I Returned the Product. I Don\'t Think I Owed Them And,
Of Course, I Didn\'t Pay the Debt.\" In That Case You Get a Right to Put
Your Statement or Your Letter Included in the File, and So the next Time
Somebody Looks At Your Credit Report, They See A Defect, but They Also
See What Your Answer Is. And So Contractors Feel like They Ought to Be
Treated the Same Way. You Can Be Critical, but Base on It What You\'ve
Told Me, Base it On Measurements That You Have, And Then Tell Me What
You\'ve Done and Let Me Respond. Sometimes Risky. You Know, If You Are
Critical of Their Performance, They Might Just Have Something to Say
about Your Performance, You Know, like How Late Were You in Delivering
That Government Furnished Property? You Know, Those Six‑foot Posts
Didn\'t Quite Meet That Eight‑foot Standard and Then You Didn\'t like
the Height of the Fence. Now, Who Is at Fault? So Somewhere along the
Line with We Start Being Critical of Someone Else, We Better Have Facts,
Because They Are Likely To Be Critical of Us. And So Those Are Things
That Are Important for You to Share, to Discuss, and to Decide How
You\'re Going to Handle in Terms Of Exercising and Utilizing past
Performance as a Factor in Making Future Contract Selections. We May Be
Coming up with a Point That You Might Think about That\'s in Your
Tele‑lesson Guide. It\'s Kind of in the Middle of That Page Marked
Segment 7, Slide 8. Can You Establish or Not Only Can You, but Maybe Are
You Able To, Are You Willing to Establish Clear Performance
Requirements? To Accurately Measure Compliance And Then Document and
Discuss Those Things with Your Contractor? Those Are Maybe Some
Important Things That You Need to Address Yourself. So with All This,
Somehow in That Last Slide, Then We Need to Make Sure That What We Do We
Put It in That Safe File Cabinet and We Share the Information Only as It
Should Be Shared. We Think about Proprietary Kind Of Information, and We
Make Sure That We Protect the Rights and Interests of Others While
We\'re Exercising the Rights and Interests of the Federal Government. So
with That, I Think It\'s Time To Move Back over and Address Some Special
Questions. So ‑‑

Dabb: Dave, I Have a Question For You. When We\'re Talking about the
Contractor Evaluations, Do They Have to Be in Writing? And How Much
Detail Is Required?

Williams: Ok. I Think Maybe Julie Is Going to Get to Some of That, but
in Terms of Writing, Certainly it Can Be Informal under the \$100,000.
We Ought to Have Some Record in The File to Reflect It. We\'re Going to
Have a Very Formal Procedure That I Think You\'ll See Some Forms in Our
Course Manual That Will Cover That.

Dabb: Ok. Thanks.

Williams: So There\'s Kind of A Three‑part Exercise That I\'d Like You
to Begin to Address as You Think about What We\'ve Been Talking About.
So the First One Is ‑‑ What Key Elements Would You Put Or Would You
Include in a Contractor\'s Performance Appraisal?

Williams: Ok. You Might Jot That Answer Down, Because We\'re Going to
Build on It Secondly by Saying the next Question for You to Address Is
‑‑ How Would You Measure the Contractor\'s Performance Based On Those
Elements?

Williams: as Part 3 of this Exercise, I\'ll Ask You ‑‑ How Would You
Communicate These Results to Your Contractor?

Williams: I\'m Not Sure What You Might Have Written down for Your
Contract, but I Hope That You Began to Make this Personal, The Kind of
Contract That You Would Be Administering. You Know, If I Were Thinking
in Terms of What Might Work, If I Were Involved in Some Kind of
Helicopter Operation Contract, You Know, Maybe One of the Most Important
Factors Is Safety. Sure, It\'s Nice to Be Quick. Sure, It\'s Nice to
Carry Big Loads, but If We Don\'t Act Safely, We\'ve Got a Serious
Problem. Maybe the Way I Would Measure That Safety Is I Have a System
That Ties into What Faa Says and If We Have Incidents, We Report Them
and We Document Them and If We Have Accidents, Then We Move Probably One
Step Further and We Have Serious Investigations. So If the Contractor
Then for Me To Discuss Has an Incident or an Accident, Number One, I\'m
Probably Going to Sit down Pretty Timely and Share That Information with
Them, That We Have Serious Concerns about Their Ability to Perform,
Safety Was the Most Critical Aspect. We Don\'t Want People Killed. If We
Have Incidents, We Become Concerned about Their Quality of Performance.
So When You Start Thinking about Whatever Your Contract Is, Then Begin
to Think about What Are The Important Performance Elements. Once You
Know Those, Think about How You\'re Going to Gather Information. Then
the Third One, How Are You Going to Communicate It? My Last Example, it
Might Be Easy to Give Them a Copy of the Incident Report and Have a
Serious Discussion. Maybe Tongue in Cheek, to Try And Get a Little Bit
of What I Would like to Have Normally in My Class Is a Little Humor,
Sometimes You Just Need to Pick Up That 2‑by‑4 and Hit Them over The
Head and Say, \"Look, I\'m Trying to Get You to Understand I\'m Not
Happy with Your Quality. Now, What Are You Going to Do About It?\" With
That Parting Comment, Julie, That\'s How I Might Deal With past
Performance. I Don\'t Know How BLM Is Going to Deal Witness.

Lewis: as Dave Was Saying, For the Performance Evaluation Process, BLM
Has Created a Form 1510‑60, Called the Contractor Performance
Evaluation. This Form Is Shown on Pages A‑6 Through 8‑8 in Your Course
Manual. Using the Form Helps with Consistency as it Lists Some Standard
Areas to Be Evaluated And Defines Rating Levels. For Simplified
Acquisitions You May Use this Form or Any Other Written Documentation.
Remember, this Documentation May Be Released to the Contractor or Even
Other Contracting Officers. Is Also the Documentation That We Would Use
When Evaluating a Quote on Price and past Performance. Finally, We Can
Make Award to Other than Low Price, but You Must State up Front and What
You Will Base Your Award On, and it Must Be Reasonable. Peggy?

Dabb: Thanks, Julie and Dave. It Was Very Informative and You Definitely
Hit Some High Points There. At this Time, We Have Phone Calls. We Have
Jim Johansen from Boise, Idaho, on the Phone. Hi, Jim.

Johansen: Hi, Peggy. How Are You? Peggy Dabb Fine, Thank You. How Are
You?

Johansen: Very Good.

Dabb: Also on the Phone We Have a Call from

Moore:, Contracting Officer At the National Business Centerer in Denver.
Hi, Peggy. Hi, Jim.

Johansen: Hi, Gwen.

Dabb: Gwen and Jim, Why Don\'t You Share Your Experience with All of Us
on past Performance Evaluations. Go Ahead, Jim.

Johansen: Well, in Boise, We Had a Need to Construct Numerous Small
Fences over the next Few Years. All Had Very Similar Specifications and
Each Project Was less than \$25,000. Due to the Erratic Nature and Short
Time Frames of Fire Rehabilitation and Our Land Use Decisions, We Are
Not Able to Combine the Projects into Large Contracts. We Wanted to Go
with a Multi‑year Requirements Contract To Cut down on the Number of
Solicitations. However, past Experience Showed That Small Projects
Attracted Unreliable Contractors with Very Little Experience. I Was
Reluctant to Gamble on a Commitment for the next Several Years on a
Fence Contract Simply On the Fact of Low Bid. So I Got with the Cos in
the Idaho State Office and in Denver, and I Involved Them Very Early in
the Process. The Decision Was Made to Use Past Performance as the Most
Important Evaluation Factor for Award to Try and Acquire a Contractor
That Would Be Reliable for Several Years.

Moore: Now, this Was a Very Different Process for Us Because
Construction Is Usually Done as Sealed Bid. Dave Talked about the Need
for Witness Our Specs and Drawings And That Sort of Thing. But in
Conversations with Jim And the Procurement Analyst, Competitive
Negotiation Was Going to Fill the Bill for Jim\'s Needs. So We Issued a
Request for Proposal Using Cost and Other Factors for Evaluation. And
the Contractor Was Required To Include past Performance Information
along with His Proposal Cost. We Ranked past Performance More Important
than Price in this Particular Situation. Once the Proposals Were
Received In My Office, I Forwarded Them To the Evaluation Committee. Jim
and Julie Were Part of That Evaluation Committee. They Ranked the
Proposals and Made a Recommendation to Me on Award, and We Went Ahead
and Made Award to a Contractor Based On past Performance Rather than Low
Bid. Now, the Contract ‑‑ We\'re into The Second Option Year, Right,
Jim?

Johansen: That\'s Correct.

Moore: We Just Renewed it for The Second Option Year and You Might Want
to Tell These Folks How That\'s Been Going for You Administrationwise.

Johansen: Well, It\'s Worked Real Well for Us. The Contractor Has a Good
Work History of Building Fence in Our Area, and the Administration Time
Has Been Cut down Considerably. We Have Great Flexibility in Start
Times, Performance Times When Issuing Task Orders and We Can Issue These
Task Orders Right out of Our District Office.

Moore: Right. Copies of Those Purchase Orders Are Sent Back to the
Contracting Officer along with Any Pay Documents That Are Issued. So
I\'ve Got a Good Track Record On the History of That Particular Project,
Too. Peggy, We Just Thought We Would Call and Give You a Success Story
Using past Performance, But the Reason That it Worked in The
Construction Area Was, Number One, Jim Was Able to Analyze His Future
Needs. He Knew That He Had These Recurring like Kinds of Fences Over the
next Period of Years, And Then He Was Able to Adequately and Clearly
Express That to Julie and I Both and the Three of Us Put Our Heads
Together and Developed the Strategy Together and We\'d like To Say That,
You Know, We\'re Giving That Project a Star.

Dabb: Sounds like the Teamwork Effort Worked Really Well in this
Particular Instance. I Do Have a Question for Either One of You. When
You Determined the Award, How Did You Determine Whether The Price Was
Fair and Reasonable? I Know You Said You Awarded Not Really Based on
Cost, but Did You Not Still Have to Determine Fair and Reasonable?

Moore: of Course. Because Cost Is Still a Very Important ‑‑ Everybody\'s
Budget Is Critical, and So We Certainly Were Not Going to Pay an
Exorbitant Price for the Very Highest Quality, but the Way That the
Ranking of Evaluation Factors Were, We Were Able to Give ‑‑ Give Them
Weight, and That\'s How We Came up with Who Was the Best Contract, Where
Did We Get the Most Value, the Most Experience, past Record and Price.
It Was All Considered.

Lewis: That Price, Too, Was Right in Line with the Government Estimate.
So it Wasn\'t like it Was Outrageous.

Moore: Absolutely.

Lewis: Yeah.

Dabb: Wow, Thank You Both for Sharing That. That\'s Pretty Exciting.
That Helps Us All to Know What We Want to Do Next, Huh?

Lewis: You Know, We Didn\'t Know How We Were Going to Do it
Particularly. We Just Kind of Started off Talking and Working Our Way
Through it and Working It, Which Is How You Have to Approach All Of
These New Tools.

Williams: and Kind of Tying In on That One, What I See Happening Is That
There\'s Some Organizations That Have Dealt Exclusively in Low Price
over Time and Then You Wonder about The Quality of the Contractors That
You Have. I Mean, the Prices Are Terrific. Who Else Could Do it less
Expensive than They. And So We\'ve Created a Cadre Or, You Know, a Group
of Contractors That Are Not the Best in the World. So with These New
Tools, Part of What Your Challenge, Is I Think, Is Being Able to Openly
and Honestly Sit down with Some of Those Weak Performers and Say, You
Know, We\'re Going to Start Playing by a New Set of Rules in The Future
and We\'re Going to Begin Judging past Performance And We\'re Going to
Put a Weight On That and We\'re Going to Actually Look at Your Price and
Your History. So You\'ve Have a Chance to Start Doing it Different Live
and Better in the Future. If You Did That, You Might Also Go to Some of
the Contracts Throughout in Your Communities That Wouldn\'t Play the
Game with You Before Because They Wouldn\'t Play Low Price. But If You
Go out to Them and Say, We\'re Willing to Look at Past Performance and
We\'re Willing to Pay a Fair Price for Quality, Some of Those Good
Contractors M.i.s. Just Decide To Give You Some Quotations or Be
Interested in Your Work. I Guarantee You One Thing, Contractors Are in
Business to Make Money, and If You Can Get Satisfaction from Them and
They Can Get Some of Your Money, You\'re Going to Have a Pretty Good
Team.

Dabb: Thank You Very Much, Jim, for Taking Time Other Your Busy Day And,
You, Too, Gwen. We Know You Have Other Things You Want to Go Do. Thank
You Very Much.

Moore: Bye‑bye.

Johansen: Bye.

Dabb: All Right. Well, We Have Received a Couple More Faxes and We Do
Want to Make Sure to Keep Telling to You Call N We Really, Really
Appreciate That. That Would Be Something That Would Help Us as Well as
Helping You. We Are Coming to the Last Part Of the Today\'s Session. So
There Again, Because We Are Approaching That Final Day ‑‑ or That Final
Time of Our Day Today, Please Send in Your Questions, Send in Your
Faxes, And, Remember, You Don\'t Have to Be Necessarily Just What We
Barely Talked B Anything We\'ve Talked about Today or Anything Else That
Maybe Would Fall into Place with What We Are Discussing. I Do Have One
Fax Here. It\'s Somewhat Related to What We\'ve Talked About, but this
May Be ‑‑ Well, I\'m Just Going to Go Ahead and Ask It. Have There Been
Any Changes Made To the Architectural Engineering Design Contract
Procurement? And the Other Side of this Is, Is the Brooks Act Still in
Place?

Williams: First Question, Yes, There Have Been Changes. One of the
Things That Came out Of ‑‑ You Know, We Use the ‑‑ Is The New
Design‑build Concept. That\'s the New Aspect for Construction. We Don\'t
Have to Go to the A.d. To Do the Design. So That Part Is New. And it Can
Work. And I Think I Forgot the Second Part of the Question.

Dabb: Talking about the Brooks Act.

Williams: Ok. Brooks Act in Terms of ‑‑ If It\'s Brooks Act Applying to
What Is Architectural Engineering, Including Surveying and Mapping, No,
it Still Exists. No Change There. The Brooks Act, If You\'ve Ever Heard
of the Brooks Act Going Away, It\'s That Aspect of the Brooks Act That
Dealt with Buying Government Computers. That That Part Is Over. But Not
for Architect/engineer Surveying and Mapping, All Covered by a and E
Procedures.

Dabb: Well, Why Don\'t You Go Ahead and Do a Brief Summary of What
We\'ve Talked about Today.

Williams: Well, Peggy, Seems Like I\'m Worn out for All the Stuff
Weaver\' Talked about Today. And in Some Senses, You Know, We Kind of
Think about Maybe We\'ve Overwhelmed People a Little Bit. On the Other
Hand, in Hearing From like Oregon with Bob Heaton, Some of These Things
Have Been Happening for Quite a Long Time. So There Are Lots of People
Using Bits and Pieces of this Whole Process. Some of the New Guiding
Principles. So It\'s an Opportunity, I Think, For to You Begin Putting
Together the Right Combination To Solve Your Problems. If You\'re Having
Quality Problems, Then Let\'s Design a Procurement System That Will
Start Getting You Quality Contractors and That Probably Means past
Performance. If, on the Other Hand, Your Problem Is with Price, That the
Prices Are Too High, Then Maybe You Ought to Think about a Negotiation
and Start Have Gone An Opportunity to Discuss. If You Have Continuing
Needs, Maybe We Ought to Think about Id/iq Kinds of Contracts. Certainly
There Are Enough Tools Out There to Try. Not Everything Works on Every
Acquisition. But It\'s Like, You Know, All the Tools You Have in Your
Tool Chest, Let\'s Try to Select the Right Tools for the Right Job. And
If You Can Do Those Things And at Least from My Point of View, My Biased
Point of View, I Think this Stuff Really Can Be Fun.

Lewis: And, Too, this Is Not Only New for the CORs, but It\'s New for
Some of the Cos. It\'s Just Taking That First Step. You Need to Take the
First Step And Pick a Project and Work Together with Your Program
Personnel and Just Get Started.

Dabb: Well, That about Wraps It up for Today. For Those of You That ‑‑
That Will Be Returning Tomorrow, We Want to Take a Few Minutes Now To
Complete this Exercise. Get a Pencil and Paper and Write Down the
Following Three Questions, and These Questions Are Not Included in Your
Course Manual. So Pay Attention. What Types of Projects Do You Have
Coming up Where You Can Use These New Tools?

Dabb: Number 2 ‑‑ Are There Any Concerns You Have about How To Proceed
with Those Projects?

Dabb: and Number 3 ‑‑ What Are Your Roles and Responsibilities Related
to Making These Tools Work?

Dabb: Ok. We Did Receive a Couple of Faxes And I Would like to Address
Those at this Moment. Is There Still a Minimum Order On an Id/iq
Contract?

Lewis: I\'ll Go Ahead. Id/iq Contracts, There Were Three Kinds of
Indefinite Delivery/indefinite Quantity Contracts. So the Id/iq, Which
Is the Indefinite Delivery/indefinite Quantity, Does, in Fact, Have
Minimum Order Requirements. The Contractor ‑‑ it Helps the Contractor
Know What He Can Expect Our Orders to Be. It Usually Gives Some
Estimated Quantities and May Even Give Some Maximum Quantities. So, Yes,
There Are Minimums Orders You Have to Place Against An Id/iq.

Dabb: Ok. I Also Have a Fax Here, It\'s Really Not a Question, It\'s
More Of a Comment. This Person Wanted to Share a Success Story as it
Relates to Commercial Acquisitions. Apparently There Was a Pump That Was
Needed with a Pressure Tank Installed at One of the Fire Stations out in
Nevada. Contract Went out for a Pump With One 300‑gallon Pressure Tank.
Well, in the Commercial Acquisition Clause, There\'s a Paragraph That
for the Contractor to Submit a Bid on Something Different If it Will
Benefit the Government, and the Contractor Did Submit Something, And
What Ended up to Be the Success Story Here Is That the Final Product
Ended up to Be Three 100‑gallon Tanks Instead Of One 300‑gallon Tank
Because The 300‑gallon Tank Wouldn\'t Fit Through the Door and No One
Realized That Before They Put The Bid on the Street, Before They
Solicited That. In this Instance, it Seems to Have Worked out Really
Well for This Particular Office in Nevada. So, Thank You Very Much. We
Do Enjoy Have Gone These Kind Of Success Stories.

Williams: Peggy, One of the Positive Things about the Commercial Item
Acquisition Is That it Does Allow Vendors to Offer Other Products or
Other Services. You Know, You Ask for What You Need but They Could Offer
Something Else. If You Think about Just Equipment, it Might Be That I
Have a Little Better Model That I Hadn\'t Been Able to Sell, I Had it in
Stock, and That I\'d Be Happy to Give You this Newer, Better Model at a
Price That\'s Comparable to Something You Thought Could You Get. So by
Not Stating Exactly What You Want but Simply Saying, These Are Our
Performance Requirements in the Commercial Marketplace, Then it Allows
Them, in Fact, Encourages Them, To Issue or to Provide You with
Alternate Offers. In the Rest of the Procurement World, an Alternate
World, it Would Be Considered Nonresponsive. In the Commercial World, it
Says, Tell Me What Else You Might Have That Will Help Me Do My Job.
It\'s a Whole New Ball Game. Market Research Is the Key Again.

Dabb: I Do Want to Recap One Area There, and That\'s to Go Back to the
Exercises That I\'d Asked Asked to You Think about And I Will Recap Each
One of Those Three Questions. What Types of Projects Do You Have Coming
up Where You Can Use These New Tools. Number 2 ‑‑ Are There Any Concerns
You Have about How to Proceed with These Projects? And Number 3 ‑‑ What
Are Your Roles and Responsibilities Related to Making These Tools Work?
Ifer in a Group, Can You Work Together and Send in One Response. Please
Fax Your Answers to the National Training Center at 602‑906‑5701. Before
Leaving Today. We\'ll Address the Responses First Thing Tomorrow
Morning. For Those Tuning in for Today\'s Session Only, Please Remember
to Complete the Course Evaluation And Return it to Your Downlink
Coordinator. Also, Be Sure You\'ve Signed the Attendance Roster and
Given to It Your Downlink Coordinator. Remember, We\'ll Be Back Here
Tomorrow Again on Telstar 5, Transponder 17, Starting at 9:00 A.m.
Mountain Standard Time. Thanks for All of Your Participation. Bye.

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