Business Practices

What Do I Do? What you do on a project is determined by the contract Contract usually contains a “scope of services” that defines what is to be done and how The contract and the scope are created by the buyer of the services, i.e., a government agency or their delegate If you work for the government, you may need to write the scope If you work in industry, you may need to comply with the scope Both parties need to understand and negotiate the costs

What? How does the proposal and contract process work? How do you decide what needs to be done and what it costs? Depends on nature of project (undertaking) and legal requirements. Some projects are exclusively for planning: ICRMPs, Predictive models, Historic Contexts, etc Others include fieldwork, analysis, curation, etc Requirements that need to be taken into account include: Laws, e.g., NHPA NEPA Curation regulation Federal agency regulations and policies State concerns and regulations Indian concerns and regulations General public’s concerns If you are the government official, you need to figure out what to do, discuss it with the state and tribal officials Think about goals and methods Government official should make sure that the gov’t gets good value for its money It’s very important that the government have professional archaeologists on staff to make sure that the contracts are properly formulated and the contractors do their work properly If you are the contractor, you need to make sure you can do the requested work for the amount negotiated The more detailed the plan, the better, given, of course, that you can’t predict everything

What do you need to do? If you’re the government official You need to understand the project and what needs to be done You need to choose or hire a contractor You need to pick the kind of contract You need to write a scope of work that Explains the construction project Includes the plans and drawings Specifies exactly what you want the contractor to do, including analysis and preparation of collections for curation Includes “deliverables” and a schedule You need to prepare a government cost estimate reflecting your estimate of the costs of the work requested

If you’re the contractor You need to understand the project and what is being requested You need to develop a bid for the work based on your knowledge of the area and the work requested You need to understand the type of contract offered You need to negotiate enough money to do the job

Types of government contracts Federal Government contracting is governed by the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Title 48 CFR Long and extremely complicated regulation Currently (2014) 1889 pages long Very few people fully understand it despite extensive classes that are taught about it Lots of case law The Contracting Officer is usually a high official The archaeologist is often the CO Technical Representative Simple competitive low bid Best Value contracts A&E contracts Indefinite delivery indefinite quantity contracts (IDIQ)

IDIQ contracts Government prepares cost estimate Write scope of work with background, purpose, work to be performed, deliverables, standards, what the government will supply, and usually some boilerplate, etc Send scope of work to contractors Contractor submits bid The bid preparation is not billable, It is overhead Bid includes hours Bid includes responsive research design Has to include all costs, up to and including curation Hourly rates (fully loaded) do not basically represent salaries They include all the costs of doing business Then, government negotiates with contractor Contracts can be modified if the scope needs to change, for instance, if there is an unexpected find or if the plans change Some contractors try to live off contract modifications Low ball bidding is awfully dangerous-living on the edge! How many contracts can you lose money on before you are bankrupt? Federal contracting officers usually try to use an A&E contract or a “best value” contract rather than a low bid IF SEALED BID: evaluate technical qualifications, then prices in second step

What do you do in practice to prepare a cost estimate or bid? Need to visit the site or project area Need to understand the soils and geomorphology Why? Need to do some background research If the contract calls for visiting and evaluating known sites, you need to know how many are known How do you find that out?