Contracting Officer's Representative Refresher Training\
Building On The Basics -- Course 1500-14SS

**\
A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

**BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona**

**February 3, 2005**

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

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

Announcer: Welcome to \"Building on the Basics, Contracting Officer\'s
Representative Refresher Training, Providing Tools to Successful
Contract Performance.\" brought to you live from the BLM National
Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona. and now the host of your program,
Denise Bickler.\
\
D. Bickler: Well, good morning, everyone. welcome to day two of our
satellite presentation of Contracting Officer\'s representative, or COR,
refresher training. as you know by now, my name is Denise Bickler, and
I\'m a Contracting Officer in the construction and architect engineering
branch at the BLM National Business Center. Lou and John, welcome back
this morning for the second and final day of training. before he would
get started, I have a couple of messages. first of all, Park Service,
your push-to-talk bridge is still up and you can use your push-to-talk,
and John, Lou and I invite you to please use your push-to-talk. we
welcome your questions, comments and conversation today. BLM, your
bridge is down, but you may call or fax at the numbers on the screen
Now. I\'m told that we will throughout the day \-- not the day, but
throughout the morning here, we will try your push-to-talk again to see
if we can get that up without the echo, but for now please send in your
faxes or call. We can get you on air live with a phone call. Please
participate that way as well. And we apologize for the problems that we
had yesterday morning with the Park Service. We know that you came in a
little bit late And I\'m going to pick on Cathy in Lincoln home because
I have a question to ask you. Cathy, are you out there? Someone at
Lincoln home with the Park Service, are you out there ? Okay. Anyone
from the Park Service, is your bridge up This is Canyonlands.\
\
D. Bickler: Okay. Cathy at Lincoln Home National Park, you had a
question about U.N. core and what the requirements were for purchasing
from Unicore. The policy says agencies shall purchase required supplies
of the classes listed in the schedule of products made at the Unicore at
prices not to exceed current market prices using the procedures in this
part. So we had a discussion, and we interpret this to mean that you\'re
not to go out and get competition but do some market research to
determine if Unicore\'s prices are at fair market value. If you feel
that they\'re not at a market value, you need to get a waiver from the
federal prison industries to go off their schedule. So that\'s the
answer that we have for you, Cathy, if you still have other questions,
you can either push to talk or call us, fax us and we\'ll get those
answers for you as well. Now, under 2500, as we said yesterday, is not
\-- is exempt from Unicore. So if it\'s under 2500, you don\'t have to
use Unicore. Over 2500, do some market research, see if it\'s a market
price, if not you need a waiver. Okay.\
\
Caller: Is anybody else having problems hearing you? Is anyone else
having problems hearing you from the other sites?\
\
D. Bickler: Who is this having problems? Who are you?\
\
Caller: This is Cathy from Lincoln home. We can barely hear you. We have
our volume up all the way. During the test it was fine but now we can\'t
hear you.\
\
D. Bickler: Okay. Just a minute. We\'re not aware of any difficulties.
Would you guys like her to call somebody?\
\
Caller: This is Margie in Santa Fe. What she probably needs to do is get
her help number and use that because we can hear you clearly.\
\
D. Bickler: We\'re going to put up some numbers for you and move on with
the show but we\'ll put up some numbers you can call to get help. There
they go. Now, yesterday morning, as I said, we were missing our friends
at the Park Service for just a little while and we wanted to just let
you know that all we did was a general overview of the entire broadcast
for yesterday and today, and we don\'t believe that you missed very
much, if anything at all, but in your study guide, everything that we
said is pretty much summarized or in the study guide. So we also had a
question to go over yesterday\'s first exercise, exercise number 1, the
answers to that. So I\'m going to do that right now. That\'s on page 6
for the Park Service folks who missed this yesterday. Page 6 of your
study guide, exercise 1, the answer to number 1 regarding who the two
most important members of the acquisition team are is C., the
Contracting Officer and the COR. To number 2, the COR\'s \-- all every
the COR\'s roles and responsibilities are defined by the CO in the COR
appointment letter, the answer is false. You have a variety of duties. A
COR is required to always exercise sound judgment, number 3, or contact
who to seek advice. That would be C., the Contracting Officer. And
number 4, when does the COR\'s involvement start? The answer was D.,
during project planning. So those are the answers to exercise 1 that our
Park Service friend missed yesterday. Again, we encourage and invite you
to participate Park Service, because you\'re the only people we have on
our push-to-talk bridge.

Let\'s move on with the show. Are there any questions at this point from
yesterday that we can answer right now? Okay. Well, at the end of the
training today, you\'ll need to go back to the national training
center\'s website, the same one where you took the pretest and got the
study guide, and take a post course assessment. After you have
successfully completed the test with a minimum score of 70%, you will be
recertified as a COR. Online at that same location you\'ll need to print
off your COR certificate. Please remember to send a copy of your
certificate to the person in your office for maintaining the list of
certified CORs. In the BLM this is usually the state procurement analyst
or Contracting Officer. Today we\'re going to continue on with the
solicitation phase of the contract and then to evaluating the bids,
awarding the contract and finally performing contract administration.
Have your study guide handy because we\'ll be referring to it throughout
today\'s broadcast. Like yesterday, there will be two 15-minute breaks
throughout the training session. Also, the fax and phone numbers remain
the same. As you see them now on your screen below. I that\'s about it
for housekeeping items and we will move into our next module with the
solicitation process and Lou is going to discuss the COR\'s involvement
in this phase of the acquisition process.\
\
L. Maestas: Thank you, Denise. Let me start off by saying that the
technical involvement Is very important and required here as well. John
has explained the importance of planning and just how we go about
formulating the government\'s requirements. We\'ve made sure that the
statement of work or the specifications have clearly defined our
requirement. Remember, any ambiguities in the statement of work are
interpreted most strongly against the party who drafted it. Well, now
it\'s time to rock-\'n-roll and I don\'t mean for Denise to stand up and
start dancing. You may be asking yourself, what do I do here? The
solicitation phase and this is where the contracting people do their
thing? Well, in this section, we\'re going to show you that your
responsibility as a COR continues to play a very important role in the
solicitation phase. The first thing the COR generally starts off with is
developing the acquisition plan, which includes a list of milestones,
contract type, a variety of other information, and you may or may not
have seen one of these, but trust me, your input has been a valuable
source to the Contracting Officer completing this acquisition plan.

Now, there is a sample of an acquisition plan in appendix A of the guide
and before we go further, let me apologize. Yesterday we should have
mentioned this, but in the appendices we failed to number the appendix
pages. You might, and you probably already have done this, but you may
be want to tab your appendices so it is easier to get it to. I was
having a heck of a time going through them myself. I kind of tabbed my
guide so I can access them better. Again, we apologize for that. Much of
this information is obtained from a properly submitted requisition
package. As I said earlier, it\'s a lot of the input you\'ve given us.
But anyway, if you look at the acquisition plan, and I hope you had time
to find it, you\'ll see that it does contain substantial data about the
proposed acquisition, but for now let\'s \-- just to summarize, let\'s
go over the milestone schedule. That will be the last page of your
appendix A, and, again, like I said, they weren\'t numbered, but it will
be the last page of appendix A.

If you\'ll go to the last page, and the other stuff, at your leisure you
can review on your own and you can see there is a lot of data in that
acquisition plan. If you take a quick glance at the milestone schedule
there you\'ll see a list of just a numerous number of tasks. I think
there\'s like 19 on there. But you can also the days that it takes to
accomplish and those are just estimated dates no doubt. On the far end
column you can see who is kind of processing that particular action at
the time. But I think that gives you an idea, and this doesn\'t even
show all the stuff that we did way before getting to this point. So you
can see there\'s a lot of actions that take place, and one of these days
you might want to sit down with your Contracting Officer and go over an
acquisition plan. Let\'s briefly discuss now just what the government
purchases. You and I know that we buy a great variety of things,
sometimes in substantial quantities. Today we want to focus in on
services and constructions only because \-- well, it\'s generally these
two areas where the CORs are appointed, really. Making this
determination may not be as easy as it seems, and it affects the way we
proceed with the solicitation. A service contract is defined as a
contract for identifiable tasks rather than to furnish an end item.
Services may be either non-personal or personal type and may be
performed by either professional or nonprofessional basis. The FAR
defines construction as: construction, alteration or repair (including
dredging or excavation and painting) of buildings, structures or other,
and the key here, real property. Well, what kind work is considered
supply or service? And what is construction? Let\'s do an exercise to
differentiate between the types of acquisitions. We\'re going to walk
through these together so you can fill in the answers to exercise 9 on
page 21 of your guide. We have an Elmo here and we\'ll go through them
with you. First, if you\'re there and ready, let\'s first take a look at
the first item there, well plugging. What would you consider \-- what
kind of acquisition would you consider that to be? You folks in the Park
Service, you can use your push-to-talk or the other folks out in BLM
land may go ahead and call. Does anybody have an answer to that one?\
\
Caller: Service.\
\
Caller: Service.\
\
L. Maestas: You\'re 100% correct. Well plugging is a service. Let\'s
look at the other side. How about the well drilling, what would you
consider that? Anybody?\
\
Caller: Construction. That would be construction.\
\
L. Maestas: Both of you answered correctly. It is construction. How well
plugging and well drilling, they\'re kind of the same, they use the same
type of disciplines, work, equipment, but you\'re right, they are \--
well drilling is a construction and well plugging is a service. Let\'s
look at tree planting. What would you consider that one?\
\
Caller: Service.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s correct again. You guys are on top of it. Let\'s go
to the next one. Haz-mat remediation. This is a little tricky \--\
\
Caller: Service.\
\
L. Maestas: John, that is a service, isn\'t that correct?\
\
D. Bickler: Does anybody have another answer? Anybody disagree with
that?\
\
Caller: I say construction.\
\
J. Sherman: Yeah, this is John. The differentiation between service and
construction on haz-mat remediation has to do if there\'s any change to
the actual contour, let\'s say, of the land. If there is, then that
would probably be called or considered construction. But if they\'re
just removing, say, drums off the service of the land, then that would
be a service. Correct.\
\
L. Maestas: Thanks, John. We\'ll put both on that. I turned that one
over to John, anyway, because he is more in that. You know what? We
would like to check, if anybody out there in BLM would like to try their
push-to-talk right now go ahead and see if you can answer this next
question. The next one I think we\'re dealing with is road maintenance.
What would you consider that type of contract to be?\
\
Caller: This is Lake Havasu \--\
\
Caller: Oregon \--\
\
L. Maestas: I guess we\'re working. Did you say it was?\
\
Caller: Lake Havasu, Arizona, construction.\
\
L. Maestas: That one there is another little tricky one. I want to turn
it over to Denise to explain road maintenance because it can fall into
two different categories and we\'ve got to be careful how we identify
that one. We\'ve had trouble with that over the years. Denise?\
\
D. Bickler: we had a discussion amongst the three of us, and we \-- I
believe, I think we all believe, that road maintenance could fall as
either a service or construction. It depends on what you\'re doing to
the road. If, let\'s say, you\'re just going to go down the road and
regrade it or push the gravel back to the middle of the road, I would
consider that a service. But if you\'re adding gravel to the road or if
you have to do some physical changes to the road, then it\'s considered
a construction so. \-- so you\'re right. Please know it could be either
service or construction.\
\
Caller: This is Barstow.\
\
L. Maestas: Barstow, go ahead.\
\
Caller: Denise, when we building a road it\'s considered construction
because it has to be acquisition contract and awarded, but when you are
servicing a road, we\'re just maintaining it.\
\
D. Bickler: It depends on what you\'re doing to maintain the road would
determine really whether it\'s construction or not.\
\
Caller: St. George. Denise, what about filling potholes on a paved road
into a campground?\
\
D. Bickler: I think that \-- I think that\'s construction, but you\'d
want to ask your \-- it\'s a matter of interpretation. Your CO that
would handle that, because that would probably be something handled out
of your office there or the state office. They may say that\'s a
service. I say it\'s construction because you\'re altering the
property.\
\
L. Maestas: You know what, Denise, that is a tricky one, because we are
doing maintenance to the road and we\'re fixing it basically. It\'s a
tricky one. As you can see, things are not always cut and dry.\
\
D. Bickler: I guess what I look at is the definition of construction
says alteration or repair. So it just depends on what you\'re doing and
I guess you\'d say you need to consult with your Contracting Officer and
it will depend on their interpretation.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s a good point, Denise. I\'m probably leaning with you
\--\
\
Caller: This is national capital region. I have a question about tree
planting and I consider that one to be construction as well because you
could be altering what \-- the appearance, putting in new trees and
such.\
\
L. Maestas: Yeah, it can be, but I think over the years we\'ve pretty
much determined that we\'re clearing land, we\'re \-- we\'re not
altering the terrain per se, we\'re doing something on top of the land.
It\'s a good question, and it\'s a good comment, but I think just about
everybody you\'ll talk to will consider appear service. It is a good
point, though.\
\
D. Bickler: You know, sometimes, and I think the point of this exercise
is to \-- it\'s not always crystal clear, the type of procurement that
we\'re doing, and so it\'s important to talk to your Contracting Officer
because it will determine how those services acquired. Lou?\
\
L. Maestas: Those are good questions, good comments. Let\'s move onto
supply and install an interruptible power supply or UPS unit, what would
you consider that, somebody?\
\
Caller: That would be construction.\
\
L. Maestas: Okay. That\'s a questionable one. It\'s tricky as well. It
could be considered construction. It could be considered a service. It
could be considered a supply item. We just kind of have to weigh the
cost, maybe, of the installation, maybe the cost of the unit itself. The
cost of the unit may be quite substantial, and the other stuff, the
installation and the work to get it in there and get it working may be
incidental. It may be a supply. But there again we have to weigh those
situations. But that\'s a good guess.\
\
Caller: That question back on road maintenance.\
\
L. Maestas: What was your question on that one?\
\
Caller: If you have actually reconstructed the road and your service is
to bring the road up to grade, would that still not be considered a
service instead of construction?\
\
L. Maestas: Basically getting it up to grade? Probably may be a service.
I don\'t know. What do you think, Denise?\
\
D. Bickler: You\'re regrading it to get it back to its original grade,
is that what you said?\
\
Caller: Adding rock or installing culverts as necessary in order to keep
it up to current standards, would that not be considered service as
opposed to construction.\
\
D. Bickler: What you have just described is a construction. You\'re
adding culverts. You\'re adding gravel. You are altering the road. That
would be construction, not a service, especially because you\'re adding
culverts. You\'re adding things to the road. Again, it depends on what
you\'re doing and you should consult with your CO in my opinion, what
you just described, Oregon, is a construction, not a service.\
\
L. Maestas: Great comments. Let\'s go over the last one, printing. That
one, what would you say that would be, somebody out there?\
\
Caller: A service.\
\
L. Maestas: Okay. Service might be the answer. Supply may be the answer.
We don\'t know. Generally I would consider it a service right offer the
bat, but every now and then we may be buying a printed document, and we
don\'t care about the service aspect of it, we just want the final
product. But service is a good answer.\
\
D. Bickler: Lou, we have a fax that just came in from San Antonio
national historic park. Is archaeological excavation a service or
construction? John?\
\
J. Sherman: I would consider it a service.\
\
D. Bickler: Probably a professional service, wouldn\'t you?\
\
D. Bickler: What do you think, Lou?\
\
L. Maestas: I have to go with the service. We have to kind of look at
the end result. We\'re not doing anything to purposely do something to
the grounds, if you will. We\'re doing it for the purpose of trying to
determine certain aspects of the archaeological point of view, and it
would have to be a service in my point of view.\
\
D. Bickler: I would say \-- we say professional service to that, San
Antonio. Thank you for the fax.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s a good fax. Thank you very much. Those are great
responses, folks, and we\'ll go ahead and move on now. Just as a point
of interest, statistics show that service contracting is growing and
growing by leaps and bounds. There\'s a chart on page 21 of your guide
that shows that these numbers have increased over the several years, you
can see the trend. The dates \-- the date of that chart may be a little
dated, but I can guarantee you that if we were to look at it today,
those numbers would even be greater. So services is growing
substantially. This is all the more \-- go ahead, somebody was calling
in? Okay. This is all the more important that we have qualified and
trained CORs in that services arena. Yes, it\'s still proper that we
have qualified and trained CORs in the construction area just as well.
Another decision that needs to be made is the contract type, again on
page 21 of your guide lists a few of the more common ones and a brief
description of each one. Let\'s go over first the first the firm fixed
price type. That\'s the most common one used in BLM. We like to maximize
risk on the contractor. It\'s more used in just about all our contracts
that we \-- there\'s other types, too, and that next one would be like a
labor \-- labor, hour \-- labor hour. Those are somewhat available to
us.

We like to try to stay away from them because they require so much more
administration.\
\
D. Bickler: Labor, hour, time and material also requires a written
justification because there more of a risk on the government and it\'s
more costly and that\'s the type of procurement that we would use, for
instance, on a well plugging, because in order to plug that well, you
have to dig everything out that\'s down the well, but you don\'t know
what\'s down there beyond an arm\'s length, so we have to do a time and
material while they fish it out. It requires 100% inspection in order to
verify the contractor\'s build time and the materials that\'s billing us
for.\
\
L. Maestas: We also have cost reimbursement. Cost reimbursement is a
little tricky. Sometimes we know what we want but we don\'t know how to
get there. So cost reimbursements do come into play. Those are another
type that require lots of contract administration. So we have to be
careful when we use those and use them in the appropriate time.
Indefinite delivery, we have an indefinite delivery types. We like to
use those. They come in handy when we have recurring type items. They
come in handy when we make the awards initially and you can issue
delivery orders against those. They come in handy. We have the variety
of other \--\
\
Caller: This is Anchorage Park Service. What are cooperative agreements,
are they viewed as a contract or not?\
\
L. Maestas: A cooperative agreement is a contractual relationship but
they\'re totally different than contracts. They operate under totally
separate rules. To answer your question bluntly, no, they\'re not
considered contracts, okay? They\'re a different breed. There\'s a
variety of additional other contract options that we can use. Maybe we
require multiple deliveries, variable performance periods, option
periods. So there\'s a lot of venues to use when we start selecting the
contract. These decisions are all based on your requirement developed
during the planning phase again. Now that we\'ve discuss add little
about the different types of acquisitions, it\'s now time to choose the
appropriate acquisition method. Now let\'s go to page 22 of your guide.
There are a variety of methods that can be used. Fill in the blanks as
we go through each one. The most common method using competitive bidding
with public opening of bids. What would you say that would be?\
\
Caller: Sealed bidding.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s correct. It is a sealed bidding. Let\'s go to the
next one. Awards based only on price and price related factors. This
method allows greater flexibility and allows for negotiation prior to
award. Can be used for competitive or noncompetitive contracts, award
may be based on factor other than price. What would that be? For the
sake of time we\'ll call that one negotiated. This other one is used for
acquisition of supplies, services, including construction, estimated
under \$100,000. The processes are easier and more flexible. Uses
negotiation and awards can be factors other than price. Can anybody take
a stab at that one?\
\
Caller: Request for proposal?\
\
L. Maestas: Request for proposal is correct \--\
\
D. Bickler: She said quote.\
\
L. Maestas: Request for quote is correct but we are using simplified
acquisition procedures there. That is the correct answer. This last one
includes all purchases at or below \$25 2500 and for the sake of
construction under \$2,000, this may be performed by other than a
Contracting Officer when authorized to use the government purchase
card.\
\
Caller: Micro-purchasing.\
\
L. Maestas: That is absolutely correct. Thanks for the responses. As we
mentioned, for negotiated commercial items and simplified acquisitions,
you may want to evaluate on other than price. As it was discussed
yesterday \--\
\
Caller: John, could I get the first 2 on that, please?\
\
L. Maestas: Pardon?\
\
Caller: I need the first two we did on acquisitions \--\
\
L. Maestas: The first one was sealed bid, and those are kind of wide
open and the next one we called negotiated methods. Okay? As was
discussed yesterday during the planning phase, you may have determined
what non-price actors you want to use to evaluate contractors. Prior to
issuing the solicitation, the Contracting Officer will coordinate with
you to finalize these factors. Some of the common nor non-price factors
are \-- evaluation factors we use are, past performance. Past
performance will entail maybe reviewing prior contracts we\'ve had with
these vendors. That\'s a good way \-- that\'s probably the best way to
go about reviewing past performance. We got technical proposal
evaluation. Here we want to basically evaluate the technical merits of
what this contractor is submitting and see how they relate to our
efforts and make sure they\'re going to meet our needs. We want to make
sure their approach is what we\'re looking for. Management capability.
Well, there again we want to look at the overall capability of that
organization, making sure that they\'re going to be capable of meeting
our demands, our needs.

Next, key personnel qualifications, just like applying for a job, we
want good people working on our projects. So we want to look at those
qualifications, primarily the key people that will be working on our
projects. And the last one there is prior experience. It may go a little
hand in hand with the management capability, but every now and then we
may want to be looking at a little more, oh, maybe what work have they
done for BLM, for example. So we may want to be a little more specific
and that\'s why we have that category in there. One that\'s not list
there had is company location. If we\'re in Alaska, we may want to
evaluate and give higher points to somebody located in closer proximity
than, somebody, say in New York or Texas or somewhere like that.
Sometimes that\'s very important to us. Well, now that we\'ve \-- have
our solicitation ready to go out for bid, John, you were going to take
it from here. So go for it, my friend.\
\
J. Sherman: Thank you, Lou. Since the solicitation is issued
electronically, the COR will need to access \-- or may want to access,
just depends, electronic commerce through IDEAS or the FEDBIZOPPS
website to obtain a copy. Upon doing this you will need to review the
solicitation package. And, Denise, you do something extra, don\'t you,
as far as getting that solicitation to your CORs?\
\
Yeah, once I post the solicitation, within FEDBIZOPPS there\'s a
function that you can register yourself to receive e-mail notification
from FEDBIZOPPS when anything is posted against that solicitation. So I
register myself, the COR, the PI and anybody else that I think needs \--
within BLM that would want to see that package, and then I might send an
e-mail and let them know it\'s posted, but then I don\'t ever have to
remember to tell them if I posted an amendment.\
\
J. Sherman: That\'s a great perhaps. If you are accessing EC by any of
the pre-described methods, be sure you know the solicitation number
because you will definitely need it to find it on the website. Nowadays
all vendors must register in the central contractor registration in
order to contract with the federal government and depending on the
estimated dollar amounts all procurements are conducted electronically.
It is therefore \--\
\
Caller: I have a question.\
\
J. Sherman: Go ahead.\
\
Caller: I\'ve lost my train of thought. Sorry, I didn\'t have enough
coffee. I\'ll ask later.\
\
J. Sherman: We\'ll be here.\
\
D. Bickler: I want to say, you said depending on the dollar value most
procurements are done electronically. Isn\'t it all procurements are
electronic, even the simplified acquisitions?\
\
J. Sherman: Well, it\'s \-- anything that is \$25,000 or over that\'s
not issued under a GSA schedule is posted in FEDBIZOPPS and is available
electronically. Under \$25,000 you don\'t need to post.\
\
D. Bickler: I think it\'s \--\
\
Caller: I\'ve got my question back. Denise, or do all of you post your
solicitations online exclusively or do you also send out hard copies to
your contractors?\
\
D. Bickler: I never send a hard copy to the contractor, and the
philosophy is there what you do for one you must do for all. So if I
sent one to one contractor, I would have to make that available to every
contractor, and that\'s, in my view, unreasonable. Now, what we will do
\-- I can\'t tell you how much time I spend with the contractors walking
through them through FEDBIZOPPS and IDEAS EC because IDEAS EC is not the
most user-friendly website. So they\'ll call me and tell me they have
problems, but one of the other things that we\'ll do is if we have a
very large project, let\'s say it\'s a total of maybe 15 or 20 megabyte
in drawings and specifications, because IDEAS is limited to the size of
EC, stuff you can put out there, we will make the drawings and the
specifications available on CD. The contractors have to fax or e-mail us
a request for that CD, but that\'s what we\'ll do, and then we add about
a week to the solicitation time to allow for mailing of those. But never
do I do both hard copy and paper in the arena that I work in, which is
over 100,000. I don\'t think it would be a good practice.\
\
L. Maestas: The same with me, Denise. The mandate there has been that we
go paperless, and that\'s what we\'re trying to do and I think we\'re
doing it pretty much across the board nowadays.\
\
Caller: What happens if the contractor says he doesn\'t have a
computer?\
\
D. Bickler: There are a lot of means he could use to get that
procurement electronically. He could go to the small business
administration local to him. I am sure they would be more than happy to
help him. Do we have public rooms in our local offices that they could
use the computer? And we might charge them to print that. They could go
someplace like Kinko\'s, because I can\'t think of anybody place else,
Kinko\'s, you can pay them, they\'ll go online and print it off for him.
There are a variety of means for contractors to get a hold of those
electronic packages, and as \-- you know, as mean as it sounds, these
contractors, no matter how small they are, they simply have got to
become electronic because that is the waver of the future, and again we
deal in the world of procurements over 100,000. I\'m not sure what the
field folks are doing with procurements under 100 \-- I was just told
it\'s probably the same thing. It should be the same thing.\
\
L. Maestas: It is basically the same thing. One other thing you might
tell them is check your public library. There\'s computers there they
can use.\
\
D. Bickler: The risk in providing electronic and paper is that you have
to make sure that the contractor gets in paper exactly what went out
electronically. So if I issue an amendment to that solicitation that he
got in paper, now I\'m responsible for getting him a paper copy or
you\'re responsible for getting him a paper copy of the amendment, and
if we don\'t send it to him, we\'re opening ourselves up to a protest
we\'re most likely going to lose. So it\'s the contractor\'s
responsibility to get the EC stuff. There are a lot of options
available.\
\
J. Sherman: Let me just mention, looking into our crystal ball here,
there\'s one new aspect with FBMS, we spoke about that yesterday,
that\'s going to be our new financial system where our new acquisition
system will be integrated into it. Right now electronic commerce has
always missed that 360 loop, and that is that invoices from these
contractors that we make award to have always been sent in hard copy.
Well, in the new FBMS system they\'re going to be sent in
electronically.\
\
D. Bickler: What I\'ve heard is if a contractor can\'t submit it
electronically, the paper copy when it reaches the finance office will
be scanned and it becomes an electronic invoice.\
\
J. Sherman: They\'ll fax it in, it will be scanned and it will be routed
through an electronic approval process.\
\
D. Bickler: So we\'re moving EC and the contractors have to keep up with
us if they want to do business with the government, unfortunately.\
\
J. Sherman: So, hold on.\
\
D. Bickler: For several years now I think we\'ve tried to do some
outreach, community outreach, to let these contractors know about these
things. So, anyway, sorry, John.\
\
J. Sherman: No problem. Thanks, Denise. Here\'s some websites we could
go over. Acquisitions estimated at over \$25,000, like I stated earlier,
will post into FEDBIZOPPS and that\'s WWW.FEDBIZOPPS.gov. You can see it
on the screen. The next acquisitions estimates under 25,000, they will
still be posted but they will be limited to the IDEASEC website.
Generally the Contracting Officer will notify the Contracting Officer
rep or COR when the solicitation is posted, and we are now fully
electronic and should retrieve the solicitation online at least on one
of these sites that I just mentioned. Contractors are also obtaining
their solicitations this way now, and so this is also your opportunity
to verify that things are downloading correctly. In any event, somehow
you need to be sure that you receive a complete copy of the
solicitation.

If an error is discovered, it is much easier to correct the solicitation
by issuing an amendment than having to follow up and do a mod with
increased costs after award. Amendments are free and should be
accomplished early in the solicitation process. If errors are discovered
a contract award, modification may be issued and most modifications,
like I stated, probably require additional funding to the government.
What are your responsibilities as a procurement official with regard to
conduct and ethics at this point in the process? Well, once the
requirement is submitted to the Contracting Officer, and prior to the
solicitation being issued, you must be very cautious in talking with
contractors. Market research may still be occurring, but you should not
be talking about the specific requirements soon to be solicited. After
the solicitation release date all questions concerning the requirement
need to go to the Contracting Officer. We call this the black-out
period. Go to appendix C of your study guide, which is a solicitation
review checklist \-- B, I mean \-- which is a solicitation review
checklist to help you in reviewing the solicitation package. Sometimes
we make mistakes, don\'t we?\
\
D. Bickler: No!\
\
J. Sherman: We\'re only human and you know how procurement goes,
everyone wants it yesterday and we\'re somewhat of a hurry. So it makes
sense for the COR and anyone else involved in that solicitation or
procure. To take a look at that package thoroughly. There are specific
areas we would like you to review. If you\'re looking at that document
now, the solicitation review checklist in appendix B, we\'d like you to
look at the schedule of items or line item summary. This is where the
contractors concentrate on, and this is where we should be concentrating
on also. Basically schedule B is your items you\'re going to be
procuring. It will have a brief description, it will give you the
quantities that are requested, a unit of issue, may it be each, square
yard, square foot, acre, et cetera. Make sure those are defined
properly. It will also give you the period of performance and/or the
delivery date. It will talk about maybe minimum or maximum quantities,
and it also \-- for let\'s say construction will give you the estimated
price range. The next section is the site tour. That will give you the
tour date and time, the meeting location, point of contact and phone
numbers and any special requirements that are involved. The third area
is the technical specifications, or statement of work. They\'ll include
like Denise stated for construction pertinent drawings and/or maps.
They\'ll talk about liquidated damages if they\'re required. It should
be free of ambiguities. We don\'t want any vendor to misconstrue our
requirements, and like Lou stated earlier, ambiguities are construed
against a drafter, which in this case would be us, the government. If
we\'re using performance based requirements, it will be included and
we\'ll have a quality assurance plan. Then for evaluation purposes of
the technical proposal we may have \-- or will have evaluation factors.
That\'s how vendors know how their proposal will be evaluated.\
\
D. Bickler: John, just a few war stories to give examples. We realize
not everybody wants their procurement yesterday, but sometimes we do get
in a hurry in the office and we have our own reviews and these things
don\'t get caught. On one occasion we issued a solicitation \-- we had
to retype the bid schedule, and it was \-- I don\'t know, we typed it
from whatever was given to us, but little did we know the specifications
that came to us in adobe acrobat format had another bid schedule which
was supposed to have been the same bid schedule at the very back \-- the
last page of that specifications. Well, in our review we didn\'t catch
it. In the COR\'s review, they must not have caught it, and not one
contractor called to say, hey, you\'ve got two bid schedules here. So it
wasn\'t noted until the time of the bid opening, I was halfway through
that bid opening when I realized I was looking at two different bid
schedules, in and of itself may not be a problem if they were exactly
right but they weren\'t. There was one line item on the bid schedule
that between the two schedules there were different quantities, and
that\'s not something that can be corrected after bid opening and we
wound up having to cancel the entire solicitation due to that ambiguity.
So it\'s just \-- we can\'t stress enough the importance of you to
review what we\'ve put out on the street to make sure that it\'s what
you wanted and make sure there\'s nothing miss Ping that I think right
now would be a good time for a break, give everybody a breather, go
stretch your legs and use the facilities if you need to and we\'ll be
back in 15 minutes, but before we do that, does anybody have any
questions?\
\
Caller: Yes. This is Lincoln Home.\
\
D. Bickler: Wait a minute. We\'ve got two people there. We had Lincoln
home and someone else. Let\'s take Lincoln home first.\
\
Caller: Yes, I have a question about the site, pre-site visit. If you
have \--\
\
D. Bickler: Just a minute. \--\
\
Caller: Come and do a pre-site a site visit, if none of those vendors
\-- if a vendor cannot make it to one of those three times that you have
set up, is there a requirement that you have to do a fourth or a fifth
site visit just for that vendor\'s convenience?\
\
D. Bickler: Your timing is impeccable, Lincoln Home. We\'re going to
talk about site visits next, and the answer to your question is next but
if you can hang on until after the break you\'ll get more information
about that. Now, there was another caller that came in. What was your
question about specs and drawings, I think. Ambiguities? Okay. Please
ask it again after \-- are you there?\
\
Caller: Which rules, the written text or the drawing maps or \--\
\
D. Bickler: The rule of thumb is that the specifications take precedence
over the drawings. I \-- and I did hear a third person try to come in.\
\
Caller: This is Yosemite. I have a question that goes all the way back
to exercise 3, and the use of printing as a service. I don\'t know if
this varies among agencies, but \-- we have to go through the GPO,
government printing office.\
\
D. Bickler: You\'re absolutely correct. Printing services, we\'re
required to use GPO, and I did hear that person that asked me to wave if
I heard them. So is there someone else? I heard a fourth person.\
\
Caller: Is there a rule on trucking, on certain \-- certain dollar
amounts that you have to use specified trucking companies?\
\
J. Sherman: Not that I\'m aware of.\
\
D. Bickler: Not that we\'re aware of.\
\
J. Sherman: I don\'t think there\'s any national contract or anything
like that or any situation like GPO where everything has to go through
that service.\
\
D. Bickler: Okay. Great. All right. We\'ll take our 15-minute break now.
Stretch your legs and clear your mind. We\'ll be back in 15 minutes.\
\
D. Bickler: Okay. Welcome back. We have a fax that we\'d like to address
before we move on. This comes from Glenallen, Alaska. Yesterday we
covered personal services, and page 16 says federal agencies cannot
enter into personal service contracts. Today you defined a service
contract as personal or non-personal, so we want to clarify that. The
Bureau of Land Management at least, and possibly the Department of
Interior, is not authorized to enter into personal service contracts.
They\'re very rare in the government. There\'s extremely limited use.
They have to have very special authority to do that. I believe the
Forest Service might use personal services, but the BLM at least does
not. I guess our point there was that you have to be careful when
you\'re doing services, be careful that it\'s not a personal service,
because this agency just doesn\'t do that. The other part of that
question is that we had at the very end of the day in the test or the
little quiz that we did talked about RFQs and IPBs. We did a little
example about service contract at 65,000, what type of procurement, and
this individual was asking for guidelines, and perhaps we didn\'t make
that very clear. The little exercise that we did on page 22 of your
guidebook, which had to do with contract types, that\'s really where
that question belonged. We put it in the wrong place. What we\'re
getting at there is that over \$100,000 it\'s typically sealed bidding.
If it\'s under \$100,000, you use simplified acquisition procedures
which are requests for quotations typically. We don\'t typically do
requests for proposals under 100,000, do we, John?\
\
J. Sherman: No, that would be a request for quote.\
\
D. Bickler: Anything under 2500 is a micro purchase. And negotiated is
typically used over \$100,000. Do you have anything to add to that?\
\
L. Maestas: Let me see if I can make it a little more clearer. When we
start talking about sealed bids, basically we\'re meaning IFBs as well.
When we start talking about simplified acquisitions, they go hand in
hand with RFQs, under \$100,000. And then for negotiated procurements,
generally those are going to be RFPs, requests for proposals. I know it
does get a little tricky but the thresholds. Over 100 thousand tow
we\'ll probably doing negotiated or sealed bids. Under 100,000 dollars,
more than likely it\'s going to be an RFQ for whatever type of project
it is \-- the type of project doesn\'t matter. It\'s the contract type
or solicitation type if you will. IFB, sealed bid, RFP negotiated, RFQ,
simplified acquisition. I hope that helps out.\
\
D. Bickler: The exception to that would be commercial item, right?\
\
J. Sherman: There\'s still a commercial item that takes the RFQs up to
actually \$5 million. I don\'t think we all need to get too much into
that at this point.\
\
D. Bickler: We apologize for not being more clear on that. So, Lou,
you\'re up.\
\
L. Maestas: Thank you, Denise. John, let\'s get going here. As you can
see, the COR is a key player in the solicitation process review. Let\'s
hope that your future reviews find error-free solicitations. That would
be nice. Our solicitation would have been posted by now for a couple
weeks. Most of our service and construction service solicitations
incorporate a site selection tour and we had a question early but we\'ll
be hopefully answering your question here in the short few moments.
Ultimately site tour attendance by potential bidders or offerors,
unfortunately it\'s not mandatory, as much as we encourage it, they\'re
still not mandatory. As contracting officers and CORs or technical
representatives, we should strongly encourage vendors to attend. It\'s
to their benefit. I know I would not bid a project unless I was out at
the site. A site tour is an opportunity for prospective bidders or
offerors to physically visit the project work site, make determinations
that may affect the bid or proposal in terms of price, time or other
factors. In any event, contractors are required to make themselves aware
of all conditions which may affect contract performance. Now let\'s take
a break and listen \-- not take a break, but we\'ll sit down and listen
to a recent site tour that was conducted.\
\
Under service and construction type requirements, the contractors are
required to make themselves familiar with conditions at the work site
which may affect contract performance. In order to do this, the COR must
make themselves available to conduct a tour or visit of the work site. A
single visit coordinated by the government is generally offered as a
matter of efficiency. Let\'s watch as Steve conducts a site visit.\
\
I\'m Steve Smith. I\'m the Contracting Officer representative.\
\
I\'m Thomas.\
\
We\'re here for the janitorial contract site visit.\
\
Great.\
\
I have a sign-in sheet we\'ll pass around this way. This way we know who
showed up today.\
\
Do you need the address there as well?\
\
Yeah, just kind of fill in your name \--\
\
The he pre-bid site visit is held for the benefit of the contractors. It
allows the contractor an opportunity to physically see the site and ask
questions to clarify the specifications or statement of work. A record
of the visit should be kept, including the names and phone numbers of
attendees and forwarded to the Contracting Officer for the solicitation
file.\
\
We\'ll start the tour here on the main floor, and the successful
contractor, this is the area that they\'ll have to keep free of debris.\
\
That reminds me, I have a question, my cousin has a janitorial service
and he was supposed to be here but I don\'t know, he just didn\'t show
up. What\'s your number so that he can give a you a call so you could
get together with him.\
\
Steve has a decision to make. Should he coordinate another site visit
with the contractor\'s cousin or not? Let\'s see what he does.\
\
This is the only site visit that the government is going to give for
this solicitation. So the results of it, though, will be made as \--
made available to him as an amendment to the solicitation. Usually
what\'s going to wind up happening is the Contracting Officer is going
to modify the solicitation like by amendment and put in the results of
our site visit. So can he still bid on it.\
\
All right.\
\
If there\'s no other questions, we can go up to the second floor.\
\
That\'s right. Only one site visit should be conducted by the
government. The minutes and the sign-in sheet should be forwarded to the
CO for inclusion in the solicitation by amendment.\
\
In this building the contractor is going to have to keep all those
classrooms vacuumed and anywhere you see carpeting in this common area
and stuff would also have to be vacuumed.\
\
Steve k I take to you over here a second? I have a question.\
\
Steve has another decision to make. Should he speak to the contractor
individually or should he maintain a group discussion?\
\
Okay. We have to stay as a group, guys. He has a question, and we\'re
going to all listen and answer it together. That way everyone knows
what\'s going on.\
\
good. Steve made the right decision. The COR should not speak
individually to a contractor. Every contractor should here all the
questions and answers to keep a level playing field.\
\
Are these classrooms left open at night so we can access them?\
\
Some are open, some are not. Whoever the successful contractor would be
would get a set of keys. You could get into any room you need to get
into. That\'s it for this floor unless anyone else had any questions.\
\
I noticed that in the solicitation there really wasn\'t mention of the
bathrooms involved in this contract. I was wondering if that was
something that was \-- you guys wanted in the contract or not?\
\
Okay. This is a good question from the contractor. But what should Steve
tell him? It\'s likely that the bathrooms were an oversight and will
need to be included. Should Steve tell the contractors to go ahead and
consider the bathrooms in their pricing?\
\
I think you\'re right. We didn\'t include the bathrooms. That was
probably just an oversight on our part but I wouldn\'t consider any work
that\'s not in the solicitation. So if we do need to have the bathrooms
in the contract, the Contracting Officer will modify it. So I wouldn\'t
add it to your price or consider any of that work or anything like
that.\
\
Thanks.\
\
Anybody else have any other questions? That\'s it for this floor. We can
go on out now. We\'ll go to the \--\
\
That\'s right. The COR cannot make changes to the specifications or
statement of work during the site visit. Any changes to the requirement
must be made by the CO through an amendment to the solicitation.\
\
That should wrap up the site visit. I don\'t know if anyone else has any
final questions. Thanks for coming.\
\
Thank you, Steve.\
\
We\'ll see you.\
\
Good seeing you again. Steve, we missed you over the holidays, and I
have actually a little gift for you, it\'s a small thing, a token of our
appreciate ration \--\
\
Thanks, but I can\'t accept anything. But I appreciate the thought. Say
hi to everyone for me.\
\
I will. I will. Thank you.\
\
L. Maestas: Okay. Thank you. Let\'s talk about some of the things we saw
that a COR should do and remember when he is conducting the site visit.
Let\'s go to page 23 of your study guide. There\'s a list of things that
we\'ll go over. First of all, some things that we should remember, and I
think the video did a good job in illustrating many of these points that
we\'re going to go through here real briefly, but the site inspection
tour is not a for do you mean make or agree to changes in any aspect of
the solicitation. As you saw, the COR actually made a good reference to
the fact that, hey, we\'ll give this to the Contracting Officer,
they\'ll probably issue an amendment to include the bathrooms in this
particular case. We never discuss the government estimate, of course.
That\'s one of the things we don\'t do. I think that\'s pretty
understood.

We be sure that all questions are handled in a way that everybody\'s
involved. We don\'t want to go off to the side with a particular
contractor and let him ask a question and give him a specific answer.
It\'s got to be wide open for everybody to see and hear. You heard the
thing there about maybe the brother-in-law or something had that a
janitorial contract, he wanted Steve, the COR, to go ahead and set up a
separate or a special site tour visit just to show this particular
contractor. That\'s a no-no. Every now and then there may be some
necessary to do something like this, there may be some clarification and
maybe another second site visit may be needed, but those will be hand
dulled by an amendment and everybody will be invited. We don\'t want to
have one particular site visit for one particular vendor after he should
have been there at the primary one to begin with. Of course, Steve,
started off with documentation and he is going to finish one his
documentation. You know, you probably have handled a few of these site
visits yourself. Is there anything else you can think of about a site
visit in your experiences? We\'d like to hear from you.\
\
Caller: (multiple caller).\
\
We did \-- if they issued a modified contract, would they want a second
field to have the guys back to show them the bathrooms, too?\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s a good point. Let me clarify some terminology. This
is kind of a benefit to everybody. When we start talking about changes,
modifications apply to contracts. That means after award. So whenever
you\'re referring to changes, let\'s use the word amendment. Yes, more
than likely we would issue an amendment because the bathrooms are
important and we\'re going to have to include them in the project. So
there may be a need for that, but there may not be.\
\
D. Bickler: And there may be \-- to an your question, there may be a
need to establish a second visit because possibly and probably they
didn\'t go to the bathrooms. So it just depends on the situation. And if
you do that, I would say that you should restrict that visit to the
bathrooms only, to that thing that was missed. I hope we answered
Lincoln home\'s question about multiple site visits. The problem there,
the danger in having more than one site visit is if you give anything
\-- there may be different questions, you may give different answers.
All of that information must be made available to every contractor, and
it\'s just a good idea to only have the one. The only time I\'ve ever
had to reschedule a site visit was during the September 11 attacks. We
actually had site visits scheduled on the 11th or the day after, several
days after, and within the downing of all the flights, we had to
reschedule and postpone our bid opening dates, but it\'s the
contractor\'s responsibility to make himself available to visit that
site. It is not the government\'s responsibility to hold multiple site
visits for the contractor. I hope we answered the Lincoln home\'s
question.\
\
L. Maestas: Thanks, Denise. Is there anybody else out there that may
have any comments or questions?\
\
Caller: This is Chip in Phoenix. Even though it\'s not required during
site tours, I\'ve done some documentation with photo and video to have a
record of what exactly it was that was seen so later after things change
there\'s \-- we\'ve got some documentation.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s a good point, Chip. That documentation is valuable.
In more cases than one, I\'m sure the contractor will probably use some
of that data, some of that documentation to possibly issue an amendment
to, if nothing more, for clarifications. But that might be a part of the
solicitation package for the benefit again of all vendors. Good point,
Chip. Anything else?\
\
Caller: This is glacier national park. What happens when bad weather at
the last minute prevents some of the bidders but not all of them from
reaching the site?\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s another good question. Lord knows we live in areas
that the weather is so unpredictable. I as a Contracting Officer, I\'d
have to make that decision, and I\'d say I would probably have another
site visit.\
\
D. Bickler: I would agree and what I would do is caution you to maybe
take your minutes from the prior site visit and be sure to try to stick
to just what was said there, and it may wind up there are two amendments
to the solicitation issuing the notes or the minutes from both site
visits.\
\
L. Maestas: Thank you. I\'ll remember that along with my CORs. Anything
else out there?\
\
Caller: Bill in Denali \-- \--\
\
Caller: What legal requirements are you required \--\
\
D. Bickler: Could you repeat that question, please? About the legal
requirements.\
\
Caller: Yes, what legal requirements, there, in other words, do you have
to notify every party at the onsite meeting that you are taking a
recording or a video recording of the process or what?\
\
L. Maestas: First of all, let me say that there\'s no legal requirement
for a bidder to attend a site. Why? Because the government \-- or the
courts say that our specifications and drawings and all that should be
clear up in that you don\'t need to be at a site visit. That\'s kind of
wishy washy in my book, but as far as any legal parameters that dictate
who, what, when and taping and all that, I don\'t know of any there, do
you, Denise?\
\
D. Bickler: I don\'t know of any. John?\
\
J. Sherman: Not that I\'m aware of. I know like for pre-proposal
conferences if you want to videotape those proceedings or record, you
should at least tell the vendors you are doing so.\
\
D. Bickler: And if a vendor wanted to record, that would \-- we don\'t
really have any control over that. I believe Denali called in at the
same time. Denali, did you have a question or comment?\
\
Caller: Yes, I did. I wondered if you get post tour phone calls from
potential contractors asking questions how do you handle that?\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s another good question. I\'ve seen that often. I
think what we can do is we \-- if the questions or the documentation
that we got is sufficient enough to issue an amendment to the
solicitation to put that data in \-- out there for people to see, we
might just tell them, why don\'t you go see \-- you would coordinate
with the Contracting Officer, of course, but we might be able to tell
them there is an amendment with some of the questions and answers that
were provided at the site visit.\
\
D. Bickler: My experience is the questions, the answers are in the
solicitation, but if the occasion comes up that it\'s not there, we
direct them to the solicitation. If it\'s not there, then we call you,
the COR, and we deal with that, issuing another amendment.\
\
L. Maestas: I kind of misunderstood the question. We just have to use,
again, back to our first day good judgment, and if we have to clarify,
let\'s clarify. We don\'t give any additional information or accept more
than we need to but we have to use good judgment there. That is a very,
very good question. I know that happens a lot.\
\
Caller: This is Barstow. I know we talked about this a while back but I
can\'t remember. What if a vendor takes upon his own to visit the site,
say it\'s a construction site after you\'ve conducted your tour?\
\
D. Bickler: It is public property, so if a contractor wants to go on his
own and just look around, that\'s fine. You should not agree to meet him
there and we shouldn\'t discuss the project with him. It\'s fine if they
want to do that. We got a fax in from a national Park Service, and
it\'s, reasonable accommodations, when do you know if an interpreter is
necessary?\
\
D. Bickler: Well, when they tell us, I guess. If a contractor is going
to require an interpreter and needs \-- I don\'t know whether that would
be our responsibility or not.\
\
L. Maestas: No, Denise, unless it was certainly in the specifications of
the contract, I mean, that\'s our gospel, but if it\'s not in there,
that\'s going to be up to the contractor, that particular vendor to
provide his own interpreter if he needs one. Anything else?\
\
Caller: Do you always have to issue a time extension with any
amendment?\
\
L. Maestas: That may \-- it depends.\
\
D. Bickler: What was the question?\
\
J. Sherman: Is there a time extension normally for issue of an
amendment. Usually we look at the severity or questions that were
answered in the amendment and how late that amendment may have been
issued. If it was issued three days before the closing date of that
solicitation and they were material in nature, that may affect their bid
substantially, technically or price wise, individually, that\'s how
ideal with extensions.\
\
D. Bickler: There\'s a rule of thumb. The FAR requires that if \-- there
has to be a reasonable amount of time between the issuance of the
amendment and the opening of the bid and the rule of thumb that has been
used in my section is 7 to 10 working days and we like to stick with 10.
That allows the contractor times to review the amendment and if
necessary modify their bid prices and then still get their bid to us on
time. So it depends on the timing of the amendment to the bid opening.\
\
L. Maestas: Very good questions. We appreciate your comments. Let\'s go
back to John for some more detail on some other matters. John, for
question.\
\
Caller: I have a question from kings canyon.\
\
L. Maestas: Go ahead, kings canyon.\
\
Caller: With all these amendments going on so that the contractors like
to visit the site every day and check for new amendments or how often do
we expect them to revisit the site and look at amendments and download
new information? What\'s the reasonable guideline there?\
\
D. Bickler: I\'ll answer that question. The courts have said that it is
the contractor\'s responsibility to ensure that he has received every
amendment issued under the solicitation. So as unreasonable as it may
sound, yes, the contractor should visit that site regularly to ensure
that he\'s received all of the amendments. I usually get calls the day
before a bid opening with a contractor saying, have you issued any more
amendments? Are you going to issue any more amendments? And the answer
is, not that I\'m \-- I\'m not planning on it, but we have the right to
amend that solicitation up to the moment of bid opening.\
\
It is the responsibility of the contractor to not only check for
amendments, but also acknowledge those amendments in their offer.\
\
D. Bickler: That\'s right. There have been times before electronic that
we stand at the bid room door with the amendment in hand because we had
to amend it that day and we hand it to the visitors who have come for
the bid opening. The government has that right. The contractor should
check that site often and at least the day of the bid opening to look
for amendments.\
\
Caller: This is Neal up in El Centro. Just to let you guys know, for
public meetings that we had, we have had to provide sign interpreters
for people that are hearing impaired. We\'ve had to provide larger text
files so that people can read it if they have eyesight problems, and
we\'ve had to read documents to people for people that are dyslexic.\
\
D. Bickler: Well, you know what, that\'s great, if your office has that
policy, it probably falls under the ADA, which is Americans with
Disabilities Act. If we have the ability to provide that, we probably
should. We don\'t have a lot of experience with that for the three of us
up here, and it probably is something if you have the ability to provide
it and you know that you may need it, we should probably provide it for
those conferences or visits.\
\
Caller: It is under ADA and we are required to provide it.\
\
D. Bickler: Thank you very much, then, for that information. We
appreciate that. So back to John.\
\
J. Sherman: Great questions from the students. Good review by Lou of the
site visits. I think that video did an excellent job covering what we
may encounter. At this point now our solicitation closing date as come
and gone and we have received some bids, proposals or quotes and
hopefully no protests. We\'re ready to guinea valuating the
contractor\'s submissions. If all we have to look at is price when we
receive our bids or proposals, then your assistance as a COR or
technical expert would be minimal. But with the advent and the further
continuation and growing of best value acquisitions, evaluating
proposals can be much more involved. A very important note here is you
as a procurement official, all activity related to technical evaluation
is strictly confidential. Vendors should not even be aware that you are
part of an evaluation team. This protects from potential procurement
integrity violations. Proposals may contain proprietary information and
we must be careful to safeguard this data. So if you have proposals that
you\'re reviewing, you\'re at your office at night, you should at least
put them away, keep them off your desk. If you have a place to lock them
up, I would do so.

I know in my office I have vendors coming and going all day long,
probably like you two, also, and I\'d hate to have something be
jeopardized just because I was lazy and didn\'t put them away.
Information released to the public is very limited and can only be
released at certain times. Talk with your Contracting Officer about
these issues. Evaluating proposals is a team effort and documentation is
necessary to justify our selections. The formal process is referred to
as the technical proposal evaluation committee, or TPEC. Also on page 23
of the study guide, we have provided you with an overview of this
process. We are not going to go into that level of detail here today but
you may want to read it later on. I would like to pause and talk about,
Lou mentioned on page 21 with that chart there, we are seeing an
increase in the number of service contracts, and you as CORs getting
trained in evaluating proposals under the technical proposal evaluation
committee process is very important. It seems like the last probably
half dozen or so that I\'ve done in the last year or two, each time we
get a new COR and each time we have to re \-- not \"re\" but we have to
train them in this process. I would like you to pay specific attention
to this portion of the broadcast, ask a lot of questions, and also refer
to the study guide because you may be asked sometime in the near future
to participate on one of these teams. As a COR, the Contracting Officer
will probably look to you to assemble the evaluation committee. Probably
be on the committee or even serve as the chairperson. On some of these
procurements we may bring in ex officio members that are subject matter
experts to assist but not necessarily participate in the actual scoring.
A final element needed prior to beginning the TPEC is development of the
scoring plan. Done as a team effort with the Contracting Officer. The
formalities of the TPEC require the appointment of TPEC members by the
Contracting Officer or the source selection official. Depending on the
scope of the project, a letter to the supervisor may also be in order.
Sample of letters and documents associated with conducting a TPEC are
found in appendix C of your study guide. For instance, there\'s a
nondisclosure statement which basically states that you agree not to
discuss, publish, disclose any information regarding the procurement,
TPEC guidelines. An example of the letter from the TPEC with their
findings and recommendations from their evaluation. Procedures may vary
among officers, so be sure to check with the contracting folks at your
location.

Remember, documentation is critical in this process. In our careers we
have applied for jobs and maybe not been selected. Didn\'t you want to
receive some feedback? Well, the same is true with TPECs. These offers
are the ones not selected that may want a debriefing to see where they
fell short and hopefully improve their proposals for future
solicitations. This is one of the reasons why your documentation is so
important. As you can imagine, this is probably the number one area for
a successful protest if not done properly. So if myself or another CO
says to you as a TPEC member we need to have you go back and re-document
your findings, they\'re doing it for a couple different reasons. One, to
avoid potential protests or not let it be sustainable, and, two, for the
reasons of debriefing.\
\
D. Bickler: John, I typically will have my COR be a part of that
debriefing since \-- or the chair of the TPEC committee, which is
usually the COR, participate in that debriefing since they\'re the ones
that evaluated the proposal.\
\
J. Sherman: You bet. You need at least one of the members, preferably
the chair, not all necessarily have to be present. When working in the
simplified acquisition arena, which if you recall from earlier
discussions, that\'s under \$100,000, you may want to evaluate
contractors on factors other than price. We don\'t necessarily have to
go with the lowest price offer. This can be done and the good news is
that the process is simplified and pretty flexible. The same is true
when projects we plan to solicit go through general services
administrations federal supply schedules. The procedures are not
strictly defined as long as you tell the contractors what you will be
evaluating them on, then in fact conduct the evaluation using that
criteria and document the process. You can get through these very
quickly, and you don\'t necessarily need a team of people. It could be
done by just you, the COR, and the CO. Keep the information you request
from the contractors to be very minimum that you will need to conduct
the evaluation. An even easier best Valley valuation criteria can be
done on price and past performance alone. In technical or simplified
acquisitions, the Contracting Officer\'s only \-- knowledge of the past
performance is all that\'s required. Of course, this must not be
arbitrary and must be documented by the Contracting Officer. The CO can
use knowledge of other contracting officers or Contracting Officer\'s
representatives. You may ask for references if you have limited
knowledge as well. Or we also have available to us performance
evaluations in national databases. This should be the minimum level of
evaluation of your projects. I think you can understand now how
important your role in the selection process is. Let\'s go now to
exercise 10 on page 25 of your study guide, and please take five minutes
to answer the questions.\
\
L. Maestas: Thank you very much. Hope you all had a nice break. John
just covered a lot of information. While he\'s working the Elmo, I\'m
ask the questions. The very first question, we have some blanks to fill
in. The blank and blank is primarily responsible for preparing the
acquisition plan and the blank input may be requested. Does anybody have
the answers to those two? Just to get you rolling \-- we have somebody.\
\
Caller: The CO and the COR.\
\
L. Maestas: The answer is correct. It\'s the Contracting Officer and the
COR. Good job.\
\
Caller: That was gulf islands.\
\
L. Maestas: The next question, the milestone schedule included in the
acquisition plan includes a list of all pertinent contracting actions
and dates and can be a tool to assist the Contracting Officer\'s
representative in planning and scheduling. Is that true or false?\
\
Caller: I\'d say true.\
\
Caller: True.\
\
Caller: True.\
\
Caller: In question one \--\
\
\
\
Caller: True.\
\
L. Maestas: In the first one it would be the COR. The Contracting
Officer and the COR because the COR and the Contracting Officer actually
develop that acquisition plan. So the correct answer was the Contracting
Officer and the COR. And, yes, for number 2 the correct answer is true.
We had about three or four people answer it. So you all are on top of
the questions here and paying attention.\
\
Caller: I was referring to the third blank in question one. C and COR
are responsible for preparing the acquisition planned and blank input
may be requested.\
\
L. Maestas: Blank input \-- the first two lines are actually Contracting
Officer, and then we just simplified the last line for just the COR,
COR. But that\'s the correct answer, Contracting Officer and the COR.\
\
J. Sherman: Let\'s go back Lou, briefly to the acquisition plan. That
actually goes back to the point in the procurement prior to the
solicitation. The acquisition plan is a development document. It tells
you such things as, you know, what the requirements are, if there\'s a
security plan, what your evaluation criteria is going to be. It also
kind of discusses your procurement strategy. So the comment made about
the vendor may be being the last fill-in, no, this is prior to award.
It\'s even prior to solicitation.\
\
L. Maestas: Thank you, John. Let\'s go onto number three. This is
probably where we left out information when we had that one question
about simplified acquisition. Here is probably where you\'ll get your
answer. In number three we\'re going to match the project description to
the appropriate acquisition method described below. The first one we\'ll
talk about is \$500,000 dam construction. Evaluated on price and only
price related factors. What would you consider that to be, what type of
method, acquisition method, would that be?\
\
Caller: Sealed bid?\
\
L. Maestas: You got it. Sealed bid is the correct answer. How about the
next one, warehouse support services estimated at 1.5 million requiring
a TPEC.\
\
Caller: Sealed bid.\
\
Caller: Negotiated.\
\
L. Maestas: The correct answer is negotiated. Because we are going to
evaluate on other factors other than price when we talk about TPECs,
there\'s a lot of other information we\'ll evaluate on, technical merit,
qualified vendors and all that other good stuff, okay, past performance.
So the correct answer again is negotiated. How about pave campground
parking lot estimated at \$2200?\
\
Caller: Micro purchase?\
\
Caller: Simplified.\
\
L. Maestas: You got the simplified \-- simplified is the correct answer.
Simplified acquisition. Micro purchase is not right. Had this been a
service, it might have been micro service, but you have to remember in
construction the threshold is only \$2,000. But good try. How about
designed and deliver a training course using past performance and price
estimated cost of \$22,000?\
\
Caller: I would say negotiated.\
\
Caller: Commercial.\
\
L. Maestas: You said \--\
\
Caller: Simplified.\
\
L. Maestas: We\'ve talked a little bit about commercial, but it\'s
probably simplified, or it\'s possibly commercial, but we\'ll go with
simplified because of the dollar threshold in this case. Okay? Fence
construction estimated at \$85,000. Somebody?\
\
Caller: Simplified.\
\
L. Maestas: I heard sealed bid \--\
\
Caller: Negotiated.\
\
L. Maestas: I heard negotiated, too. That\'s not correct, either. The
correct answer is simplified \--\
\
Caller: Commercial.\
\
L. Maestas: Construction, this is going to be a simplified acquisition,
folks, because remember that threshold, under \$100,000 generally it
will be simplified acquisition, regardless of the type.\
\
D. Bickler: Just as a note, construction cannot be commercial.\
\
L. Maestas: Construction is still in the limbs out there. We can\'t
consider construction commercial yet. That may come, who knows. How
about consolidated cattle guard purchase valued at \$2.2 million?\
\
Caller: Sealed bid.\
\
Caller: Commercial.\
\
Caller: Negotiated.\
\
L. Maestas: This one has me stumped. John, how about you taking that
one, partner.\
\
D. Bickler: I say commercial.\
\
J. Sherman: We have the answer here being commercial and these are
rather tricky. We\'re getting responses all over the board here on
these. Maybe we should spend some further time.\
\
D. Bickler: I would say cattle guard would be considered a commercial
item because you can purchase that \--\
\
J. Sherman: There are off the shelf \-- I know BLM we have our own
specification, but it could be considered commercial because it may be
slightly modified, which it is. They use the H-20 load factor, I know,
but they may be slightly different design than the county or the Forest
Service.\
\
D. Bickler: If it\'s \-- if you were to determine it\'s not a commercial
item, then it would be procured under sealed bidding procedures.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s a good point. Both of you had good points. Things
can be a little confusing at times. But together you and I and these
other contracting officers will get it straight. How about the last one
there, repair, HVAC system at a cost of \$2400?\
\
Caller: Micro.\
\
Caller: That would be the micro purchase.\
\
D. Bickler: No, I disagree. Well, maybe.\
\
L. Maestas: I would have to say that you\'re right as far as a micro.
Denise, you had something else?\
\
D. Bickler: I was thinking construction, but maybe I\'m wrong, if it\'s
just \-- you\'re all right. It\'s micro.\
\
J. Sherman: We ended on a good note.\
\
L. Maestas: Remember the service threshold of 25,000 for service type.
Good job. Let\'s go onto question number 4. Contracting \--\
\
Caller: This is Neal in El Centro. I have a question. Under the FAR,
construction includes repair and the construction threshold on the micro
purchases is 2,000.\
\
L. Maestas: You know, Neal, the situation here is this may or may not be
real property. Am I right, Denise?\
\
D. Bickler: I would not consider an HVAC system to be real property.
When they talk about repair, they\'re talking about repairs to your
building or the earth that we own. So this is a service because it\'s
repair of a piece of equipment.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s a good comment, though, but something to consider.
Let\'s go on to four again. Contracting officers ensure that in-house
review of a solicitation is accomplished and, therefore, it\'s not
necessary for the COR or the PI to review. Is that true or false?\
\
Caller: False.\
\
L. Maestas: Sorry?\
\
Caller: False.\
\
L. Maestas: The answer is correct, false. I mean, it is false. Number 5,
during the review of a solicitation for a fencing project, the COR
discovers that the completion date was wrong. He also discovered that
the incorrect project location was included. What action should the COR
take?\
\
Caller: B.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s correct. Let me tell you, I\'ve been involved in
that and I\'ve had to be reminded to correct it. That\'s the correct
answer, B. Number 6, which two statements below are correct regarding a
site inspection tour, A., changes can be made at the site inspection
tour; B., you may schedule another tour if a couple of other vendors
missed the scheduled date; C. are, the COR is normally the individual
who conducts the tour; D., vendor attendance of a site inspection tour
is mandatory; or E., the Contracting Officer\'s representative should
document the site tour activities including taking attendance. Which are
the two correct?\
\
Caller: C. and E.\
\
L. Maestas: C. and E. is correct. Thank you very much. We have one last
question. As a government official, the COR is pound to blank the
integrity of the acquisition process and must never release the offerors
blank information another offeror. Choose the correct pair of words.\
\
Caller: C.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s excellent.\
\
D. Bickler: I have two things I want to say. Back on page 26 of the
exercise where we\'re picking the types of procurement, you guys were
absolutely right that fence construction estimated at 85,000 is covered
under the simplified acquisition procedures but what I want to say is be
careful. If you have reason to believe that the acquisition that you are
\-- that your prices may come in close to or over \$100,000, you might
want to consider doing that as a sealed bid because there are bonding
requirements at the \$100,000 level, and if the lowest price comes in
over \$100,000 you have to cancel the whole thing and start over. So
talk to your Contracting Officer about your estimated value and consider
doing something about it, 85,000 dollars consider doing that as a sealed
bid to cover yourself. The second thing I have here is a fax question
from Buffalo, Wyoming, and I think it\'s an excellent question. In the
site visit video, had the contractors not noticed the missing bathrooms
and the contract was awarded, could a modification be made post award?\
\
D. Bickler: As with most answers in contracting, the answer is, it
depends. It might be able to. What you have to consider is the magnitude
of the change. In this particular instance, you probably \-- I\'m going
to say, and you guys tell me if you think I\'m wrong, you probably could
modify the bathrooms into the contract. The problem is you\'re dealing
in a sole source situation. The contractor is already locked into all it
other prices and you\'re pretty much \-- you can negotiate the cost for
the bathrooms, but we\'re stuck negotiating with one contractor instead
of having everybody bid on it. What do you guys think?\
\
L. Maestas: From my standpoint, I think you\'re absolutely correct. It
gets a little touchy and we have to be very careful when we start doing
modifications after the fact like this.\
\
J. Sherman: Definitely, if you have the time during the solicitation
process to amend, amend.\
\
D. Bickler: The answer for the video, we think probably you could, but
in real life you want to be very, very careful because the magnitude of
the change, both physically and dollar-wise, may be such that you\'d
have to cancel the requirement. Did somebody have something to say?\
\
Caller: Excuse me, but \--\
\
Caller: Yes, I had a question.\
\
D. Bickler: Whoever said excuse me, you were first.\
\
Caller: Milwaukee here. We had a question regarding the bidding
methodology. If you go sealed bid, doesn\'t that automatically tell a
savvy contractor that you are asking for more than \$100,000?\
\
D. Bickler: No, necessarily, because Weaver to tell them the magnitude
of the project. So \-- in this case we\'re going to tell them that it\'s
between 25,000 and \$100,000. And if \-- when it\'s it through at
100,000 \--\
\
J. Sherman: They probably realize you\'re just trying to cover yourself
there in case, and it\'s always going to be low most responsive
responsible offer, correct?\
\
D. Bickler: Correct. So if a contractor thinks that we are thinking it
might be over and he bids high, he may very well lose the project.
We\'re just covering ourselves. It\'s a good question, though. But we do
have to give the magnitude. So \-- anyway \--\
\
Caller: This is glacier. If you\'re going to go with an in deferent nut
quantities contractor that\'s already competed, is there a limit on how
much work you can send their way before you have to contract
separately?\
\
D. Bickler: That\'s a very good question and the answer would be yes.\
\
J. Sherman: Under an indefinite delivery indefinite quantity you will
have a minimum established for that period of performance as well as a
maximum. A lot of times when we to our contracting for IDIQs, that
maximum is rather high, and depending on your budget and your
requirements, you may not even get close to that max. It just depends
how the contract is set up.\
\
D. Bickler: The answer to your question would be the minimum, you have
to meet the minimum before you could go looking elsewhere for pricing
and hopefully you\'d have a reason not to use the contract that you had
established. Lou?\
\
L. Maestas: Thank you. That\'s a very good discussion and we thank you
for that. Before we go on into our next segment here, John covered some
information regarding TPEC, and I think John and I and possibly Denise
here, but that area is very dear to us and we know that the situation
out there, we need a lot of training yet to go around, and if you have
any questions, please ask them. John and Denise the COR has provided
enormous assistance in the acquisition process and thank you. Thanks to
you we can now look to make the contract award. Yea! At this point, you
will officially \-- be officially be designated by a Contracting Officer
to work on a specific project. Making the contract award is really no
big deal, but just remember that this could not have been possible
without your help. The Contracting Officer may sign and seal the \--
your seal of approval may not be visible on a contract, but believe me,
we know it\'s there, okay? Ultimate responsibility for the contract
falls with the Contracting Officer and that is why the Contracting
Officer will only appoint somebody like you, highly qualified and
competent CORs that take this training, I\'ll add. This course affirms
your status, so thanks again for being here. Let\'s go to appendix E of
your study guide and go over the responsibilities when appointed as a
COR, your responsibilities when you are appointed as a COR. Appendix E
is actually a copy of your appointment letter. It\'s just a sample.
Other offices may have similar type letters, and that\'s okay. But we
can cover the letter in its entirety but I just want to highlight a few
of the points here. If you\'re looking at your appendix E, your letter,
number 1, you\'ll notice the contract number is on there. One of the
things I always like to see on any correspondence that affects the
contract, whether it be issuing your letter or a modification aPR
requesting a modification, an invoice, you name it, we need to make sure
that contract number is on that particular piece of documentation. I
want to just put \-- touch your attention \-- place your attention to
item number three. As you can see, there\'s, oh, let\'s see, A, B, C, D,
E, F, G, several statements there that kind of describe how you\'re
going to represent that Contracting Officer. In other words, some of
your authorities.

On that first one, A, basically what\'s after there is when it says
review the contract, make sure you do get a copy of the contract once
it\'s awarded. Make sure you familiarize yourself with eye, not just the
technical aspects, I know you\'re not a contracting officer, but read
the whole thing and try to be as familiar as you can with the whole
contract. In B there, basically we know that this is where you\'re going
to start doing your surveillance and inspection, and that\'s all we\'re
saying. You\'re going to be the person that we\'re going to rely on
totally to do this. How about in paragraph 3C there, it says you may
respond to the contractor inquiries purely on a technical matter. We
don\'t want to start interpreting the contract now. It\'s set in stone.
Your job is to follow, if you have a question, you tell the contractor
accordingly what it says in the contract. Nothing else, nothing more. If
we have to do interpreting and something is not defined, we have to get
together as a team and go over that. Item D kind of \--\
\
Caller: I have a question. Is it a requirement of the CO to issue this
letter?\
\
L. Maestas:. With just about every contract \-- Denise I\'m not sure
where it\'s written, but we are required to appoint a Contracting
Officer\'s representative. Obviously we don\'t know anything
technically, or mostly. We \-- that\'s where we rely on you. We\'re the
contract experts. You\'re going to be the technical experts. That\'s why
we have this team. Is there anything specifically that \--\
\
D. Bickler: I\'m not sure that it\'s a requirement to have a COR. It\'s
in the government\'s interest to have a COR. I think to answer your
question, though, if we\'re going to have a technical representative,
you must have a letter of authority written to you by the CO. It can\'t
just be assumed. If you don\'t have a letter, then you don\'t have
authority. Any more than if I don\'t have a warrant, I don\'t have
authority to spend money.\
\
L. Maestas: Denise, I think we can answer this easily, I have the
authority when \-- as the Contracting Officer. What I\'m going to do
here is delegate some my authority to you so that you can help me out
with the technical and the contract administration \--\
\
D. Bickler: But that has to be done in writing, right?\
\
L. Maestas: You bet. It does have to be done in writing.\
\
Caller: Excuse me. I have just a comment. I don\'t think I\'ve ever been
delegated that authority in any official capacity other than what\'s
written in the contract, which is my name, identified as the COTR.\
\
L. Maestas: Local policy may dictate. As far as I know in BLM, I don\'t
know if you\'re in BLM or not, in BLM we must delegate that authority in
writing. So we need to appoint you so we can officially delegate some of
our authority to you.\
\
Caller: Thank you. I\'m with NPS.\
\
L. Maestas: You might want to check with your Contracting Officer.\
\
D. Bickler: It may be sufficient if it\'s listed in the contract. We
like to do it in writing.\
\
L. Maestas: Let\'s go on down to number D there, and it\'s actually
talking about cost reimbursement things there, and pretty
self-explanatory. We mentioned it earlier, but contract administration
and surveillance, it just zooms up. In other words, there\'s a lot of a
lot more requirements for surveillance in contract administration and
cost reimbursement type contracts. Number E there, again, it\'s in
essence you\'re basically making sure the work is being accomplished
again, according to the specifications, satisfactory, and, of course,
timely.\
\
J. Sherman: Lou, on that one, a lot of the contracting that I do is
support services, and we to a lot of time and materials or level of
effort and what they\'re trying to do here is say, based on the amount
of expenditures, how much progress have we achieved in the effort? If
we\'ve got this much progress but this much spent, then maybe there\'s
something that\'s not correlating or not correct. So I think that\'s
what they\'re trying to say there.\
\
L. Maestas: Thanks. How about in F? It\'s basically self-explanatory. We
say this time and time again. When you\'re unsure, call the Contracting
Officer. G, it\'s kind of somewhat like E, maybe we \-- we may be
referring here to a performance-based service contract where additional
requirements are necessary to perform surveillance and stuff like be
that. And bear in mind, some of this stuff we\'re talking about here,
you\'ll probably see it liter on as we get into contract administration.
Is there \-- I think that\'s about it. Well, there\'s some other areas
in there. Please, at your leisure, take a look at that letter, take a
look at the letter that your Contracting Officer gives you. I\'ve had
experience where many of my people, my cohorts, would get the letter and
acknowledge they received it but did they really read it? I don\'t
know.\
\
D. Bickler: I know that we use a slightly different letter, and I almost
think one of the most important things about this letter is where we
talk about the limits of their authority as a reminder. And back to the
Park Service gal that called in about not ever getting a letter, that
may be okay. What this does is it helps clarify to everybody involved,
including the contractor, what authority that you have and what limits
you have, and then it\'s clear to everybody.\
\
J. Sherman: So a copy therefore letter does go and is acknowledged by
the contractor?\
\
D. Bickler: Right.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s a good point, Denise, and as you can see in
paragraph four, there are some limitations. They\'re not there to look
pretty. They\'re there for a reason and we\'re trying to protect you,
and we\'re there to protect everybody involved. Be aware of those as
well. As I was saying, read this letter, get familiar with it, and if
you have any questions regarding that, be sure to call your Contracting
Officer.\
\
Caller: I have a question. This is Sandy in burns, Oregon. I\'m just
unclear on the CORs\' role where you issue the notice to proceed and yet
on page 5 I.T. it says the COR is not allowed to start or stop work.\
\
Caller: Clarify that for me, please.\
\
L. Maestas: Basically when we talk about the notice to proceed, that\'s
after we\'ve awarded the contract, we\'re probably having a pre-work,
which we will get into later and that\'s about the time we want the
contractor to start work. What we\'re referring to there earlier in page
5 is that we simply \-- I think we\'re referring to the contract
ongoing. We\'re not going \-- the contract \-- we can\'t make changes
while the contract\'s already in place if that makes sense to you. Does
that make sense, Denise?\
\
J. Sherman: So it\'s after the notice to proceed and maybe you have a
winter shutdown coming up that the COR can\'t authorize that, correct?
It\'s got to be the Contracting Officer?\
\
D. Bickler: Really \--\
\
J. Sherman: Because that can affect price.\
\
D. Bickler: That process would start with stopping work. You can\'t stop
it and you can\'t restart it. That has to do with time and that\'s
something that has to be dealt with by the Contracting Officer.\
\
Caller: So if we have an emergency fire situation, we still need the
Contracting Officer? What if they\'re not available.\
\
D. Bickler: That would be a different situation. That\'s an emergency
situation. The only time \-- what we tell you \-- what we like to tell
our CORs is that the only time you have authority to stop the work is
imminent threat to somebody\'s left, there\'s serious OSHA violations or
a fire. Other than that, you can\'t stop the contractor\'s work. Let\'s
say he\'s not in compliance with the contract. You can reject his work,
but you can\'t tell him just stop everything that you\'re doing.\
\
J. Sherman: Because there could be certain costs associated with the
start-up and shutdown.\
\
D. Bickler: So if something comes up that may require stopping all the
work, you definitely want to consult with your Contracting Officer. But
if it\'s urgent, like life-threatening or a fire, you may stop the
work.\
\
Caller: Thank you.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s good, Denise and I would certainly expect any of my
CORs, if there\'s a situation out there, emergency type, they have that
authority.\
\
Caller: What kind of documentation would you have to make for something
like that and how quickly would you have to notify the CO in that case?\
\
L. Maestas: A good telephone call would be the first probably step to
take and follow up in writing.\
\
D. Bickler: Okay.\
\
L. Maestas: Now back to Denise. Denise will talk about the duties of the
COR during contract administration.\
\
D. Bickler: Now, we should be on page 28 of the study guide now, and as
Lou said, you\'ve been Del indicated authority to represent the
Contracting Officer on certain contractual and technical matters. As the
COR you play a very important role because you are the eyes and ears of
the Contracting Officer during the course of the contract. Contracting
Officers Representatives a wide range of duties and responsibilities
under a contract, and these duties are similar, whether you\'re acting
under a service contract or a construction contract. I\'m going to go
over some of the most important ones with you now.

First of all, you conduct the pre-work conference or the preconstruction
conference. You review and approve a contractor\'s proposed schedule or
project plan. You\'ll issue the notice to proceed. You provide overall
inspection of the contractor\'s work. Through inspection, you ensure
compliance with specifications, drawings and other contractual
requirements. You call the contractor\'s attention to deficiencies as
they occur, and you issue notices of noncompliance, which could be done
on a form that your bureau or office has one that\'s created in letter
format. You submit diaries or other required progress reports to the
Contracting Officer and keep the CO fully informed on all phases of the
contract. You review and certify to the CO that payment requests
accurately reflect completed work and submit it in a timely manner. You
need to be familiar with OSHA requirements and apply them to the
contract and investigate alleged safety violations. You would secure
independent cost estimates for proposed modifications and forward them
to the CO.

Inform the CO of potential claims and provide details if a claim
materializes. You\'ll make final inspection and acceptance of the work.
You\'ll complete the contractor\'s performance profile or a
contractor\'s performance report. Assure that labor posters are
displayed properly. You will additionally \-- the COR has additional
responsibilities under the construction contract that include the
assuring that timely submission of contractor payrolls and audit the
rates and forward the payrolls to the CO. You may also be asked to
assist in classifying jobs that are not included in the wage decision.
You assist in that enforcing the labor standard in the contract by
conducting onsite interviews with contractors\' employees and conduct
field investigations of compliance of the contractor\'s failure to
comply with the labor standards. You report all noncompliance issues to
the CO. You prepare or secure as-built drawings for all projects. So as
you can see, you have a lot of responsibilities out there in the field.
And some of these duties can be delegated to a project inspector,
however, as the COR, you\'re ultimately responsible for all every it.
There are specific limits to your authority as Lou was discussing as the
COR. The procurement regulations specifically prohibit the CO from
delegating any responsibilities regarding time or money. If the need
arises to address price, quality, quantity, delivery or contract terms
and conditions, you must contact the CO. Your first official duty as a
COR is to coordinate and conduct the pre-work meeting. The pre-work
meeting is the way for the government and contractor to meet face to
face and transition from the solicitation phase. Now, let\'s go to
exercise 11 in your study guide on page 30 and fill in the blanks for
types of people who might attend. Now, at a minimum the COR, the
contractor and the PI, if appointed, should attend. Who else might
attend a pre-work meeting? I didn\'t hear that. What was that?\
\
Caller: The job superintendent and the foreman.\
\
D. Bickler: Job superintendent and foreman. Very good. Anybody else?\
\
Caller: Union rep.\
\
Caller: Subcontractors.\
\
D. Bickler: If you have a job \-- I guess it doesn\'t matter what size
the job s but the larger the job, the Moore important it might be for
your subcontractors to be there. Someone said a union rep.\
\
Caller: Denise, this is Milwaukee, you\'re cutting out on you quite a
bit.\
\
D. Bickler: Okay. Our technical folks will \-- he okay. I\'m not sure if
that\'s us or you, but someone out there said union rep. I\'m not sure
\--\
\
Caller: Denise, is anybody else getting cut out?\
\
D. Bickler: Not that I\'m aware of.\
\
Caller: It\'s affecting us in New Orleans, too.\
\
D. Bickler: What\'s happening in New Orleans? Okay. If you guys could
call the help line, if you can put that up on the screen, maybe. Just
bear with us. We\'ll get that number up there for you to call. Okay? So
we\'ve got superintendent, subcontractors. Is there anybody else you can
think of that you might invite or that you think might be at the
pre-work meeting? \--\
\
D. Bickler: Go ahead, Yosemite.\
\
Caller: We often have a natural and cultural resource monitor to be able
to talk about resource issues.\
\
D. Bickler: That\'s very good. Did somebody say a safety person?\
\
Caller: Yes, safety officer.\
\
D. Bickler: And somebody else, I think, said a facilities person, did I
hear?\
\
Caller: That\'s right.\
\
D. Bickler: So those are \-- those are all very true. The point here, I
think, is it depends on what type of procurement you\'re doing who you
might want to get involved. Safety for sure if you\'re doing something
that perhaps is haz-mat.\
\
J. Sherman: Or the EPA. Are.\
\
D. Bickler: Or the EPA. The cultural folks if you\'re doing some type
cultural contract. Very good answers. Now, what is management\'s role in
a contract or in \-- at a pre-work conference? Does anybody have a
comment on management\'s role? And we have the help line number up there
now. I can tell you that management\'s role \-- the only time I\'ve seen
management involved is if it\'s a really, really large project. We\'re
putting up a new admin building in part of Colorado, and the assistant
field manager was present at the pre-work conference, or the
preconstruction conference, and that\'s fine, because this contract
impacted every single employee at that job site, especially the way they
decided to do it. It\'s fine for management to show up at your pre-work
conference, however, remember that nobody really as a role unless the
Contracting Officer gives it to them. And so this \-- I made it clear to
the contractor that while the manager was there, and the manager would
be floating around during construction of this building, he had
absolutely no authority under the contract, and they should be nothing
more than polite to him because he had no right to make changes or
address anything that had to do with this contract with them. One thing
we want to be careful of is not to overwhelm the contractor with
government people. The contractor, as we said, he can bring every
subcontractor that might be participating in the contract, which is a
very good idea, but the government needs to be careful that we don\'t
overwhelm the contractor. So keep the attendance to essential personnel
only.\
\
L. Maestas: You know, Denise, if I can interrupt here, earlier we said
that we \-- one of the official duties \-- one of the unofficial duties
of the COR is to conduct the pre-work, but contracting officers don\'t
always attend the pre-work. I know from my standpoint I certainly like
to attend when \-- if possible, but if necessary sometimes the
Contracting Officer participates by telephone. It\'s nice to have both
parties \-- when I\'m saying parties, the Contracting Officer and the
COR, jointly conduct the pre-work. I know when I have attended, it works
out really nice where I more or less go over the contractual aspects and
then the COR can focus more on the technical aspects of it. It always
makes it nice if we can attend. We can\'t always attend but we lie on
you the \-- we rely on you the Contracting Officer to do so. In appendix
F of your study guide, we\'ve provided you with \-- well, in BLM we have
the form 1510-30. It\'s called the pre-work checklist. We\'ve also
included a sample agenda for you to use. Now, we\'re going to get into
\-- we\'re going to view a site dash pre-conference a little later, but
you know, this agenda that we finished there is just a sample, it\'s
kind of a good tool for you to use if the Contracting Officer is not
there to help out with the pre-work. You can probably use some of the
documentations that\'s listed there. It kind of highlights much of the
contract data, much of the contract clauses, and more \-- in more like
layman\'s terms so they don\'t get too complex. It\'s written, I think n
a form that you can sit down and brief a contractor on it without
getting too technical. It does cover quite a about it, but if we were to
cover everything on a contract, it would probably be going on for days
and days. So at your leisure, please take a look at that opinion in your
future pre-works, use them. If you have any questions on them, holler at
us. Thanks. Denise, back to you.\
\
D. Bickler: Thanks, Lou.\
\
Caller: I have a question. What about officials from the surrounding
community when it\'s going to affect, say, maybe a road or something in
the community, would we invite them?\
\
D. Bickler: That\'s a good question. As a matter of fact, I\'ve got that
\-- that\'s going to be going on in a project I have out in California.
Indict require the involvement of the either the county or city shall
and yes, they\'re being invited in limited quantities, limited numbers,
to the pre-work conference as a matter of courtesy. So, yeah, that\'s
fine, as long as \-- if it directly involves them but, again, limit the
number of people that show up. Now, we have a phone call coming in. Go
ahead, Bob, shall this is Bob in Pinedale.\
\
Caller: My question is, would a COR ever deal directly with the
subcontractor is that relation refined to the contractor?\
\
D. Bickler: That\'s an excellent question, Bob, and the answer is in the
natural course, I\'m going to say \-- use construction. In the natural
course of construction, the COR is going to have some interaction with
the subcontractor, but you \-- if there are issue with the
subcontractor\'s work, they must be directed to the prime contractor. We
do not have any contractual relationship with that subcontractor, so the
technical answer to your question is, no, but we do understand that in
the course of natural work you kind of have some dealings with the
subcontractor, but the prime contractor is responsible for his
subcontractors. Does that answer your question?\
\
Caller: Yes, it does, thank you.\
\
D. Bickler: Great. Thanks for calling.\
\
J. Sherman: In contractual terms, Denise, and ideal with this sometimes
also, the government really has no legal relationship with the
subcontractor. It\'s called privilege tea of contract. We have no
PRIVITY with the sub and you should be careful in your dealings with the
sub. Unless they\'re just clarifications, the prime is ultimately
responsible for the completion of that project. If we\'re telling a sub
one thing and the prime doesn\'t necessarily agree with that, there
could be an issue and there could be a resultant claim that we were
responsible for it at a later point maybe.\
\
D. Bickler: Thanks, John. We\'re going to close for the bridge a little
bit while we move on. What I want to talk about now are the goals of a
pre-work meeting. They are to establish open lines of communication
between the government and the contractor, to clarify and address
questions and expectations about the work to be done, to introduce the
government personnel to the contractor for day-to-day contacts and
review levels of authority, to discuss paper work flow, especially
payments and submittals, and to issue the notice to proceed. Now, to
better illustrate what I\'m saying here\'s a short video of one such
meeting.\
\
So when is the contractor supposed to be here?\
\
He should be here any minute now.\
\
Okay. I got my copy of the contract and my appointment let ear couple
days ago. I looked it over and I think I\'m pretty clear about my limits
much my authority for this job.\
\
Here\'s the contractor now.\
\
Steve.\
\
Glad you could make it.\
\
This is Denise Brown. She is the project inspector. I\'m art Findley
with Ajax construction.\
\
I guess before we start we\'ll hand in a sign-in sheet, if you could
just fill in your name and stuff on there. I\'d like to make it clear on
who the government contracts \-- contacts are and what authority
everyone has. Kathy will be the Contracting Officer. She is in our
Denver office. She is the only one with full contracting authority. Her
phone number is inside that contract we should have sent to you. On the
I\'m Contracting Officer Representative and Denise here is the project
inspector, and did you \-- you received a fully executed copy of the
contract?\
\
Yes, I did receive those.\
\
The letters tell you what authorities that everyone has under this
contract. Do you have any questions on anyone\'s authority?\
\
No, it was very clear.\
\
As far as your company goes, will you be onsite the whole time
throughout the performance of this contract?\
\
No, I only plan to be on site one or two day as week.\
\
Okay. On the bottom of the pre-work conference record, can you fill out
who will have authority to act on behalf of your company and what type
of authority they\'ll have? Next are the specifications and I\'m going
to let Denise explain \--\
\
Thanks, Steve. What I thought we could do is take the specs and drawings
and walk around the site with them. That way we can kind of take a look
at some of the more complicated requirements and make sure we\'re all on
the same page as to what you are \-- your requirements are.\
\
That would be great.\
\
Every project has unique requirements and the specifications indications
should be discussed in some detail. This does not mean you must read the
specifications word for word to the contractor. All parties should leave
the meeting with a mutual understanding of the work to be accomplished.\
\
Next we\'ll go over the department waiver requirements. Did you get the
posters that were sent along with the copy of the \--\
\
Yes, I did get them and I plan to post them outside the trail we\'re
going use as an office.\
\
That\'s great. Let\'s go over the wage decisions and payrolls together
to make sure we agree on classifications that there are.\
\
Sometimes the wage decisions can be difficult to understand. Since it
will be the COR\'s responsibility to assist in the review of payrolls,
it\'s important to make sure you both agree on what classifications will
be used.\
\
So do you have any other questions for us?\
\
No, I think we\'re good to go.\
\
Okay. I\'ll go ahead and issue the notice to proceed and you can start
work on Monday.\
\
Great. We\'re anxious to get started.\
\
I\'ll send a copy of the notice to Cathy. She can put it in the official
contract file.\
\
D. Bickler: So we contracting officers are very multi-talented, aren\'t
we? A few things that we\'re Democrat \-- were demonstrated in the
meeting \-- we just saw, is that the COR conducted the meeting. In some
cases the CO may conduct the meeting is the project is complex or if we
have a new COR, the project is of a large dollar value or other reasons
such as known problems with the contractor. The conference took place at
the work site. The PI played an active role. For each person attending
the meeting for the government, their role in the meeting should be
decided before the start of the meeting. The meeting notes were taken
and as always documentation is very important and those \-- the pre-work
conference is no exception. Now, as I said before, it\'s recommended you
use an agenda or checklist to help ensure that you cover all every the
pertinent information. Your agency may have a specific form like our BLM
example that we looked at earlier. A copy of the notes that the COR took
along with the notice to proceed are forwarded to the CO for inclusion
in the official contract file. Now, while the pre-work conference is not
required by any contract provision, it is strongly suggested. It\'s an
opportunity to establish the ground rules of the contract and it opens a
dialogue between the contractor and the government. I hope you
understand your role in conducting a pre-work meeting and why it\'s
important and why it\'s important at the onset every pre-work \-- \--
are there any questions out there? Sorry?\
\
Caller: I\'m sorry.\
\
D. Bickler: Okay. We\'re going to go to break right now. The second
15-minute break. So see you back in 15 minutes.\
\
D. Bickler: Well, welcome back after a short little technical
difficulty. Apparently we lost our feed. So you pretty much saw the site
visit video, so some \-- I\'m sorry, the pre-work video. Some of the
goals, we\'re going to start backwards at the goals of the pre-work
meeting.\
\
Caller: Denise, this is Milwaukee calling. We can\'t hear you at all. We
can see you, your lips moving, but no voice.\
\
D. Bickler: It\'s on your end is what I\'m told. And I need to move on
\-- we\'re going to move on with the show, I\'m sorry, Milwaukee. Do you
guys want to put up the phone number for them to call? To establish the
purpose of the pre-work, to establish open lines of communication
between the government and the contractor, to clarify or address
questions and expectations about the work to be done, to introduce the
government personnel to the contractor for day-to-day contacts and
review levels of authority , to discuss paper work flow, especially
payments and submittals, to issue the notice to proceed, and to better
illustrate what I\'m saying, we will look at that short video clip one
more time. Some important things are demonstrated in that video that you
saw a portion of. Number one, the COR conducted that meeting. In some
cases the CO may conduct the meeting if the project is complex or if you
have a new COR or if the project is of a large dollar value or if there
are other reasons such as known problems with the contractor.

The conference took place at the work site. The PI played an active
role. Now, for each person attending the meeting for the government,
their role in the meeting should be decided before the start of the
meeting. The meeting notes were taken. Now, as always, documentation is
very important and the pre-work conference is no exception. As I said
before, it\'s recommended that you use an agenda or a checklist to help
ensure you cover all the important information. Your agency may have a
specific form like our BLM example we looked at earlier. A copy of notes
was sent to the Contracting Officer along with the notice to proceed for
owe inclusion in the contract file. While the pre-work conference is not
required by any contract provision, it is strongly suggested. It\'s an
opportunity to establish the ground rules of the contract and it opens a
dialogue between the contractor and the government. I hope you
understand your role in conducting a pea work meeting. If you don\'t all
right. And why it\'s important at the onset of a contract
administration. John, do you want to talk about monitoring the
contractor\'s performance?\
\
Sure, Denise. Performance monitoring is accomplished primarily through
an inspection and documentation and contract diaries or periodic
reports. The PI or task manager generally conducts the first level of
monitoring assuring compliance with the contract. The task of assuring
contract compliance with accomplished through both physical observation
of the contractor\'s operation and other methods. The government
reserves the right to make periodic inspections of the contractor\'s
work, and there are contract clauses which establish this right. The
term periodic inspection can also include continuous inspection when
constant monitoring is required to protect the government\'s interests.
Inspection is for the sole benefit of the government and does not
relieve the contractor from compliance with specifications. Even though
inspection is not a requirement per se, the government generally accepts
the responsibility to inspect the work and notify the contractor of any
nonconformance. All observations made by the COR and the PI should be
documented in contract diaries. Diaries are not required by any contract
clause, rather they are required for the specific benefit and protection
of the government. They serve as the official contract record.
Therefore, they are crucial to contract administration. Contract diaries
are such vital important in such matters as the amount of payments,
causes for delay, computation of damages, disputes, verbal notices of
noncompliance, actions to eliminate problems, determinations as to the
responsibility of the contractor for use in making other decisions vital
to the contractor and the government. Oftentimes diaries can make or
break the ability of \-- to enforce compliance with the specifications.
Should any dispute or claim arise during the course of the contract, the
CO will use the diaries to support the government\'s position. Let\'s
look at a diary and see what kind of information is included in it. This
form is included in the appendix H in your guide. Denise, will you cover
this?\
\
D. Bickler: I sure will, John. Appendix H is the third page back from
the back in your study guide, and I\'ll give you a few minutes to do
that. Again, we apologize for the little mishap we had a few minutes
ago. As you can see on this diary, I\'m just going to talk about it in
thirds, the very top, top third of this diary, is basic information that
we\'re looking forward to identify the contract, the day of the week
that you\'re there, the temperature, ground conditions, that sort of
thing, what time did you arrive, what time did you leave, but if you
look at 16 through 22, those are some important information that the
Contracting Officer needs. 16 is the contract time. What we\'re looking
for there is the period of performance and can that change with
modifications to the contract. Make sure that\'s up to date. How many
days have been used? That\'s helps both you and I keep track of how much
time is left on the contract and if the performance \-- if the
contractor\'s performance is on schedule. 19 and 20, the percentage of
time used versus the percentage of work done. Again, that helps us to
maintain a good picture of whether this contractor is staying on
schedule.

Number 21 is the work on schedule? That would be a \"yes\" or \"no.\"
And 22 is important, is the contractor\'s work acceptable, unacceptable,
or \-- and you need to explain in the narrative either way. In the
middle of the diary, you will see workforce and equipment, and it starts
with worker classification. What we\'re looking for here is the
contractor\'s employees that are on the site and tell me what they\'re
working on, what kind of equipment are they doing or what type of work
are they doing? This becomes important to the Contracting Officer when
we\'re auditing the contractor\'s payrolls, especially in construction.
And underneath that is a place for you to keep track of pay items.
Let\'s say we had a pay item for aggregate or fill. This would be the
place to say, it came today and this is how much we received, so on and
so forth. Of course on the bottom is the narrative report. Remember to
keep your narrative report factual. Don\'t include personal information
or personal feelings because this is something that may very well wind
up in front of a judge or in the hands of the contractor\'s attorney if
we have to go to claim or a dispute. It is public information. And the
more information you give us in the narrative, the better. A one-line
sentence really doesn\'t work. Tell us what\'s happening. You can talk
about what employees are doing what if the job is small enough, but, you
know, be descriptive there, give us a lot of information or enough
information to understand what\'s happening on that job site. So let\'s
move on. Lou, what \-- what do we do when the contractor is just not
getting the job done?\
\
L. Maestas: This is one of the negative aspects of contracting we don\'t
like to see too often, but when a contractor is failing to conform to
the specifications or to the statement of work, it\'s customary to give
the contractor a verbal notice and, of course, document the contract
diary. When the problem remains uncorrected, it becomes necessary to
issue a written notice of noncompliance. The BLM has a specific form
used to issue these notices called the notice of
noncompliance/instruction to contractors. This form can be found in
appendix I of your study guide. The written notice should state where
within the contract documents that there is a noncompliance. It should
clearly state what the specifications by paragraph and verse is not
being met and how the specification is not being met. The contractor
shall acknowledge receipt of this notice. As an example, such a notice
could be used to inform the contractor that test results show some
portion of work that does not comply with the contract specification and
reject the work. This sometime happens, maybe, as an example o a
concrete job when you\'re pouring concrete and we have the test results,
they don\'t pass, that may be a good time to issue one of these notices.
In a service situation, it could be that the carpets were fought
vacuumed in accordance with their service schedule that we established
in the contract. So, Denise, what happens if you inspect, see a
noncompliance and you fail to notify the contractor?\
\
D. Bickler: Well, Lou, this may constitute acceptance and could waive
the government\'s right to conformance. It happened on a fire station
that we were building that the COR was on the site pretty much most of
the time, if not all of the time, and he saw the contractor performing
non\-\-- nonconforming work. He took pictures, but never documented it
in the diary, never notified the CO and when the job was complete, he
had this whole list of nonconforming work that he expected the
Contracting Officer to negotiate a reduction in the price. Well, it\'s
too late then. It\'s done. And the fact that the COR actually stood
there and watched it and had evidence of it and said nothing, that COR
waived our right to compliance to the specifications and we have to
accept the building as is.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s a good example, Denise. Both the diaries and notices
of noncompliance should be forwarded to the Contracting Officer promptly
during the course of the contract. These become crucial when you run
into continuously poor performance and the Contracting Officer needs to
take more serious corrective action. Now we have a few questions, review
questions for you.\
\
D. Bickler: Before we get into the review questions, I have a few faxes
I would like to answer. One comes from our Springfield Virginia Eastern
office and the question is what responsibilities does a COR have
regarding enforcing labor standards for a services contract. We will get
into labor in a just a few minutes. I\'m going to hold that question and
we\'re going to get to that. The second one comes from Glenallen. As a
COR, what liabilities do you have with regards to OSHA standards, i.e.,
if a worker gets hurt on a job site and the cause was a result of an
OSHA violation that you were not aware of, can you as the COR be
personally liable? That is an excellent question from Glenallen. The
answer would be, no. You are not required to enforce OSHA requirements.
You must, however, maintain \-- see to it that the contractor maintains
a safe work environment. If you don\'t see it, there\'s no way you can
stop it. If you see something unsafe, you do have a responsibility to
make the contractor correct what\'s going on, if he refuses to correct
what\'s going on, you have a right, and this is one of the very few
times, you have a right to stop the work until the contractor corrects
the violation. Okay? So the answer would be if you haven\'t seen it, you
are not personally liable. The third question comes from clam other
falls, Oregon. What \-- Klamath Falls, Oregon. What resources does the
officer have with a lessor of a an officer when the lessor does not
remove ice and snow from the parking lots before the work day begins?
I\'m going to have to refer you to Terry baker or someone in our leasing
group to answer that question. I have no idea. We don\'t deal with
leasing \-- leases or leased buildings in this group, so I would not
know how to answer that question.\
\
L. Maestas: But you know, Denise, briefly they are kind of like service
contracts, so we would have to take that \-- you know, identify who the
pertinent responsible person is and maybe inform him of such \--\
\
J. Sherman: If it\'s a requirement in the lease and there\'s a service
level, then regardless of the sub, the prime, or the lessor, would be
the one that would be responsible for clearing those walkways.\
\
D. Bickler: And if that\'s happening, the COR needs to then, I guess,
address that with the lessor?\
\
J. Sherman: I would think so.\
\
D. Bickler: And if it doesn\'t get resolved, contact your CO. That would
be the best answer we could give you there. I do want to say as long as
this issue came up on lessors and leased space, this class does not
qualify CORs as being refreshed and it doesn\'t \-- there\'s a special
COR class for leasing that the training center puts on. You can continue
watching. I\'m sure we have some helpful information, but this class
doesn\'t cover leasing. That\'s a whole another ball of wax. So now we
can go over the review questions.\
\
L. Maestas: Thank you, Denise. As I said, these are not in your book.
We\'ll put them on the Elmo here for you to see as we go through them.
John, are you ready?\
\
J. Sherman: I\'m ready, Lou.\
\
L. Maestas: Here\'s the first one. Again, use your push-to-talk to reply
to our questions. The COR and/or the PI need to document their
observations of the contractor\'s performance. Is this true or false?\
\
Caller: True.\
\
L. Maestas: That\'s a solid \-- resounding true.\
\
Caller: True!\
\
L. Maestas: Good job, folks. That\'s correct. How about the next one? In
what situation or situations might the diary be helpful or crucial to
the Contracting Officer? A, determining causes for delay? B., resolving
disputes? C., verifying employee labor classifications? Or D., all of
the above?\
\
Caller: D.\
\
L. Maestas: Another resounding answer. Good job. That is the correct
answer, D. The COR does not have to notify the contractor when its work
does not meet the contract requirements? Is that true or false?\
\
Caller: False.\
\
Caller: False.\
\
Caller: False.\
\
Caller: False.\
\
L. Maestas: You guys are really on top of it. That\'s correct. That
contractor has to perform regardless. Here\'s the last question, the
government\'s failure to notify the contractor when its work does not
conform to the contract requirements may constitute acceptance and may
waive the government\'s right to conformance. Is that true or false?\
\
Caller: True.\
\
Caller: True.\
\
Caller: True.\
\
Caller: True.\
\
Caller: True.\
\
Caller: True.\
\
Caller: True.\
\
L. Maestas: You guys are great. That\'s right. Our inaction can get us
in trouble at times. That was a good answer, and true. Denise back to
you.\
\
D. Bickler: Thanks, Lou. Now we\'re going to talk about labor
provisions. The Department of Labor recognizes the importance of
protecting employees from unscrupulous and unethical employers and
established several acts or lawed to just that. We\'re all aware of some
of them because they apply to every single worker in the United States,
such as the fair labor standards act. But the Department of Labor
developed some specific acts and regulations that protect employees
working on federal job sites. Under service type contracts, the primary
law that protects the employee is the service contract act. The act is
applicable to all service contracts for other than professional services
service contracts exceeding \$2500. And if you ever have a question
whether your contract is a professional or nonprofessional, get with
your Contracting Officer. Now, the service contract act requires that
contractors pay at least the established wage rate, that they pay
employees biweekly, and that they maintain their payrolls for three
years, they must post the applicable posters in common areas for all
employees to see, and they must post the wage determination with the
rates in a common area so that employees can review them. Here\'s the
answer to the question that we had. This act does not require
enforcement by the contracting agency. If complaints are received, they
are forwarded to the Department of Labor.

Now, under construction contracts, the primary law is the Davis-Bacon
act. This act applies to all construction contracts exceeding \$2,000.
Unlike the service contract act, labor laws governing construction
contracts specifically delegate responsibility and oversight to the
contracting office or the Contracting Officer. As the COR and the
government representative who is at the job site, the CO relies on you
to assist in this oversight. The requirements under the Davis-Bacon act
are similar to those of the service contract act. Must maintain the
payrolls for three years. He must pay at least the established wage
rates and benefits. He must post the applicable posters. He must post
the determination with the rates in a common area so they can be
reviewed by employees. But unlike the service contract act, the
Davis-Bacon act requires that contractors pay their employees every
week, regardless of existing relationships. They must also submit their
payrolls weekly to the Contracting Officer through the COR.

Additionally the contractor must allow the government to interview
employees at the work site during working hours. Now, these laws apply
to subcontractors at every tier. As the contract representative at the
site, and the eyes and ears of the CO, the CO relies on you to conduct
the initial review of the payrolls by first looking at a \-- at some
basic information such as, is the contract number on the payroll? Does
the payroll reflect correct dates worked? Is it signed and dated? These
items can be corrected right there by the contractor at the site. But
more importantly, the CO needs you to review the payroll and ensure that
all employees on the site have been accounted for on the payroll. The
employees are classified correctly on the payroll. The hours each
employee worked are accurately recorded. Now, this review may require a
quick cross check with your written diaries because these items affect
the employee\'s pay, the contractor may not correct them at the job
site.

If the COR identifies any inaccuracies in these particular areas with
the payroll, document the problem, forward the payroll and your
documentation with the diaries and any other supporting information to
the Contracting Officer for proper action. Whatever you do, do not
correct the payroll for the contractor. It is a certified document and
shouldn\'t be altered in any way shape or form by anyone but the
contractor. Now, violations of the labor laws can be a very serious
matter, and they carry penalties such as withholding of funds for
compensation to employees. Termination of the contract, debarment from
federal contracts for up to three years. Well that about covers what you
need to know about labor lawyers. Are there any questions out there
right now?\
\
Caller: Yes, I have a question. I would like some clarification, please.
If the service contract applies to services and Davis-Bacon applies to
construction, what applies to this the professional services?\
\
D. Bickler: Nothing.\
\
Caller: Thank you.\
\
J. Sherman: She said thank you.\
\
D. Bickler: I\'m going to explain that. The answer is nothing applies to
professional services. They\'re simply exempt from any labor laws
because they\'re considered professionals.\
\
J. Sherman: That\'s correct, Denise.\
\
D. Bickler: Are there any other questions?\
\
Caller: Does the conducting of payroll reviews apply to service and
construction contracts?\
\
D. Bickler: No, because under the service contract act, the contractor
is not required to submit payrolls. He just has to pay his employees
every other week. He doesn\'t have to prove to us that he has done that.
The only thing under a service contract act is you have to make sure he
has his posters up where people can see and the wage decision is up
where the employees can review it. That\'s it. So let\'s go he over the
information I just shared. These questions are not in your study guide
so we\'re going to go over them here in the overhead. A contract for the
construction of a campground is subject to what Department of Labor
law?\
\
Caller: Davis-Bacon.\
\
D. Bickler: Very good. A contract for a janitorial service is subject to
what Department of Labor law?\
\
Caller: Service contract.\
\
D. Bickler: SCA. Service contract act, correct. The contracting agency
has responsibility for labor law enforcement. Is that true or false?\
\
Caller: False.\
\
Caller: False.\
\
D. Bickler: It\'s \--\
\
Caller: Depends upon the contract.\
\
D. Bickler: Very good. It depends upon the type of contract. The agency
does not have responsibility for enforcing the service contract act. We
do have responsibility for enforcing the Davis-Bacon act under
construction. Next: regardless every whether the contract is for service
or construction, the contractor must maintain payrolls for the full
period of the contract \--\
\
Caller: Three years.\
\
D. Bickler: Okay. Three years. Anxious. As the COR, you should review
payrolls prior to submission to the CO to ensure which of the following
items? All employees \-- that worked are listed on the payroll, the
payroll \--\
\
Caller: All of the above.\
\
D. Bickler: And the payrolls are signed and dated.\
\
Caller: I concur.\
\
Caller: All of the above.\
\
D. Bickler: D, very good. That\'s good when they can answer the question
before it\'s asked. Thank you all very much. We appreciate that. Lou, I
know you have a lot of experience in the area \-- the next area we\'re
going over, so do you want to talk a little about modifications please?\
\
L. Maestas: I sure will, but I think most of us contracting officers and
CORs have a lot of experience with modifications. 30 page 33 of the
study guide. Changes are allowable as long as they are within the scope
of the contract. The objectives of this segment are to understand your
authority as it relates to modifications, know your role in processing
modifications, be aware of the consequences of improperly handled
modifications. Since modifications cannot include a request for work
outside of the scope of the contract, it\'s imperative that the COR be
very familiar with the statement of work and include the Contracting
Officer as early as possible on all modifications. Changes outside the
scope of the contract are called Cardinal changes and those are not
allowed. How do you determine what\'s inside or outside the scope? You
can\'t change the basic intent or end product you originally contracted
for. You can\'t ask for new work. Let\'s turn to page 33 of your study
guide. There\'s an exercise we\'ll do to see what we can accomplish.
Here are a couple of examples. These are a couple examples we\'ll look
at to see if they\'re in or out of the scope of work. Take a few
minutes, three minutes, to read the scenarios and then we\'ll get back
with you to discuss the answers.\
\
L. Maestas: Thanks a lot, folks. We\'re talking about in scope and out
of scope and we had those two scenarios there. Hopefully you\'ve had a
chance to read them. How about the first one? We\'re talking about miles
a new road \--\
\
Caller: The first one would be within the scope because you\'re still
building road.\
\
D. Bickler: Does anybody think differently?\
\
Caller: I say out of scope.\
\
L. Maestas: Time-out. We can\'t hear everybody. Just one at a time,
please.\
\
Caller: I was saying it\'s outside the scope because you can\'t change
the basic intent of the product, was the two miles. So we \-- we have an
additional one mile, so that\'s a different contract.\
\
L. Maestas: I think I\'m right with you there. Is there any other
discussion?\
\
D. Bickler: Someone had said it\'s within scope because you\'re still
building a road, and you\'re right, we\'re still building a road,
however, like the first fellow said, we\'re changing the original intent
of the agreement between the parties because we originally agreed on two
miles. You can\'t add a mile and a half of road. You really can\'t add
any portion of the road.\
\
L. Maestas: Thanks, Denise. The correct answer \--\
\
Caller: I just have a question about the nature of a modification.\
\
L. Maestas: Go ahead.\
\
Caller: Can\'t you do work that is very similar or the same as in this
case and ask them to provide a price for that additional piece of work
and call that the modification?\
\
L. Maestas: That is a good question. But when we look at this particular
scenario and we called for two miles of road and if we want to add
another mile and a half, I mean, we\'re talking here and about here, and
that\'s \-- wouldn\'t we maybe consider this a Cardinal change? Cardinal
changes are not allowed to be modified.\
\
D. Bickler: To further answer your question, it really depends on the
magnitude of the change. In this case we\'re adding an extra mile and a
half to two miles of road, no, that is not something we can modify. Now,
if you quickly put that out so that the contractor could quote on it,
then maybe he would get it because he\'s already mobilized, but you have
to look at the quantity of the change or the magnitude of the change.
Does it change the intent of the original agreement?\
\
L. Maestas: And we talked earlier, we talked earlier, regarding the
integrity of the acquisition process. If we go and modify this contract,
in essence, we\'re actually \-- the poor contractors that originally bid
this contractor and the contractor that did get the award, he bid for
two miles of road, and maybe his price would have been different or
somebody else\'s price would have been different if we would have gone
for, say, four miles of road. So a lot of ramifications. We got to be
careful. This I consider a Cardinal change and the correct answer is out
of scope.\
\
Caller: If you bid this \--\
\
L. Maestas: One at a time, please.\
\
D. Bickler: Repeat the question.\
\
J. Sherman: We had two folks call in.\
\
L. Maestas: Repeat the last question about the two separate bids.\
\
D. Bickler: Or line items.\
\
Caller: Do two line items on the original and say for the second one if
there\'s availability of funds, then it would be within the scope?\
\
D. Bickler: Absolutely. That\'s whole another situation. At the time of
award you would have to determine whether you have funds available at
the of the award, not at the change of the fiscal year when a new budget
comes in. But, yes, you can. That would be availability of funds. You
can do that.\
\
J. Sherman: Like an appear shun \--\
\
D. Bickler: No, kind of like.\
\
Anne: but it\'s based on how much money you have at the time of award.\
\
L. Maestas: That was a good discussion but let\'s look at the other
question. Maybe that will help clarify. Here we\'re talking about a
window a glass window. We want to move from one wall to maybe another
wall. What would you consider that, in or out of scope?\
\
Caller: Within.\
\
Caller: I think that would be a Cardinal change. That\'s a fairly
significant change to the structure of the building.\
\
L. Maestas: It\'s a good comment an and the first answer, I would
consider this in scope. Yeah, there would be some circumstances we would
have to look at if that window was like \-- that we\'re moving it,
we\'re moving it to this side \--\
\
J. Sherman: From a load bearing to a no-load bearing wall may would be a
significant change.\
\
D. Bickler: Again, you would have to look at the circumstances of the
situation. The basic \-- basically what we\'re getting at with this
little exercise is we\'ve not changed the basic and original intent of
the agreement of the parties. We wanted a window. To change the location
of the window is not a Cardinal change. To change the size of the window
is not necessarily a Cardinal change, either, unless you\'re going to
change it from a 6 by 6 to windows throughout the entire \-- that entire
side of the building. So you have to \-- it just depends on the
magnitude of the change.\
\
L. Maestas: And for simple reasons here, possibly this window here,
it\'s just being moved wall to wall, probably is not going to in Kurt
any additional costs. I would probably consider this in scope.\
\
D. Bickler: What\'s important, I think, is to be sure to discuss the
changes with your Contracting Officer and try not to make assumptions
that it would be within or outside of the scope. Make it a team
decision.\
\
Caller: I have a question from steam town national storage site. If in
the contract when it was written the scope of work, if you knew you
might have available money coming in the future, if you asked for a unit
pricing on lineal footage on that road, could you then let them continue
to do that mile and a half because everybody bid on it in unit pricing
and lineal footage?\
\
D. Bickler: Well, there\'s a clause in \-- that we\'re going to talk
about later, the variation in quantity clause, and you could do it in
linear feet and then the variation in quantity clause could kick in. The
problem is, no, you couldn\'t add a mile-and-a-half. That\'s still
considered new work, and even though everybody bid by the linear foot
their price was based on two miles of road, not three-and-a-half miles
of road, and three-and-a-half miles would definitely change \-- have
impact on a contractor\'s unit price, whether it were by the mile or by
the linear foot. It is still considered new work. If you did it by \--\
\
Caller: This is Gary at dinosaur national monument.\
\
D. Bickler: Go ahead, Gary.\
\
Caller: Could you \-- like the gentleman said earlier, if he thought he
might have the money, could you do a bid additive for the
mile-and-a-half and not honor that if the money doesn\'t come through?\
\
D. Bickler: The way that works is your bid schedule would be set up with
a base bid of say two miles and an additive of a mile-and-a-half, and
there\'s different theories. Some people say that you\'re supposed to
know at the time of bid opening what your funding is, and some people
will take it out to a contract award. Either way, we have \-- until that
contract is awarded, that additive, we don\'t have to add it or we can
add it. It just depends on the money. Once you\'ve awarded it, you then
cannot go back and add an option or additive. Then it\'s too late.\
\
L. Maestas: This actually \--\
\
Caller: I have a question. What if you used a sole source 8A contractor
for that road project, can you add that then?\
\
L. Maestas: It makes no difference who the contractor is. We\'re looking
at the specific modification. It\'s a Cardinal change whether it\'s an
8A \--\
\
Question from Cheyenne. We were just wondering what you would say if we
put an estimated quantity on our contract.\
\
D. Bickler: The same thing. You can\'t add a mile-and-a-half of road
when the contract was for two miles, or whatever the linear footage is.
To add that much, it\'s new work, it\'s a Cardinal change.\
\
Caller: So you wouldn\'t be \--\
\
D. Bickler: Hold on.\
\
Caller: We had a road put in but we needed to add a guardrail because
the elevation changed. We considered that as modification the road is
already in that area. But when you extend the road, the conditions
change also. You might be going uphill, downhill, the different fill you
may need. So that would be an extent which is outside the scope at that
point.\
\
D. Bickler: You\'re absolutely right, and to Wyoming, you can use
estimated quantity, absolutely, and I would strongly encourage it.
We\'re going to get into that a little bit later, because that\'s not
something that you could necessarily measure perfectly, so we want to be
sure to use estimated quantities whenever possible. By the way, I want
to let everybody know we have some additional air time because of our
little technical snafu, and so we will be on the air until about 1:30 so
we can get through everything we wanted to get through.\
\
Caller: Thank you from Cheyenne.\
\
L. Maestas: Who is this in Cheyenne?\
\
L. Maestas: My name is Lori Crum. I took over Charlie\'s job.\
\
Caller: Can you all go over the pretest results?\
\
J. Sherman: You mean the answers to the pretest or the scoring?\
\
Caller: Both.\
\
D. Bickler: We\'re not planning on going over the pretest results but
they may be posted at the website after the class.\
\
J. Sherman: The final questions are different than the pretest.\
\
Caller: Carlsbad with one last comment on the road thing. Adding a mile
and a half more road means you are at the very least going to have a
major modification to an EA and probably a new EA or new EIS and a lot
of other things, too. So it\'s just not something you can slap together
even if you could get the money in the contract.\
\
D. Bickler: You are absolutely right. That kind of brings up a final
point. You can\'t just modify a contract. You have to look at every
aspect of your planning stuff, too. If there was an EA involved, how
does that impact the EA? Like Barstow said, how does that impact other
additional work you might want to have done because you want to extend
the road. For the purposes of this exercise, our point is it\'s new
work, and there is absolutely no way you can call that anything but new
work and a Cardinal change and it can\'t be modified, but also you\'ve
got \-- there are so many things that need to be looked at and
considered when you\'re talking about modifications. So, Lou?\
\
L. Maestas: That was a very discussion. I hope it helped a little bit
there. Anyway, to get back into the training here a modification is
required to officially implement any change in the \-- and the COR does
not have that authority to make those changes. Only a Contracting
Officer has the authority to execute a modification. There must be a
contract clause that authorizes a lake. Technically the contractor
cannot perform any work on the modified portion of the contract until
authorized by the Contracting Officer either in writing or by
modification or even verbally if the situation calls for it. There are
two types of modifications, change orders and supplemental agreements.
Supplemental agreements are bilateral mods requiring two signatures. The
contractor signs first and the Contracting Officer signs last. We use
bilateral mods to document negotiated adjustments to the contract. This
is the preferred method, of course, when we modify a contract. Change
orders are unilaterally issued by the Contracting Officer and only
require the signature of the Contracting Officer. They are used when
issuing a direction to the contractor. Once a change order is issued,
the terms and conditions of the change order are negotiated and
finalized by a supplemental agreement. In other words, we direct the
contractor to perform work and then we negotiate the cost. Change orders
are only issued when time is of the essence, where the entire project
might be delayed, and this could cause serious harm. We rarely use them
because of the risk. So what responsibilities do the CORs have? Well,
first of all, they should contact the Contracting Officer when a
modification is being considered. They should provide justification for
the mod and written revisions to the statements of work or
specifications as necessary.

For modifications requiring additional funds, the COR must provide a
funded purchase request to the contracting officer through the IDEAS
system as well as provide an independent government estimate. Now let\'s
do exercise 13 and go over that. I\'ll read the scenarios on page 34 of
your guide and then give you a couple minutes to briefly discuss with
that your neighbors and see if you can determine the correct course of
action for the situation described. Here it is. Carpet shampooing is not
included in the statement of work for a janitorial service contract for
a government building. During the night a heavy dust storm moves in
through the area followed by early morning rainstorm. By the time the
government manager reports for work a great deal of mud has been tracked
in, deposited on the carpet. He asks the janitorial contract to clean
the carpet and remove all the mud. What is the correct course of action
for this situation? We\'ll be waiting for your responses in a couple
minutes. Is this going to be inside or outside the scope?\
\
L. Maestas: I think we\'ve given you enough time now. I hoe hope you\'ve
had enough to look over that scenario. There\'s a lot of little
situations in there. What did you see in that?\
\
Caller: I\'m not sure.\
\
L. Maestas: Repeat that question.\
\
D. Bickler: Barstow, first.\
\
Caller: I was thinking it could be outside the scope because it\'s not
\-- it\'s not something that was in the initial contract. It could be
inside the scope, too, because it is cleaning of a building. But at the
same time, we could probably look at a change of orders because it says
change of orders are only issued when time is of the essence, and this
seems to be time of essence, it\'s raining, muddy and needs to be
cleaned up. I would say outside the scope but it can be issued through
change of order.\
\
Caller: I agree.\
\
D. Bickler: Anything else? Anybody think differently?\
\
Caller: It could be outside \--\
\
D. Bickler: One at a time. Go ahead, somebody was talking about the
Contracting Officer\'s rep.\
\
Caller: Is the building manager, the CO, COR, or involved in the
contract?\
\
D. Bickler: That\'s an interesting question.\
\
J. Sherman: Who is authorized.\
\
D. Bickler: Very good question.\
\
L. Maestas: What else did you notice in that scenario that\'s kind of
funny?\
\
Caller: You could also have that cleaned as a micro purchase.\
\
D. Bickler: Very good point.\
\
L. Maestas: Anything else?\
\
Caller: Management could make the decision to have it cleaned, not the
CO.\
\
D. Bickler: That\'s a good point. Someone else had a comment or
question.\
\
Caller: If it was a contract that said that the carpet had to be cleaned
\--\
\
D. Bickler: Go ahead, the \-- there was a man talking. The gentleman
\--\
\
Caller: Yes, this is Vicksburg. My question would be, does it matter
whether the guy was a COR or not? One of the comments I heard was, who
was the guy that instructed him to clean it?\
\
D. Bickler: That\'s a very good question. There was a gal that came in
also. What was your comment or question?\
\
Caller: If this was a performance based contract, it should be easy to
do it because the performance probably was, keep the carpet clean.\
\
D. Bickler: Excellent point. You guys have brought up excellent points
and questions.\
\
L. Maestas: You did. There\'s a lot of situations here that surfaced. Is
it inside or outside the scope? It probably in just looking at it may be
out of scope. If it\'s not a performance-based service contract.
Unauthorized representatives may be on both sides of the contract or in
the government. Maybe that manager has absolutely no authority
whatsoever in the contract phase of it. So maybe he should be given
direction. Maybe the contractor was just an employee and not the project
manager. So there may be some implied authority that may have resulted
there. With this unauthorized action by the manager directing the
contractor to proceed, there may be ratification action that may be
necessary here. A good question came up regarding what if it is a
performance based service contract? That\'s very good. More than likely
we would have to see what the standards are, but more than likely we
expect that carpet to be clean, maybe, just maybe, it\'s within scope. A
lot of good comments, got of good questions and various answers as you
can see. Thanks. Any other comments on this?\
\
Caller: He never said he specifically asked for it to be shampooed, just
cleaned up.\
\
D. Bickler: The pleasure in having scenarios like this is it\'s so
open-ended, and you\'re right, it didn\'t say shampooed, it just said
cleaned up. But you guys got the gist of this. There are a lot of things
that could have happened and a lot of answers to the question. The micro
purchase thing is exactly right. Use the credit card to get that taken
care of. We like the way you\'re thinking.\
\
L. Maestas: It\'s just like any other contract, various provisions,
various statements of work, various terms in the contract open to
interpretation. That\'s why we need your help. That\'s why together you
and I are going to make some sound judgments, especially in the
modification arena. Is there any more questions regarding modifications?
That was great exercise and great input. Denise, back to you.\
\
D. Bickler: Let\'s briefly discuss differing site conditions and
responsibilities of the government for contractor. The government in a
differing site condition has a responsibility to tell the contractor \--
not in a differing site condition \-- we have a responsibility to tell
the contractor in the contract the conditions they can expect to
encounter both surface and subsurface. When the contractor encounters
any conditions of an unusual nature that differ from those represented
in the contract, the differing site clause is the authority to modify
and correct the situation. Most differ ring site conditions occur
subsurface so they can\'t be seen. The contractor\'s responsibility in
this situation is to stop work immediately and give written notice to
the government of the conditions encountered. The government\'s
responsibility is to promptly investigate, engineer a fix and modify the
contract. Most if not all differing site conditions with result in an
equitable adjustment to the contractor. Now, if the contractor fails to
notify the government and remedies the problem himself, he is not likely
to be entitled to an equitable adjustment.

If the government fails to act promptly, we may be responsible for
additional costs due to delaying the contractor\'s work. It\'s important
that we as a team act promptly when this situation is encountered.
Another clause that authorizes modifications is the variation in
quantity clause. Actually there are a few depending on the type of
contract. It is included when the government has reason to believe the
quantities may vary up or down or when quantities cannot be accurately
estimated. For example, weighed or measured items, tons or cubic yards
of material type thing. In construction this variation cannot exceed
15%. In supply it cannot exceed 10% of the contract line item quantity.
The clause guarantees the contract price if the variation is above or
below the contract quantity by that percentage. Should your variation be
greater then the unit price is subject to negotiation by either

party. Are there any questions about differ ring site conditions or the
variation in quantity clause?\
\
Caller: What about classification \-- whether it\'s classified soils or
unclassified?\
\
D. Bickler: Classified what?\
\
Caller: Sometimes you have an unclassified classify versus classifying
conditions, whereas the risk is on the contractor versus the
government.\
\
D. Bickler: Could you give me an example.\
\
Caller: For example, we have to put a trench in for some reason and
we\'re not real sure what\'s going to be encountered there but we don\'t
have to pay for rock or something like that that could be there because
we don\'t have funding, therefore, we just go ahead up front and shift
all the risk to the contractor in saying, whatever soils you anticipate,
it\'s your baby.\
\
D. Bickler: There\'s two problems I\'m going to say about that. You\'re
going to pay a lot of money that front, if the contractor has to bear
that entire burden or risk, he is going to charge you for it. He is
going to assume the worst case scenario. If you can afford that, great.
The second thing I want to say is, if the contractor chose to file a
claim against your agency or your office for additional costs incurred
because he didn\'t anticipate enough of a cost, I\'m going to say
you\'re not likely to win that because the courts and judges are
probably going to say, government, why didn\'t you know? Why didn\'t you
test? Why didn\'t you figure out what was going to be encountered when
digging that trench? That\'s my opinion based on experience.\
\
Caller: On the supply end, so I gather then that it would be okay if a
supplier consistently delivered 91% of the supplies that you had
anticipated? It\'s inside the 10%.\
\
J. Sherman: Under supplies, we\'ve got the various in quantity, let\'s
say we go up or down the maximum 10%. I believe that the contractor is
required to deliver the full original amount. If you had a quantity of
100, they\'re due to ship you that 100. It\'s just if the government
maybe before the items are delivered says, wait a second, we\'re
completing this phase of our project and we found we only need 95, then
we have the right to reduce that by the quantity of five. Or conversely,
if we figure out we need five more and we need 105, then we have the
right to request an additional five units.\
\
L. Maestas: John, let me just add, the variation in quantity clause
applicable to supplies generally occurs when we have standard packaging.
Let\'s say the units come packaged like in boxes of 40 and we want maybe
110 of these items, but they\'re packaged in boxes of 40. So actually
we\'re probably going to end up getting 120 of these units. So we can
probably use a variation in estimated clause to go ahead and accept
those extra 10 unit. But that\'s where I have seen the variation in
quantity clause comes in often is in standard packaging.

J. Sherman: It could also be a production run. Maybe their standard
production is 105 units instead of 100 and they want to get paid for
those 5 because they may be specify took our requirement. Then we can
order the additional five at the same price of the first 100 units.\
\
D. Bickler: I would say this about the variation in quantities under
construction. That clause is not intended to cover is us for bad surveys
or \-- it doesn\'t mean we shouldn\'t do our part and properly survey
our work to get fairly accurate quantities, because what can happen in a
construction job is if we have a bust in our survey, and let\'s say
we\'ve estimated 200 cubic yards of material required for this \-- for
the abutment, but what we forgot to do was times it by three because \--
or four because we have four sides to the abutment and we don\'t realize
that until we\'re well into the project, that could be considered a
Cardinal change but I\'m not likely to cancel or terminate the contract
at this point because we\'re so far into it. So here\'s what will
happen. This actually happened.

We had a bust in our survey and with a we said we need was 200 but we
needed 6. The contract guarantees the price to 15% \-- let\'s use 100.
I\'m not good at math. 115 cubic yards, but what we really needed was
400. From 115 cubic yards to the 400 cubic yards is negotiable, and what
happened in my situation is that the contractor failed to go to the site
visit and so he made an assumption he could haul this material in a dump
truck. When he got to the job site he realized it\'s in a remote and
precarious location. Dump truck isn\'t going to work. He had to use a
tandem haul, which was two or three times the cost. Well, the 115 cubic
yards of material, he took it in the shorts because that was his price.
But from 115 to 400 was negotiable, and he had a right to his actual
costs, and we paid a lot of money because we had to pay him for the
tandem haul. We didn\'t get to hold him to the price \-- the unit price
of the contract. So I just \-- that\'s the danger in the estimated
quantity. It only holds us to 15%, and it shouldn\'t be our way out of
doing really good planning and estimating of our quantities.\
\
Caller: That illustrates some other \--\
\
D. Bickler: Wait a minute.\
\
Caller: Do you think you would be better off \--\
\
D. Bickler: Somebody was talking about it illustrated something.\
\
Caller: Some of the other dangers of too quick or too incomplete
planning because if you had noticed that it was going to be a problem to
haul the stuff out there, that would have been a very different contract
probably set up.\
\
D. Bickler: Yes, we might have had a different contractor, which
wouldn\'t have been a bad thing either on that particular case. Now
somebody he is came in asking whether it would be a better idea to do
small \--\
\
Caller: When you have a differing site condition, do you think it would
be better on a small job whereby you didn\'t do the soil testing before
and you run into a situation where you hit boulders, whereas if you did
the soil borings, you are might have missed that boring. You are going
to have to pay either way.\
\
D. Bickler: You are going to have to pay either way. I think we
industrial a responsibility to the soils testing. I had a project up in
Glenallen, actually, I hope you\'re enjoying that new office we did for
you, in planning for Glenallen they did their soils samples up there,
and as we all know there\'s permafrost under the surface. Our soil
samples didn\'t turn up permafrost but lo and behold as we were digging
for footings we ran into permafrost. So that \-- just because we might
not hit it certainly doesn\'t relieve us of having to test the soils. So
we still had a differing site condition there. Now, John, what can you
tell bus payment processing?\
\
J. Sherman: This is something we do a lot of, process payments. The
objective of this segment is to identify your part in processing payment
requests properly. This is a team effort, as the invoice goes through
several individuals prior to payment but still must be paid in time
frames mandated by law. The prompt payment act requires payment of a
proper invoice within a specified payment time. The payment due dates
after due dates or acceptance of goods are, seven days for perishables,
14 days for construction and 30 days for service and supplies. Every
contract should identify the office and person to which the contractor
should send his payment. This is known as the designated billing office
or DBO. Each office should be sent \-- each invoice should be sent to
the DBO date stamped immediately when received and processed
expeditiously. Time is of the essence. The date stamp is critical
because without a date stamp the payment due date is calculated from the
actual date of the invoice.\
\
D. Bickler: What if an invoice is sent someplace other than the DBO? How
do you handle the payment?\
\
J. Sherman: How we normally should handle these types of payments if the
invoice is sent to the improper DBO, you should formally reject that,
meaning, submit a written litter and return that invoice within seven
days.\
\
D. Bickler: What if an invoice goes to the right office but it\'s
incorrect or incomplete, what do you do?\
\
J. Sherman: There are actually two courses of action here. The most
preferable is again to return that in invoice to the contractor, and
that must be done within seven days also. You must tell the contractor
when you reject these invoices what was missing or incorrect. You can\'t
just put it back in the mail and say it\'s your turn. You have to tell
them specifically, what are the issues, what needs to be corrected. Some
issues that we may get are, oh, they just didn\'t fill out the hours
correctly. They\'ve got an incorrect labor rate. They might, I\'ve seen
ones with the wrong contract number. If we send an invoice to our
payment office with the wrong contract number, they\'re going to reject
it. So it\'s up to the COR and the CO to catch these and also help the
vendor out so that they don\'t have to wait weeks or months before
payment. There\'s also another course besides the formal rejection. If
the correction is minor in nature, like maybe they have a mathematical
error, you may make a determination to do that correction, just initial
off on the invoice, maybe with a memo to the file of your conversation
with the contractor.\
\
D. Bickler: When you \-- if you\'re going to return the invoice prior to
seven days, I want to make this comment, most likely, and hopefully that
invoice was date stamped into your office. It\'s important that you
cross through that date stamp and initial it and then maybe make a
little note returned. Return that invoice back to the contractor. If he
by chance submits the same invoice, then there\'s evidence that you may
have received it but you returned it. State stamp it again and finance
is going to pay that based on the new state stamp and not your old one.
But, John, what happens if the COR is out hunting for a couple of weeks
and he\'s out of the office during all of this?\
\
J. Sherman: It\'s up to the COR to designate an alternate employee or
individual that you\'ve contacted the CO so they know this person has
approval authority for those invoices. You can\'t just take off and let
them sit. What we haven\'t stated is under the prompt payment act, if we
don\'t meet the seven days for perishables, 14 for construction or 30
for supplies and services, we\'re due to pay interest to the contractor.
And we\'ll get to that in a moment.\
\
D. Bickler: Okay.\
\
J. Sherman: Interest accrues let\'s say 30 days for supplies and
services, if a proper invoice was received, it goes back to the office,
let\'s say it\'s the COR\'s responsibility, maybe he or she was on
vacation for three weeks, they\'re actually going to get dollars taken
out of their project or their office\'s budget to pay for that interest.
So it\'s something you may want to explain to your boss why your budget
got reduced. If you take a small invoice maybe it\'s not that big a
deal. The bureau does track it, however. If it\'s a large dollar
invoice, then that interest could be substantial.\
\
D. Bickler: So the interest is paid by whose ever office cause the
delay, either the COR, CO or finance?\
\
J. Sherman: Exactly. If the COR is out, these duties are delegated, the
C can make payment. On occasion when the COR is unavailable. But has to
do so in those cases. It\'s not something we like to do all the time,
because, again, you guys are the ones out there that know specifically
whether the work has been done or not.\
\
L. Maestas: John, just one quick note. The responsibility to make sure
somebody\'s at home to handle these invoices rests with the contracting
officers as well. We just don\'t leave and let invoices get lost.\
\
D. Bickler: It seems \-- I don\'t know, maybe it\'s tricky on service
and supply but the 14 days for construction is really, really short time
frame because you guys need time to look at it and time to get it back
into the office to me, and then on I\'ve got to quickly review it and
get it down to finance to get it paid. So it\'s a pretty important
process. I\'m also making a wild guess as in one of these conditions
where you would find an error beside dating it, and sending it back to
the office, you would probably also make a copy your records, make a
note in the diary, let the CO know?\
\
J. Sherman: You\' exactly on track. You need to document receipt of
invoices. If that was an improper one, that needs to be documented as
well. In order to process a payment you must submit for supplies and
services the original invoice and any other documentation required by
the contract. Construction contract payments require an original
invoice, certification of progress payment, subcontractor payment
information, and the COR should somehow indicate acceptance and
concurrence with the payment. You may use a special form or you may sign
acceptance right on the invoice. Either way is acceptable.\
\
D. Bickler: Well, in the BLM \-- for construction we require that you
submit a 1510-10, I believe it is.\
\
J. Sherman: But for supplies you can just sign on the invoice. We prefer
the form. It\'s all going to change when we go electronic. The BLM
Washington office has set a goal of 97% or greater for the number of
invoices we should be paying on time. That\'s not the dollar amounts but
it\'s actually the number of invoices. Other DOI agencies have similar
goals. The good news is we\'re currently exceeding this goal with a
98.9% of our payments being made on time at the BLM. That\'s done to a
huge part for you the CORs in processing these and getting them to the
CO in a timely manner. Your part in this process is crucial and you are
responsible for the recording of the date the invoice was received. So
don\'t forget to date stamp the invoice and forward it to the CO
promptly. Are there any questions? If so, please call in. Okay. I\'m
sorry to say with the implementation of FBMS we could undoubtedly expect
big changes in this area with the submission every electronic invoices.
We went through that earlier. So stay tuned, and we\'ll give you the
details when we get them. Lou?\
\
L. Maestas: Thanks, John. We\'re going to talk about some of the
negative aspects of contracting. We\'re telling you about this because
it involves you, your time and your project and we want you to be aware
of this process. First, let\'s talk about disputes. A contract dispute
begins as a disagreement between the contractor and the government.
These disagreements usually resolve around \-- resolve around money. As
the COR you\'re usually the first to know and you should notify the
Contracting Officer immediately before it becomes a formal dispute and,
of course, attorney involvement \-- is required. When the disagreement
cannot be resolved, it becomes a dispute. Remember that your authority
is limited and you cannot make final decisions in resolving disputes.
The contractor must submit his dispute to the Contracting Officer in
writing. Your role is one of support in providing necessary
documentation for the Contracting Officer to make a decision and resolve
the matter.

If the contractor still disagrees with the decision, they must request
the Contracting Officer\'s final decision, which can be appealed. If the
Contracting Officer\'s final decision is appealed, it can consume a
great deal of time and cost a lot of money in trying to resolve this
situation. Most disputes and claims occur on construction contracts and
are a one or lost on contract diaries and good solid documentation. As
the court, you may be called upon or before an administrative judge to
testify on behalf of the government. There are time frames involved in
responding to the claim and the Contracting Officer relies heavily on
the COR to assist with both your time and, of course, your
documentation. Now, I\'ll let Denise discuss the other negative aspect
every contracting that we don\'t like. Denise?\
\
D. Bickler: Gee, thanks, Lou. There are occasions when the government
has no other choice but to terminate a contract. There\'s two types of
contract terminations available to the Contracting Officer. There\'s
termination for convenience and termination for default. Termination for
convenience or T for C is the unilateral right of the government. This
type of termination occurs for various reasons. It could be that the
work is no longer required. Perhaps we have ambiguous specifications. Or
there are changes which become Cardinal in nature. Maybe there\'s
interference with natural habitats. This termination is rarely invoked,
and when it is, the contractor has a right to recoup you in actual costs
incurred such as bid or proposal preparation, mobilization or start-up
costs. In other words, it will cost us money to get out of the contract.
A termination for default or a T for D, is invoked when the contractor
has reached the contract. Placing a contractor in default is the last
step in a series of steps and is a last resort. Whenever a \-- resort.
Whenever a termination for default appears imminent, the Contracting
Officer must give written notice of the imminence to the contractor.

The cause for default can raise from time related or non-time related
issues. Time related is when the contractor is failing to make
satisfactory progress. Non-related default action should not be pursued
until all pending claims which could affect performance times, such as a
government caused delay or a differing site condition have been settled.
Non-time-related default can be for failure to comply with contract
requirements, such as specifications, persistent safety violations, or
willful labor law violations. Prior to default, the Contracting Officer
must issue two notices to the contractor. The first is a cure notice.
This puts the contractor on notice that it is endangering the
performance of the contract and affords the contractor the opportunity
to cure the problem. The contractor is usually given 10 days to respond
to the letter by either curing it or responding to the Contracting
Officer what his cure is going to be. The second and final notice is a
show cause notice. This notice is issued when the problem has not been
cured and affords the contractor one final opportunity to show cause why
the government should not default the contractor. Again, he\'s given
usually 10 days or less to respond to that notice. Both notices giver
the contractor the opportunity to present facts.

The contractor has a right to appeal the termination for default. When
the government terminates for default, it must reprocure to complete the
original work and this is true in construction and in service. If we
don\'t do this, the court views that the work was no longer needed and
we should have terminated for convenience. Both the contractor and the
government bear a burden when we terminate for default. The burden of
the government is that we have to front the money and then seek
additional costs from the contractor. The burden on the contractor is
that he must repay all excess costs and damages incurred by the
government in reprocuring. As most terminated contractors appeal the
decision, it usually becomes a long drawn out legal proceeding and the
CO does not go had through this alone. Again, you are the primary source
of information and assistance and regardless of the type of termination,
both of available for the protection of the government and should be
used as a last resort after all other legal avenues have been exhausted.
Are there any questions about terminations?

Caller: St. George. BLM has been issuing a lot of contracts for resource
management planning and environmental assessments. If funding becomes a
problem in out years, what categories does that fall under? Is that
termination for convenience if funds are curtailed?\
\
D. Bickler: If you\'re in an existing contract \-- if you can\'t award
the contract unless you have the money. So if you\'re in an IDIQ
contract, as long as you\'ve met the minimum guarantee, there is no \--
it\'s not a termination. We\'ve met our minimum guarantee and we simply
don\'t exercise any option years. I\'m not sure what other type of
contract there would be that would put them in the position of having to
terminate.\
\
J. Sherman: If it was a fixed price contract just specific for an EA and
then the monies that they were maybe incrementally funding couldn\'t
follow through, maybe it would have to be a termination for convenience.
But a lot of the contracting we do nowadays for that type of effort,
indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity, task orders are issued and we
wouldn\'t pursue issuing a task order until we had the money in hand. I
guess would it depend. We would need to know more about how the contract
was set up.\
\
L. Maestas: Funding is generally provided for only one year. If we\'re
anticipating other funding, we\'re going to incrementally fund that
project and, of course, we would have the pertinent clauses involved
there.\
\
Caller: Lou\'s scenario is the one we had in mind. The contracts are
multi-year. They are put together in phases. The ones we\'re talking
about are fixed price.\
\
L. Maestas: Good. Yeah. So basically that\'s about right. The fixed
contract, we may have option periods in there. We will probably
incorporate availability of funds clause. Somehow or another we\'re
going to try to protect the continuation of that contract but the
funding does get a little tricky and we do have to fund every year and
we have to try to coordinate the effort to fund for the next year. So it
does get a little tricky.\
\
J. Sherman: Also have option years. Let\'s say you have option years for
this year, then we wouldn\'t exercise the next year\'s option because
that\'s our out. You wouldn\'t have to terminate.\
\
D. Bickler: What you\'re talking about, St. George, is not a termination
at all. Any other questions?\
\
Caller: Is there such a thing as mutual termination?\
\
D. Bickler: No \-- well, give me an example.\
\
J. Sherman: They both want out.\
\
D. Bickler: Can you give me an example?\
\
Caller: Yeah, exactly, John hit the nail on the head, if for some reason
both parties want to get out of the contract.\
\
D. Bickler: Well, ultimately what \-- what that becomes is a termination
for convenience where the government is breaching the contract. You can,
however, have a no cost termination for convenience if the contractor
agrees to that. But you can\'t just \-- you don\'t just walk away and
nobody is at fault. When you terminate somebody has to take the blame,
and occasionally you can do it as a no cost.\
\
L. Maestas: Denise, to further answer her question, contractors have
absolutely no right in that area. The sole right is reserved for the
government.\
\
D. Bickler: Very good point. Thank you, Lou. Yeah, just very good point.
We\'ll leave it at that. Anything else? Lou, I\'m going to turn \--\
\
Caller: I\'ve got a question, Denise. If you have an 8A vendor on GSA
contract and there might be even two or three of them, do you have to
put it out for competition?\
\
D. Bickler: An 8A vendor on GSA contract?\
\
Caller: Yes.\
\
D. Bickler: Yes, you have to put it out \--\
\
J. Sherman: First of all \-- hi, Howie, John. First of all, under GSA
schedule federal supply, they don\'t have set asides. There\'s no \--
it\'s illegal actually to set aside to any small business classification
under a schedule. So if \-- you\'re talking annals and orange, I believe
\--\
\
Caller: John, some of the schedules have 8A designations on them.\
\
J. Sherman: Well, you can\'t set aside a schedule buy to any of the
business classifications, if you read the FAR. So \-- if you want to do
that, the way it\'s handled is you just direct your quotes to go to
those classifications of vendors. So you just send it to 8As if that\'s
what you want to do. I guess it\'s more of a \-- you know, how you title
or wrap up that package.\
\
L. Maestas: John, I think first and foremost it\'s a federal supply
schedule. After that you can be kind of flexible as far as how you\'re
going to get the rest of the vendors in place, but it is first a federal
supply or GSA buy. After that, the other things are secondary and the
\-- in the acquisition.\
\
D. Bickler: So, Lou, would you talk about \--\
\
Caller: So if you have under a GSA an IDIQ contract and on that IDIQ all
those contractors just happen to be 8As and you get into a contract with
one of those contractors, you\'re actually on a GSA IDIQ contract or are
you conforming to 8A \--\
\
D. Bickler: You\'re on an 8A \--\
\
J. Sherman: You\'re referencing their GSA schedule number. So it would
be against the GSA schedule and not the 8A program. Separate and
distinct \--\
\
D. Bickler: It\'s a GSA bits that happens to be an 8A business \--\
\
Caller: Well, in the first contract amendment goes out during bid then
and eliminates all reference to the IDIQ contract, then what?\
\
J. Sherman: You\'re saying before the contract was awarded and you\'re
still in the solicitation phase?\
\
Caller: Yes, in the solicitation phase then an amendment was written to
\-- that eliminated any reference to IDIQ contract or the GSA.\
\
J. Sherman: Then you\'re working back with \-- sound like you want to
work with the SBA\'s 8A program. How that works, before you could make
an apardon you have to get a letter of offering, there may be the
tri-agreement. , but sure, I guess you could take it from a schedule
procurement to an 8A.\
\
D. Bickler: But you would be canceling your requirement and starting
from scratch. It\'s either a schedule buy, and once you get into that
it\'s a schedule buy, and if you decide you don\'t want to buy off
schedule, you just cancel that requirement altogether, you start over
completely from scratch and then enter into whatever other arena you
were going into.\
\
J. Sherman: Sounds like you may have had a situation where you started
off on a scheduled buy and then you found out through that process that
they were 8As or an 8A available to meet your requirements. Is that kind
of what\'s happened here? It doesn\'t matter \--\
\
Caller: What happened was GSA was going to have cost \-- cost us more
funding to utilize GSA, therefore we went away from utilizing them and
had an agreement with GSA to be able to do so. GSA does charge .75 of
1%, I believe, it\'s called their industrial feet and you might have
negotiated lower labor rates under an 8A. I\'m not certain. I think you
\-- maybe doing a little more market research we were talking about
earlier, you might have found out some of this stuff and you wouldn\'t
have had to stop and started your procurement process.\
\
D. Bickler: Thanks for those calls and we\'re going to move onto Lou and
contract closeout.\
\
L. Maestas: We\'re kind of getting ready to wind her down. Bear with us
for just a little longer. Anyway, not withstanding the last module when
we talked about defaults and disputes, let\'s just assume that your
contract was finished on time with excellent quality. The work has been
completed, accepted and the final payment has been made. The contract is
now ready for final closeout. For construction contracts, you should
ford all final payrolls and contract tire ease, further Moore, the FAR
requires that the evaluation of the contractor\'s performance be
submitted with contracts over \$100,000. We now have available to us
some of the new online systems that house information on contractor
performance government-wide. At this point in time we are asking CORs to
complete their reports machine annually, more or less, and return them
to the Contracting Officer who will enter those \-- them in the
contractors performance system or past performance information retrieval
system. These databases become very valuable to us doing \-- during
source selection and in helping us ensure that we are getting qualified
and competent contractors. Does anybody have any questions regarding
this mat center.\
\
D. Bickler: Well, we\'ve come to the end of the information we wanted to
present to you today. We sincerely apologize for the technical delays
that we had that were outside of our control. We hope we got those
handled as quickly as we could for you. We appreciate your patience in
sitting for the extra length of time that you did. John, do you have any
closing comments quickly?\
\
J. Sherman: I would just like to say this has been great, great
participation. You guys, sound like you really know what you\'re doing
out there and that\'s good for us to know. I hope you liked the format
this time around where you could get an appreciation of the whole
procurement process and what you play as far as your role and how
valuable you are in that process.\
\
L. Maestas: I just want to say I know I was in Wyoming for several years
and I worked with many of you CORs out there, you guys were excellent.
Now in the business center I\'m beginning \-- getting more and more
acquainted with other contracting officers representatives across the
different states. I look forward to working with you all and hope you
enjoyed the training. Thanks.\
\
D. Bickler: And thank you again for all of your questions and your
input. The training is boring for us if you don\'t participate. We
greatly appreciate it. And I thank my co-workers who covered my desk for
the four weeks we spent here putting this together for you. Once we\'re
done here, don\'t forget to go back to the course management tool online
at the national training center to complete your test. You should all
have the ICON in your desktop in Lotus Notes. Click on it and take the
post course assessment. With a passing score of 70% you will print your
certificate. Should you not pass the first time, giver it another try.
Make sure you pass a copy of your certificate along to the contracting
office you work with so they know you once again are recertified for the
next three years. If you have any questions at all that we didn\'t get
to or if you need some clarity, please contact John, Lou or I at our
addresses listed in the beginning of the study guide. We also want to
thank Linda Johnson and Kim Menning and Kim Flanders for all their work
and, Madelyn \-- add Marilyn for their help. Thank again and good-bye
from Phoenix.