For certain contracts, the government intends to award an order legitimately to a single contractor. Yet, contractors frequently find the customer inappropriately going through a competition when a direct assignment may be the most appropriate action.

Continue to emphasize discretion for contracting officers to allow directed awards for individual orders, if any, of the following criteria are met:

1) Only one capable contractor exists for the specialized services;

2) the award is an integrally-related follow-on to a previous competition;

3) cost of administration is prohibitive; or

4) a time urgency exists.

A provision in the solicitation should be required such as“task orders may be issued by the government through the use of competition by soliciting offers from awardees, or unilaterally on a directed source basis.”

As original multiple award contracts are awarded and a group of contractors have the opportunity to compete for or perform an order, an expectation about orders is developed by the contractor. Often the government’s actions on these orders can vary significantly from expectations in areas such as the nature and mix of the work planned over time, procedures for“competing”individual orders and the number and value of the orders to be issued. If a contractor was aware more fully of the actions the government would take, appropriate resource planning can occur by the contractor and a better customer/vendor partnership result.

Require procedures for issuing orders be clearly outlined in the original multiple award solicitation including the method for selection on orders, the number and value of orders expected to be placed, and the sponsors best description of the nature, mix and timing of future task orders.

Frequently, the government requires extensive proposals for individual delivery/task orders, rather than the simple, low cost, process envisioned by the legislative drafters and regulatory designers. Some agencies require 50% or more of the effort of a full proposal. This adds costs and administrative burden for the contractor and the government.

Strong guidance, supported by best practices, needs to be issued urging that simple proposals be used by government customers to select a company to perform a task. A best practice model should outline standard sections such as technical approach, past performance, cost/price, and ways to evaluate via shortened proposals including oral presentations instead of formal proposals and page limitations.

Contracting officers should be urged by OFPP to follow FAR 16.505(b) that states:“The contracting officer need not contact each of the multiple awardees under the contract before selecting a contractor to perform an order, if the contracting officer has information available to ensure that each awardee is provided a fair opportunity to be considered for each order.”

Some government customers are selecting among companies to perform orders based on low cost rather than by best value. In light of the specialization and high level of expertise of services typically performed through task order contracts, low cost as a selection method is entirely inappropriate. A best-value method focusing on factors such as available personnel, technical capability, proposed solution, or past performance can be expected to provide better results for the government, and thus should be used.

A policy for utilizing a best-value selection method needs to be issued by OFPP as the standard practice for all orders.

Contractors have experienced different interpretations concerning costs related to competition for individual task/delivery orders under TO or IDIQ contracts. The problem occurs when a proposal or“Task Plan”is required from contractors to compete to task/delivery orders, and is compounded for advisory and assistance services, where competition isrequired for each orderover a particular value prescribed by law. In many instances, the government will not reimburse these legitimate costs directly. This would suggest inconsistent cost accounting treatment contrary to the Federal Acquisition Regulation (Part 31.205-18, defining B&P costs, excludes those costs“required in the performance of a contract.”) and the Cost Accounting Standards Board (CAS 402, interpretation 1, 1976, which suggests that proposal costs incurred“pursuant to a specific requirement of an existing contract”can be charged direct.)

Ensure a consistent method, mutually agreed to by the contracting officer and government auditors, for contractors to bill and collect costs directly associated with responding to an order.

A provision in the solicitation and resultant contract should be required such as:“Contractors may collect proposal preparation costs as a direct cost to the contract. The method for collecting these costs will be either as a direct expense to each task order; a direct percentage allocation across all task orders; or if the contract allows for a management task order as a direct cost to the management task order.

Despite guidance to the contrary, some government agencies continue to issue orders through a method of“equitable distribution,”allocation of orders, or placing order ceilings (under which the total value of orders must remain for each contractor). This method is contrary to the intent of the law and represents the worst selection method for task order contracting.

Institutionalize the existing OFPP guidance on this issue, and urge adherence to FAR 16.505(b) that expressly prohibits“allocation”or other methods not fair to all competitors.

Large multiple award task order contracts have the potential of dominating the accessible market for a major area of agency service contracting such as information technology (IT). This is very apparent through a cursory examination of the“mega”IT multiple award contracts that have been awarded by the DoD, DOT, IRS, and HHS among others. Because of this potential for dominance, it becomes very important to carefully address at the procurement planning level, the policy and mechanisms that will be used to assure reasonable visibility, access and competitive opportunity for both small and large (non-small) businesses.

Incorporate, at the procurement planning stage, a clear approach to small and large business participation, with special sensitivity to the fact that the small business participants do not have the same level of resources and infrastructure as large companies to market and propose on individual tasks. This approach should be unambiguously communicated throughout the process, but especially at key stages such as draft RFP, bidders briefing, formal solicitation, and the final contract.

A significant challenge exists to achieve the best balance among the alternative ways of fulfilling strategic information technology objectives - explicitly defined under the Information Technology Management Reform Act (ITMRA). In the new reform environment, IT acquisition strategists and planners can pursue a strategic objective: (1) conventionally through a single contractor system integration vehicle; (2) by adopting a modular (or incremental) approach using a single or multiple contractors to fulfill the objective or; (3) by proceeding with individual tasks under an IDIQ multiple award vehicle where the tasks ultimately may“add up”to achieve the modular or total system objective

Assure that aggressive and meaningful steps are taken to implement the type of mission-driven IT strategic planning discipline envisioned in ITMRA. This planning discipline must include a careful analysis of the type or combination of contract vehicles most appropriate to fulfilling individual strategic objectives.