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Getting it on contract: five principles for success

By Maj. Aaron Boyd 2d Contracting Squadron commander

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As a customer, the contracting process can seem confusing and sometimes frustrating. This can be the case for a customer who is not adequately trained and educated on contracting requirements and the steps leading up to the contracting process.

There are many common pitfalls along the way. Most of the time, these pitfalls can be avoided with proper training and guidance from your friendly contracting professional.

The purpose of this article is to get you, the customer, appropriately trained and started down the right path for success in contracting. Education and training are the primary weapons to combat these issues. I offer five principles to combat confusion and frustration dealing with the myriad of contracting laws, regulations, policies and processes.

The first principle is to develop your requirement. No one knows your requirement better than you do. That being said, there are certain documents you must develop in order to get your requirement on contract. When you are developing your requirement, it is important to ask yourself a few questions about what it is you intend to purchase.

Ask yourself, "What exactly do I want to buy?" This can be called an item description for a supply item or a statement of work for a service or construction. In either case, the document does the same thing. It outlines exactly what you want the contractor to do.

Are there specifications? Specifications are shortcuts referring to an engineering study, regulation or policy that pertains to your item or service. These shortcuts tell the contractors what they have to do as a minimum to meet your requirements.

Have you done any market research? At a minimum, your organization should be conducting periodic market research to determine what products are available commercially and what companies are available so we can structure contracts and ensure competition. Most organizations will wait until a requirement is identified before they conduct market research. The important thing is that market research is being conducted.

How much does it cost? This is called the independent government estimate. This estimate can be determined any number of ways: previous contracts for similar effort, price lists, current contracts, etc.

Caution, this government estimate should not be determined by calling the vendor directly and asking for a quote. As a rule, any communication with a contractor should be coordinated through your contracting office.

Who are the known suppliers? Is there more than one supplier? Is there more than one manufacturer? Is there a manufacturing lead time for the item being purchased?

The answers to these questions will tell us if we are in a competitive environment or a sole source environment. When contracting for an item or service, we are required by law to compete requirements to the maximum extent possible. Through competition, we are able to achieve the best value for the government at least cost to us. That being said, not every item can be competed. These items or services are considered sole source items and will require a higher level of approval and documentation.

What is the schedule? When do you need it by?

Unfortunately, yesterday is not a realistic answer to this question. The contracting processes take time to be done properly and to ensure best value to the government. Although we do our best to accommodate last minute requirements, it is best to plan ahead to avoid a lapse in service or lack of a critical item.

Once your requirement is developed, you will need money. In its simplest form, contracting is nothing more than a checkbook and an item being purchased. This leads us to Principle 2, which is "show me the money."

The vehicle you use to pay for your requirement is called several different things. It can be called a purchase request, a military interdepartmental purchase request, a Form 9, a Form 616 or many other terms depending on the branch of service or government agency. Whatever it is called, it is ultimately a check or commitment to pay for goods and services. You will need to work closely with your resource advisor to make sure you are capturing the requirement properly and to ensure your money is certified. This certification is essential, because it gets the contracting engine humming.

Remember, our contracting clock and processes do not start until we receive a certified PR.

This certification is obtained by the certifying official in the comptroller squadron. They are certifying the funds are of the right purpose, amount and year for the item or service being purchased.

Once you get your money and your requirement right, it will be in your best interest to develop a plan of some sort. Even the simplest contract actions should have a plan of attack or strategy.

The third principle is developing an acquisition plan or your plan of attack.

It is critical to plan out the basics of your acquisition with your resource advisor and contracting officer. At a minimum, your plan should cover who, what, when, where, and why. This verbiage should be captured in your PR package. The contracting officer will take what you developed and add the acquisition strategy to it. The acquisition strategy plan will cover the details of your plan and provide further detail about how we are going to purchase the item and your evaluation criteria.

Evaluation criteria are the salient features of the item or service that are believed to be the most important. These criteria will typically focus around the cost, schedule and performance parameters of the requirement. Ultimately, they will be used to determine the winner of the competition.

Please note, we need to be careful when we craft these evaluation criteria. We cannot focus too narrowly on a specific product or service that is offered by one contractor and not another. This would limit competition and reduce our ability to achieve best value.

The fourth principle is to communicate with your contracting officer, not the contractor.

At this point, your funds have been certified, your requirement has been properly defined, your acquisition has been strategized and your evaluation criterion has been developed. You are now ready to solicit for offers. At this point, your contracting officer will draft up a solicitation and advertise within the contractor community. The contractors will have 30 days to put a proposal together for evaluation.

Do not communicate with potential contractors during the solicitation stage. Only communicate requirements through the contracting officer.

In contracting, we have the duty to maintain a level playing field and ensure fairness throughout the contracting process. If we are communicating about our requirement with one contractor and not another, we may be unknowingly giving a contractor a leg up on the competition. We resolve this situation by controlling the flow of information to the contractor community and ensuring no contractor achieves an informational advantage. All information exchanges should be funneled through your contracting officer.

The fifth principle is managing the contract.

Finally, we have received the proposals, evaluated in accordance with our evaluation criteria and we have awarded the contract.

Now the real work begins...managing the contract. This is the most critical part of the acquisition process. Is the contractor performing to the statement of work, the schedule and the specification? These are the key documents that you spent numerous hours putting together in the beginning of this process. In short, is the contractor making good on their promise to accomplish this work? If they are not, you need to communicate these issues to your contracting officer so that we can remedy these performance issues. In some cases, we can withhold payment to ensure contractual compliance until the issue is resolved.

I hope these five principles will help you navigate through the contracting and acquisition processes and make your job easier.

If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to stop by the 2d Contracting Squadron at 41 Vandenberg Ave, or call 456-1928 to discuss your requirements.