As many contractors are aware, DCAA audits have not experienced slowdowns from Coronavirus restrictions—DCAA has even embraced “virtual auditing.” The memorandum sent out earlier this year gave guidance and workarounds to auditors to help keep the workload up.
Committing to Cost Accounting Standards (CAS) compliance is a step that prepares a contractor to compete on a new level and potentially receive larger contracts. However, if the company doesn’t invest time and resources in CAS compliance, then it has little to no chance of winning those new contracts.
Many of the small businesses writing proposals to the Government, often tell us that responding to the requirements of Federal Government solicitations (RFPs) seems daunting. While there are many rules and regulations you need to adhere to, the job of responding isn’t difficult if you break the job down into bite size pieces and work diligently to respond to what is asked in the solicitation.
Determining a fair and reasonable price is the government’s overall pricing objective. Throughout the FAR, guidelines are available to help contracting officers when awarding contracts. Learning how to support this determination not only allows the award to proceed efficiently, but also with economical assurance.
Let’s discuss the highlights and guidelines that ensure a successful contract review.
This post was originally published at Federal Pricing Group and has be syndicated here with permission from the author.
Years back, I recalled a DOE Contracting Officer for a “M&O” cost reimbursable type contract commenting to the prime that the two percent fee they were earning was very generous and that the contractor should be grateful. I was appalled and could remember saying to myself, “Who in their right mind would think 2 percent profit is acceptable?”. Was my opinion reasonable? Let’s look at six reasons “six R’s” for justifying higher profit on your next contract.
Convenience, versatility, and perceived effectiveness make many people believe that spreadsheets can be used for anything. While Excel can be useful for many projects, the truth is, spreadsheets are not the most effective tools to create, manage, and analyze cost proposals. The inability to quickly import inputs, perform analysis, make changes, and create reports are among the biggest challenges organizations face in using spreadsheet applications as their primary proposal pricing tool.
During these uncertain times brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, we'd like to let you know that the PROPRICER team at EBS is continuing to support our customers and the larger government contracting community in maintaining normal productivity wherever possible.
Experienced negotiators know: preparation is critical to your efforts in forming a win-win deal. It might seem like a no-brainer, but lack of preparation is all too common on both sides of federal contract negotiations.
When you interface with DCAA, you are developing a relationship that will last years beyond the current proposal audit. The type of relationship you forge can yield good results, or can cause difficulties that can be challenging to overcome.
Here are some suggestions for building a productive relationship with DCAA:
The coronavirus (COVID-19) and the actions taken by federal government to help curb the effects of this pandemic have affected government contracting in several different ways.
Below are some brief tips on how contractors can best deal with COVID- 19, followed by resources published by law firms and consultants that we hope you find helpful.
