STUDENT 1 (Zabi):

The government procurement process begins with established statutes and regulations, and according to FAR 1.102, the vision of FAR is to “deliver on a timely basis the best value product or service to the customer, while maintaining the public’s trust and fulfilling public policy objective.” Considering the far clause, government agencies defaulted to the lowest price technically acceptable (LPTA) source selection strategy rather than the tradeoff approach due to the growing budget constraints set forth by congress.

Request for Proposal outlines the evaluation and bid acceptance criteria and bids are evaluated according to the technical approach to successfully implement the requirements of the award considering the quality and appropriateness, past performance, and best value. The evaluation process and source selection process are determined based on the above criteria’s, however, issues and problems that impact acquisitions in today’s timeframe are budget constraints. The administration is expecting to do more with less which is LPTA source selection.

LPTA can be beneficial toward contracts that to no require too much need for innovation. LPTA enforces contractors to make products as cheaply as you can, as long as it meets minimum requirements.

A bid protest is a challenge to the award or proposed award of a contract for the procurement of goods and services or a challenge to the terms of a solicitation. Only interested parties who are bidders may file protests. The protest is filed against procurement actions by federal government agencies. The bidder protesting the award must prove that the government agency evidently legally violated the rules set forth for the procurement process or didn’t evaluated the bid proposal properly.

https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1026098.pdf

https://www.gao.gov/decisions/bidpro/bid/protest.html

STUDENT 2 (Jeremy):

I hope everyone is doing well and staying safe, as we see a spike in our current environment, we need to remember we are all in it together. This week has been just another opportunity to see the validity of what and how important government contracting can be, and the impact it takes on the tax burden of the American people. This week we are discussing source selection and contract awards, in addition to our interpretation or example of a bid protest.

Forum Question:

1. Describe issues or problems related to source selection and contract award that could impact acquisitions in today’s timeframe.

-During the source selection process there should be consideration, carefullyinfect, to the number of requirements for evaluation. Additionally, a total evaluated price is determined for each offeror. Followed with the source selection authority (SSA) will award the higher costs. The contract award is negatively impacted by the lack of clarity in the acquisitions process and the unknown unallowable costs, that should have been included to the contract. Each of these factors affect the contract award drastically, and should be clearly stated in the solicitation per (FAR 15.304(d)). The timeframe that may or may not be affected is wholly up to the problems or issues that come to light through the process, each should be handles appropriately an efficiently as the project progresses.

2. Describe with an example of how one would formulate a bid protest.

“A bid protest is defined as a supported challenge to the actual award or proposed award of a government contract for goods and services or a challenge to the stated solicitation terms for a federal contract” (CFR 21.1 GAO Bid Protest Letter, Format and Requirements. 2020). The goal of the process is to provide anopportunity for a contracting company to protest the award or procurement that is not satisfactory to award. It must be done in a timely manner, but it givesoptions for an appeal basically to the contract the bidding company was not awarded.

References

CFR 21.1 GAO Bid Protest Letter, Format and Requirements. (2020). Retrieved from https://gaoprotest.us/bid-protest-letter/

Grady, C. M. (2011). ACQUISITION, TECHNOLOGY, AND LOGISTICS. Retrieved from https://www.dau.edu/guidebooks/Shared%20Documents%...