Contract Management Association (NCMA)

In the federal government market place, knowledge and understand for success. Well, there are few better sources than the National Contract Management Association (NCMA) and their monthly publication Contract Management magazine (CM).

National Contract Management Association (NCMA)
www.ncmahq.org
NCMA was formed in 1959 to foster the professional growth and educational advancement of the contract management profession. NCMA’s is that enterprises will succeed through improved buyer-seller relationships based on common values, practices, and professional standards.

Contract Management Magazine
http://www.ncmahq.org/Publications/CMMIssueList.cfm?navItemNumber=626
Contract Management is NCMA’s flagship publication – a monthly, full-color magazine that is NCMA’s number-one member benefit. Not only do members receive this publication each month, they also can access past articles of interest through our Contract Management Learning Center. Written and edited specifically for contract management professionals, and established in 1977, CM provides comprehensive reporting on current issues and trends relevant to both public and private sectors.

GSA Schedule Contractor Team Arrangements vs. Prime Contractor/Subcontractor Arrangements

GSA Schedule Contractor Team Arrangements (CTAs) differ from Prime Contractor/Subcontractor Arrangements.

In prime/sub arrangements, the relationship is very tightly defined and controlled by the prime contractor; whereas, in CTAs, the roles and responsibilities are defined by the team, as accepted by the government.

Here are the five (5) key differences:

1.
Contractor Team Arrangement (CTA): Each team member must have a GSA Schedule contract.

Prime Contractor/Subcontractor Arrangement: Only the prime contractor must have a GSA Schedule contract.

2.
Contractor Team Arrangement (CTA): Each team member is responsible for duties addressed in the CTA document.

Prime Contractor/Subcontractor Arrangement: The prime contractor cannot delegate responsibility for performance to subcontractors.

3.
Contractor Team Arrangement (CTA): Each team member has privity of contract with the government and can interact directly with the government.

Prime Contractor/Subcontractor Arrangement: Only the prime contractor has privity of contract with the government and can interact with the government. The prime contractor is responsible for its subcontracting activities. (Ordering activities are encouraged to specify in the Request for Quotation (RFQ) that the use of subcontractors requires prior approval by the ordering activities.)

4.
Contractor Team Arrangement (CTA): The ordering activity is invoiced at each team member's unit prices or hourly rates as agreed in the task or delivery order or GSA Schedule BPA.

Prime Contractor/Subcontractor Arrangement: The ordering activity is invoiced in accordance with the prime contractor's GSA Schedule contract, including any applicable price reductions.

5.
Contractor Team Arrangement (CTA): Total solutions, otherwise impossible under individual GSA Schedule contracts, can be put together quickly and easily.

Prime Contractor/Subcontractor Arrangement: The prime contractor is limited to the supplies and/or services awarded on its GSA Schedule contract.

GSA Schedule Contractor Team Arrangement (CTA)

A GSA Schedule Contractor Team Arrangement (CTA) is an arrangement between two or more GSA Schedule contractors to work together to meet agency requirements. The CTA document is a written agreement between team members detailing the responsibilities of each team member. The CTA allows the contractor to meet the government agency needs by providing a total solution that combines the supplies and/or services from the team members' separate GSA Schedule contracts. It permits contractors to complement each other's capabilities to compete for orders for which they may not independently qualify. A customer benefits from a CTA by buying a solution rather than making separate buys from various contractors.

The CML Reading Strategy

The CML Reading Strategy

When examining a solicitation to determine whether or not to bid on it (a bid/no-bid decision), employ the CML Reading Strategy.

Read Section C for a broad-based description of the work, which is called the statement of the work.

Read Section M for a list of the value-ranked evaluation factors the government will employ when deciding to award the contract.

Read Section L for the instructions on how to make a responsive offer to the government.

Working Lunch Series 1

We'll bring the information. You bring your lunch.

SBA Subcontracting Opportunities Directory

This is a most excellent resource!

The SBA Subcontracting Opportunities Directory provides an up-to-date list of companies that are currently looking for subcontractors to assist them in current or upcoming federal projects.

Here's how it is done. Per FAR regulations, the SBA obtains the names and addresses for this listing from subcontracting plans that are submitted to the Government when a large business receives a Federal contract over $500,000 (over $1 million in construction). SBA updates the directory on a regular basis and makes necessary changes when an incorrect listing is brought to its attention.

http://www.sba.gov/aboutsba/sbaprograms/gc/contacts/gc_subcontracts_opportunities.html

Prosperous. Hunting.

ARRA Spending by State - Dazzling Number$

ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act) Spending by State as reported by the Wall Street Journal:

http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/info-STIMULUS0903.html

These are some dazzling numbers.

WSJ - Recovery Act Spending: Shovel-Ready?

Shovels Are There, but the Readiness May Not Be
"As the Administration's Stimulus Plan Gets Under Way, Money for Road Repairs Hits the Streets -- and Some Bumps"
The Wall Street Journal | By Michael M. Phillips

North Middleton Township, Pa. -- On a warm afternoon last month, a week before the stimulus bill became law, Vice President Joseph Biden strolled out onto a narrow, 79-year-old bridge over the Conodoguinet Creek. He poked his shoe through a hole in a rotting girder, tore off a piece of rusty metal, and examined a crack in the concrete deck.

"Is this a shovel-ready project?" Mr. Biden asked Scott Christie, the state transportation official charged with deploying economic-stimulus money.

"It's ready to go," Mr. Christie answered. "I literally have the plans in the car right now."

It turns out, though, that shovel-readiness is in the eye of the beholder. Soon after his visit, Mr. Biden found out that his model stimulus project wouldn't see a shovel for almost four more months, possibly longer, knowing how such timetables slip. In North Middleton, a White House eager for action had run up against locals eager to avoid disruption. The locals won.

States are quickly assembling their construction wish lists. But it takes time to advertise for contractors, collect bids, check the numbers, pick a winner and get work underway. A typical paving project -- easy roadwork -- takes close to three months from the time the money is approved to the arrival of work boots on the ground, according to the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials. "It is not an instant process," says a spokesman.

President Barack Obama and Mr. Biden know their unprecedented $787 billion emergency spending package has to put hard hats on America's streets soon -- or their administration risks losing credibility. On March 3, the president announced the release of the first $28 billion for road and bridge projects. A New Dealish logo to identify construction financed with stimulus money is ready.

Last month, even before the bill became law, Mr. Biden turned to Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell to find the perfect illustration of just how fast the money could produce results.

Mr. Rendell was happy to oblige. Every two weeks he receives a confidential report from Pennsylvania's Department of Labor listing factory start-ups and jobs created, alongside plant closings and layoffs. One of the latest reports lists 2,941 positions lost, and 1,143 created. "I'm almost scared to open them," Gov. Rendell says.

To help Mr. Biden, the governor asked his Department of Transportation to come up with a list of projects. Mr. Christie had some paving in mind. But the Route 34 bridge, which had been on the state's to-do list for more than a decade, had infrastructural sex appeal. Road resurfacing just isn't "as glamorous as seeing a hole in a bridge," says Mr. Christie.

North Middleton, with a population of less than 12,000, is a bedroom community for Harrisburg and Carlisle. The bridge is a key corridor for commuters and an important access way for the North Middleton Volunteer Fire Co., whose main station is about 1,000 feet from the bridge.

Mr. Biden flew to Pennsylvania on Feb. 11. Security agents closed the bridge to traffic before his motorcade arrived.

"What are you going to show me that we're going to be using the stimulus money for?" Mr. Biden asked Mr. Christie that day.

"I've got a great example of a bad bridge," Mr. Christie responded.

The state lists the bridge as "fracture critical," meaning that if one of the two metal support girders broke, the entire structure would collapse. The green-painted girders are perforated with rust, the deck buckled with cracks. Putting up a new bridge would cost about $1.8 million and generate 50 to 60 jobs, according to state estimates.

On the bridge, Messrs. Christie and Rendell told Mr. Biden that they expected to start demolition in April.

From their yellow ranch home -- the first house on the north side of the bridge -- Creedin Cornman, 84 years old, and his wife, Reba, 77, noticed the commotion. Mr. Cornman remembers a rainy night in the 1960s, when he fish-tailed his International Scout and hit one of the girders. The door flew open and his poodle escaped. "I left my mark on that bridge," Mr. Cornman recalls with a hint of pride. (The poodle was fine).

The stimulus package "sounds good," says Mr. Cornman. "You have to start somewhere."

Mrs. Cornman isn't so sure. "I don't know -- it's a lot of money," she says.

On the day of Mr. Biden's visit, Chester "Chet" Schlusser, 76, watched from the bed of his pickup truck while a Secret Service agent kept watch on his yard. The day before, the state had written Mr. Schlusser a letter offering him $8,200 for a sliver of his property to make room for the new bridge. The government included a blue brochure titled, "When Your Land is Needed for Transportation Purposes." Mr. Schlusser says he's inclined to sell the parcel.

He worked in bridge construction for 10 years, and, stimulus or not, doubts the project will get going quickly. "People aren't geared up to start on a moment's notice," he says.

On Feb. 18, the day after Mr. Obama signed the stimulus bill into law, a Biden aide called the state's Department of Transportation to see when the ground-breaking would take place.

But April wasn't looking likely. Unbeknownst to the officials gathered on the bridge, at a public meeting on the project the previous summer, the head of school transportation had requested that construction not overlap with more than one school year. Two bus routes for the local high school crossed the bridge, and the school district wanted to minimize the disruption that a long detour would cause. The only way to make that work was to begin construction after school let out on June 10.

The state agreed to add language to the construction contract pushing back the start date. It plans to seek bids early next month, open them on April 30, review them for a few weeks and issue a "notice to proceed" by early to mid-June. Work could then commence on the site and be completed by year's end.

"To do it much sooner would be to go against what we've been trying to do all along, which is hold it to a single school season," says Timothy Bolden, of Gibson-Thomas Engineering Co., the new bridge's designer.

News that construction would have to wait for months came as a shock to the White House.

"The vice president was impatient," says a senior White House official. "He wanted it done."

At a White House event on Feb. 23, Mr. Biden brought up the delay with Mr. Rendell. The governor, unaware of the school issue, reassured the vice president that the project was on track.

"America didn't get in this mess overnight, and the cannot turn it all around overnight," says Annie Tomasini, a Biden spokeswoman. "But we are moving forward with unprecedented speed."

On Feb. 27, Messrs. Biden and Rendell met again on the sidelines of an event in Philadelphia. This time, Mr. Rendell confirmed that construction wouldn't begin until late June.

"If we want to be smackers and make sure stimulus rolls over everything, we could have started it in April," says Mr. Rendell. "We acceded to the request of the school district."

Still, he says, "I wish it hadn't been the bridge the vice president walked on."

Source: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123722072120443301.html

CCR - Change In Login Procedures

ATTENTION EXISTING USERS: CCR login procedures have changed. If you currently have a CCR record, but do not have a user ID and password, you will not be able to access your record until you create a user account. We have extended the deadline to make this change to December 21, 2009. You will need to create your user account prior to your renewal date.

Please take a moment to review the User Account Guide before getting started. An FAQ page is also available to help you through the process.

Obama Announces Plan to Aid Small Businesses

Obama Announces Plan to Aid Small Businesses
By Helene Cooper
March 16, 2009, 1:43 pm
NYTimes.

Seeking to ease the credit freeze for small businesses, the Obama administration will inject $15 billion into the industry, buying up securities that are linked to small-business loans.

In announcing the latest cylinder of his government’s economic recovery effort, President Obama said the infusion was needed because “small business owners are really struggling” because their credit lines had been pulled.

“This is still just going to be a first step in what is going to be a continuing effort to make sure that people get credit out there,” Mr. Obama said in an appearance in the East Room of the White House.

Administration officials said that by the end of March the Treasury Department would begin making direct purchases of securities backed by loans guaranteed by the Small Business Administration, and would purchase new securities. Even small businesses with good credit histories have seen lending dry up, the White House said in a news release that announced the new initiatives.

http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/16/obama-announces-plan-to-aid-small-businesses/?hp

The Importance of Having An Up-To-Date CCR Registration

From a conversation with high level Department of Defense procurement official on Tuesday, March 10, 2009.

"Ma'am, just a quick question that I already know the answer to, but just want to, again, confirm. When contracting officers are looking a vendor, it not CCR the first place they go?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Sekerak, CCR is the first place they go. I go back 34 years and I remember a time when contractors had to register at each and every location that they sought to do business. CCR erased all that can gave us a central database that allows us to search by NAICS code, socio-economic status, location, and on and on. It really saves so much time. So, it is the first place contracting officers look and that is why it is necessary for all contractors to always absolutely keep their registration up-to-date. If they add a product or service. Add it - update CCR immediately."