1. LPTA – The impact of LPTA is not fruitful to the Government or to Industry. We have seen multiple times where the lowest price won, but could not be executed, especially into the option years.
IMPACT STATEMENT/LESSON – Carefully consider the ramifications on the result of using LPTA for evaluation award. According to FAR Clauses the government must provide as much information as deemed possible for Industry to access the impact and provide a solicitation to support the scope of the work. Giving milestones and deliverables without actual man hours is not enough. We have found that often only the incumbent would know for example how far along a milestone is in its lifecycle. Going after the lowest price is not always the lowest, especially if the government has to take time to react to recompetes when the contract is not performed or change orders to get all of the requirements completed.
2. Forecast/Draft RFPs/Industry Days - We should be able to know what opportunities are likely to come out months before they come out at a minimum. Government - Industry Team - We feel it is advantageous to sit down with CO's and stakeholders up until the time of the final RFP release and be able to discuss with them the actual scope, OCI issues, KPPs and requirements, possible contract vehicles, type of award, and the tradeoff analysis they will be using WRT awarding the contract.
IMPACT STATEMENT/LESSON - By reviewing draft RFPs and holding industry days Industry can understand the needs of the government, help to word the requirements with specifics and save time to rewrite and send out amendments once it is released. This will also help Industry to plan and allocate resources to gather the effective SMEs to the proposal process.
3. Sources Sought, RFIs, .... We always use our resources to respond to Sources Sought and RFIs without any follow-up no feedback received.
IMPACT STATEMENT/LESSON – By having any type of feedback or acknowledgement from responding to a sources sought it gains insight into what the governments intensions may be. Would be helpful with businesses to monitor our tracking lists and to maintain an interest in an opportunity. The government would then have a fairer competition when the RFP does come out.
4. Qualifications of Key Personnel -  Qualifications and Certifications are sometimes very restrictive for opportunities. This often restricts qualified personnel to only the incumbent.
IMPACT STATEMENT/LESSON – Having some flexibility on certifications, perhaps giving 3-6 months after award o achieve these certs.

2. POC For Further Questions: Patti Hamilton
Q&A Process/Amendments/Timelines – The government often publishes solicitations with unreasonable timeframes to get our due diligence done and submit a qualified proposal. We’ve adapted to this. We all need to be mindful of the time on both sides to get this solicitation and proposal to the finish line.
During the Question and Answer timelines we submit our questions on time, but it may take until the day before or day of proposal submission for the questions to be answered.
Questions are not fairly answered. We understand some questions are not fully compliant, but we often get answers such as “Refer to the PWS”, back to the section we’re questioning.
We often want to know if not defined in the scope of work how many FTEs you are expecting to fulfill these requirements. The answer is often – “The contractor should evaluate the requirements and estimate the number of full time employees needed”.
IMPACT STATEMENT/LESSON - By giving an estimated level of effort of what the government needs/expects we can price the proposal, get qualified candidates and submit schedules that are more inline with the scope of work. We have often been faced with submitting for example one FTE on a proposal, we are awarded, but at the kick-off meeting the Commanding Officer is shocked because he/she was expecting two people to support the effort, and everyone is hustling to make changes and adjustments. Not fair to the customer or the company.
Upon answering questions an amendment should go out right away. We’ve often seen questions answer or not until the due date for the proposal and this always constitutes an amendment to be issued which creates additional changes to our proposals.
IMPACT STATEMENT/LESSON - Every amendment needs the SF1449 signed to show you saw the changes. If you already have your proposal package ready, or in some cases sent, you must redo the Volume where you need to add that signed SF This is a huge burden on Industry to try to regroup, perhaps redo multiple copies of binders and either reship or hand deliver at the last-minute worrying that it will get there on time.
POC For Further Questions:
Patti Hamilton
Hamilton Consulting Solutions Corp
Phone: