Streamlining source selection in federal procurement

By Polly Hall and Sarah Todd

The federal acquisition workforce is under increasing pressure from every direction. Despite the ever more integral role of procurement to accomplish our government’s most challenging priorities, the acquisition workforce is consistently called upon to do more with less. Increasingly, federal procurement is used as a force multiplier to support the priorities of different administrations.

These priorities include supporting domestic sourcing, economic development in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, advancing racial equity, modernizing our infrastructure, combatting cyberattacks and addressing climate change. No small set of priorities.

At the same time, an endless cycle of new laws, regulations and acquisition reform initiatives have set in. This has increased the workload on federal contracting officers and increased the training necessary to keep them informed and in compliance. Acquisition professionals are required to navigate a growing body of policy and guidance while simultaneously mitigating the impacts of continuing resolutions on the budget process.

In addition, every year Congress presents us with Title VIII of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), which often includes a glut of procurement reforms, changes and additions. Such complexities add additional pressure to the procurement of goods and services to support execution of critical departmental missions.

The role of the contracting officer (CO) and the business of contracting is changing.¹ Those changes do not lend themselves to business as usual. Many require COs to redirect their time and energies. The acquisition workforce must execute new requirements for compliance, reviews, approvals, clauses and myriad other mandates that are added to federal contract file checklists each year. Each new addition takes precious time from other priorities.

There has never been a more compelling time to reassess our current flexibilities, enlist innovation and technology to find efficiencies, and create a change culture to work smarter, not harder. The burden on the federal acquisition workforce is simply too high to maintain the status quo. Process streamlining will be key to our sustained ability to meet mission and to retain our workforce. It is at this intersection of compliance and innovation that we can identify ways to improve processes and work smarter, not harder.

Process change can be challenging. It permeates multiple levels throughout an acquisition organization and requires leadership support, cross-functional commitment, and operational readiness to achieve. Culture is defined as a way of thinking, behaving or working that exists in a place or organization²—a set of shared experiences over time. As such, acquisition organizations that permit their workforce to gain experience shaping new process models will be able to successfully adopt a more streamlined process for source selection.

Process simplification will not occur solely by promulgating new policy and procedures. It must be accompanied with cultural support to change, and that is where policy and innovation come together to support compliance-based streamlining opportunities. One piece of low hanging fruit, and where we focus this article, is source selection.

 

Rethinking Source Selection

In 2003, respected federal acquisition commentator and author Vernon J. Edwards stated that, “review of protest decisions by the U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) and the literature on government contracting suggests that some agencies fail to design efficient competitive processes…in connection with source selections conducted under Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Part 15, Contracting by Negotiation.”³

The January 2019 final report from the Advisory Panel on Streamlining and Codifying Acquisition Regulations, commonly referred to as the Section 809 Panel, identified 98 recommendations to improve the federal acquisition process.4 Many of these recommendations address the processes by which federal acquisition professionals select sources.

On November 16, 2021, GAO released its Annual Bid Protest Report to Congress for Fiscal year 2021,⁵  identifying the most common grounds for sustained protests. For Fiscal year 2021, those grounds were: 1) unreasonable technical evaluation; 2) flawed discussions; 3) unreasonable cost or price evaluation; and 4) unequal treatment.

Given the range of process issues evidenced in the GAO report, it is useful to examine the current process model that is normalized in federal acquisition for FAR Part 15.3 Source Selection. Rethinking source selection allows the federal acquisition community to explore the potential for process streamlining and opportunities to work smarter, not harder. Process streamlining for FAR 15.3 Source Selection will require cultural adjustments to how the federal acquisition community frames risk reduction and risk management to support improved mission outcomes.

 

Streamlining Federal Source Selection

FAR Part 15.002 (b) explicitly states that, “when contracting in a competitive environment, the procedures of this part are intended to minimize the complexity of the solicitation, the evaluation, and the source selection decision [emphasis added], while maintaining a process designed to foster an impartial and comprehensive evaluation of offerors’ proposals, leading to selection of the proposal representing the best value to the Government.” FAR Part 15.100 adds that the subpart describes only “some of the acquisition processes and techniques that may be used to design competitive acquisition strategies suitable for the specific circumstances of the acquisition.”

The regulations in FAR Part 15.3 provide the federal acquisition community rules governing the design of source selection processes, meaning the policies and procedures. FAR Part 15.3 does not prescribe all actions that must be taken or how they must be taken. Rather, rules are set forth regarding responsibilities for source selections (FAR 15.303), evaluating proposals (FAR 15.305) and making selection decisions (FAR 15.308). Yet, over time federal acquisition culture has complicated the FAR 15.3 process, which has been both formally and informally indoctrinated in training and practice by many current federal acquisition professionals.

Recognizing that FAR Part 15.3 allows for variation in how contracting officers execute their processes and taking into consideration the continued demands on the federal acquisition workforce, it is time to consider alternative approaches to source selection. There are many approaches to rethinking the source selection process. What follows are some approaches to streamline source selection⁶ that we have used. We offer them for consideration for the next source selection you are involved in.

Pre-Solicitation

• Based on an understanding of the marketplace and your contracting method options, consider if you expect a high number of offerors.

• If yes, consider an advisory down-select^7,8 to identify the most competitive offerors through a light but meaningful first phase and a more comprehensive second phase with a smaller number of offerors.
• GAO bid protest decisions indicate there is no need to require complete proposal information from every offeror at the outset or to evaluate every offeror based on all evaluation factors.^9,10,11

• Consider releasing draft solicitations to resolve industry’s questions and concerns before issuing the finalized solicitation to help alleviate a time-consuming formal question and answer adjudication process after solicitation release. This also gives industry more time to formulate their teaming agreements and finalize their strategy, supporting their ability to meet agency needs in innovative ways.

 

Solicitation

• Consider if you have a manageable number of technical evaluation factors that will serve as true discriminators.

• Eliminate evaluation factors that most offerors will rate highly since those will not add delineating value to a source selection decision. If an evaluation factor is required but will not serve as a good discriminator, consider making it a pass/fail (screening) factor.

• Consider oral presentations, product demonstrations or technical challenges in lieu of written proposals.

• While technical evaluation teams are still required to document the evaluation rating and basis for the rating for such non-written proposals, they can be more intuitive for subject matter experts to engage in and thus more readily evaluated.
• These approaches also add more value and can be more revealing than reading a written technical proposal, thus supporting more informed decision-making by the source selection official.
• Recall that FAR 15.102(a) states that, “oral presentations provide an opportunity for dialogue among the parties” and FAR 15.102(e) lists various methods for documenting oral presentations.”^12,13,14

 

Evaluation and Award

• Consider replacing traditional adjectival ratings—which can become a counting exercise and produce unintended consequences—with confidence ratings (high, some, low) to provide more flexibility and intuitive evaluation decisions.
• Consider skipping the documentation of individual evaluator findings and only document technical evaluation team’s consensus findings in written evaluation reports. GAO bid protest decisions have supported the government’s responsibility to document the merits and rational for its ratings and decisions, not the need to provide extensive documentation of every consideration factored into a trade-off decision. True discriminating points must be captured. Rethink the need to document the government’s deliberations in painstaking detail that does not add value to the decision.^15,16
• Consider oral source selection authority briefings, which can be more efficient and afford the source selection authority the opportunity to have real-time engagement with the evaluation team and move to award more rapidly.

 

Post-Award

• Consider that a meaningful, oral debriefing can significantly reduce your risk of protest.
• Some offerors protest in part to discover information on what the government noted in its evaluation of the offeror. Consider sharing the full consensus evaluation report for a specific offeror with that offeror during a debriefing.

 

Streamlined Source Selection in Practice

In Fiscal Year 2013, a procurement team from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) solicited and awarded a contract for comprehensive support services to build, sustain, and improve the coordination and delivery of support to disaster survivors. Using a traditional FAR 15.3 process outlined in Table 1, this $14 million open market Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity procurement had a Procurement Action Lead Time (PALT)¹⁷ of 308 days from release of solicitation to award.

The acquisition team relied upon a very traditional FAR 15.3 source selection process. Submission requirements included 25 pages of technical proposal documentation, past performance questionnaires, key personnel resumes and a price proposal. The government received 22 compliant proposals which resulted in a significant application of government resources to evaluate, document and brief to the source selection authority. The impact extended to offerors who had to wait almost 10 months to learn if they received the award.

When the contract’s final option period was executed in fiscal year 2019, the acquisition team started to prepare for the new competition scheduled to be awarded in fiscal year 2020. This team was ready to rethink their FAR 15.3 source selection process. Their goal for streamlining was to make a quality award in less time.

First, they recognized that the requirement would once again be highly competitive. They anticipated approximately the same number of proposals as the 2013 competition. As a result, they wanted to design a more streamlined proposal submission process because they recognized that the more information the government was required to evaluate, the longer the procurement would take to complete.

Given a competitive field of approximately 20 offerors, receiving full proposals was not something the government wanted to solicit. The team determined that a phased procurement would be beneficial. The use of an advisory down-select would appropriately narrow the field to only the most highly competitive offerors, whereby the remaining technical, past performance and price submissions would be evaluated.

Second, the acquisition team strongly felt that oral presentations would benefit the government by supporting a streamlined, more intuitive assessment process for technical evaluation factors. The team also thought it would support more effective outcomes because of the government’s ability to interact with offerors during oral presentations to better understand the offer and capabilities proposed.

The procurement resulted in two-phased FAR 15.3 source selection design. A five-page relevant experience submission and a five-page concept paper submission were requested from offerors in Phase 1.

Following evaluation, offerors were given advisory down-selection notifications that encouraged them to submit Phase 2 proposals or notified them that they were not in the most highly rated category and recommended that they not submit Phase 2 proposals. Phase 2 proposals consisted of an oral presentation focused on offeror’s technical and management capabilities centered on areas of primary support to help differentiate among the offerors. It also included past performance, key personnel, and price evaluation.

For the Fiscal year 2020 award, 18 offerors submitted Phase 1 proposals, and after the down-select process, three offerors submitted Phase 2 proposals. Leveraging the streamlined FAR 15.3 source selection process (see Table 2), the procurement action lead time for this $21 million open market Indefinite-Delivery, Indefinite-Quantity acquisition was 52 days from release of solicitation to award.

 

Beyond the FAR Thinking

As this FEMA acquisition team helps to demonstrate, source selection does not have to be so hard or require reams of (virtual) paper. The approaches to streamline FAR 15.3 presented in this article are underutilized flexibilities that the federal acquisition community have always had at their disposal. Recognizing that it is hard to change the way we work, we nonetheless encourage acquisition professionals to do just that. Design your source selections to comply with statutes, laws, regulations and policy. But also design them to yield good decisions that consider agency resources and offerors costs.

Innovation and compliance are not mutually exclusive, rather they go hand in hand. We are cognizant that federal spend is moving away from FAR Part 15.3 and more towards FAR Part 8 buying rules. We note that many of the techniques outlined above are available when utilizing other FAR Parts, or even non-traditional, non-FAR based agreements. Knowing the rules and how to read them makes you more confident that you are complying with them. Do not be afraid to ask questions. Sometimes you may not readily find a reference in the FAR for what you are doing. You may be operating in the “blank space” of the regulations. In those instances, remember our guiding principle set forth in FAR 1.102-4(e):

The FAR outlines procurement policies and procedures that are used by members of the Acquisition Team. If a policy or procedure, or a particular strategy or practice, is in the best interest of the Government and is not specifically addressed in the FAR, nor prohibited by law (statute or case law), Executive order or other regulation, Government members of the Team should not assume it is prohibited. Rather, absence of direction should be interpreted as permitting the Team to innovate and use sound business judgment that is otherwise consistent with law and within the limits of their authority. Contracting officers should take the lead in encouraging business process innovations and ensuring that business decisions are sound.

 

Tipping our hats to the folks who wrote those words.

 

Executive director, Procurement Innovation Lab, Department of Homeland Security

 

Executive director, Acquisition Policy and Legislation, Department of Homeland Security

 

 

1 Preparing for the Future of Contracting (Nov 2019), Nov 2019. NCMA White Paper in conjunction with Management Concepts.

2 Merriam-Webster. (n.d.). Culture. In Merriam-Webster.com dictionary. Retrieved November 24, 2021, from https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/culture.

3 Edwards, V. J. Edwards, (2003, April). Competitive Processes in Government Contracting: The FAR Part 15 Process Model and Process Inefficiency, April 2003. WIFCON.Com. https://www.wifcon.com/anal/analcomproc.htm.

4 Section 809 Panel Roadmap for Success, (January 20199, January). Defense Technical Information Center. Retrieved November 24, 2021, from https://discover.dtic.mil/section-809-panel/.

5 Perez, E. E. Perez (2021, November 16, 2021). GAO Bid Protest Annual Report to Congress for Fiscal YearFiscal year 2021. U.S. GAO. Retrieved November 24, 2021, from https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-900379#mt=e-report.

6 PIL Boot Camp Workbook, (October 2021, October). DHS PIL. 2.7.2. 12 https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/pil_boot_camp_workbook_oct_2019.pdf.

7 PIL Boot Camp Workbook, October. (2021, October). DHS PIL. 2.7.2. 20 https://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/pil_boot_camp_workbook_oct_2019.pdf.

8 Periodic Table of Acquisition Innovations, (2021). FAI.Gov. https://www.fai.gov/periodic-table.

9 Computer & Hi-Tech Management, Inc., B-293235.4, (2004, March 2, 2004.). U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/products/b-293235.4.

10 Sevatec, Inc.; InfoReliance Corporation; Enterprise Information Services, Inc.; Buchanan & Edwards, Inc., B-413559, .3. (2017, January 11, 2017). U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/products/b-413559.3%2Cb-413559.4%2Cb-413559.6%2Cb-413559.7.

11 IBM Corporation, B-415575., (2018, January 19, 2018). U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/products/b-415575.

12 Sapient Government Services, Inc., B-412163. (2016, January 4, 2016). U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/products/b-412163.2.

13 Vertical Jobs, Inc., B-41589., (2018, April 19, 2018). U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/products/b-415891.2%2Cb-415891.4.

14 Strategic Resources, Inc., B-419151. (2020, December 11, 2020). U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/products/b-419151.

15 Amyx, Inc., B-416734.2., (2019, April 9, 2019). U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/products/b-416734.2.

16 Dentrust Dental International, Inc., B-419054.2., B-419054.3. (2021, April 6, 2021). U.S. GAO. https://www.gao.gov/products/b-419054.2%2Cb-419054.3.

17 As defined by the Office of Federal Procurement Policy, January 14, 2021. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/OFPPPALTMemorandum-01-14-2021.pdf.x