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The purpose of this community is to empower the acquisition workforce through shared knowledge, resources, and development opportunities to enhance efficiency and effective ness in defense contract. We aim to advance the standards of defense contracting and acquisition by fostering a community of practice that promotes continuous learning and collaboration among professionals to drive innovation and operational excellence in support of national security objectives.
I have been tasked to write a CLS Contract for a proprietary system coming on line / Recovery of Airbase Denied by Ordnance (RADBO) / starting in FY26 and am looking for a good course recommendation on what all is involved with this whole process.
When executing a contract for an extended warranty, for 4 years, is it divided by option years?
Customer currently has funds to cover all 4 years of the warranty, yet we're unsure if we have to divide it by option years, or can execute one single contract to cover all years even though the current funding would cross fiscal years.
I have been tasked to write a CLS Contract for a proprietary system coming on line / Recovery of Airbase Denied by Ordnance (RADBO) / starting in FY26 and am looking for a good course recommendation on what all is involved with this whole process.
When executing a contract for an extended warranty, for 4 years, is it divided by option years?
SCENARIO
Customer currently has funds to cover all 4 years of the warranty, yet we're unsure if we have to divide it by option years, or can execute one single contract to cover all years even though the current funding would cross fiscal years.
If disclosed in the original BAA or RFP solicitation, is the decision to execute a priced option or sole-source additional development work likely to be protested?
Does the initial phase need to be treated as a source selection (e.g. provide exact same guidance to all participants) if a downselection will eventually occur?
I could only find protests relating to IDIQ task order downselection but none for BAAs/RFPs.
If a contractor is requesting termination of the contract due to their inability to subcontract their work effectively, does that constitute a contract default on the side of the contractor?
SCENARIO
We have a facilities contract that the contractor is proposing termination due to their inability to subcontract and perform the required work. The funds are expired funds. Per AFMAN 65-605 7.3.1.1.8 there are a set of criteria that determine if the original expired funds can be utilized on the replacement contract. One of those criteria state that the original contract must be terminated by default or for convenience of the government for a specific set of reasons.
I greatly enjoyed and preferred the format and flow of DAU's AAP. Would love to see AAP be brought back to life, or, the archives be made available. I found AAP to be extremely helpful in my research to give me ideas that helped in forming my positions. This new format provides little value - several questions are submitted with little response.
SCENARIO
COMMENTS
I received the following question from a customer of mine at DEVCOM Armaments Center earlier this week. It is stated below along with his contact info. Appreciate any help you can provide.
"I’m looking for the latest guidance, lessons learned and/or templates associated with the subject.Would you be able to point me in the right direction?"
Much appreciated!
Gary Barber
Director, Project Management and Integration Directorate
Has there been any conversations regarding the increase of the micro purchase threshold from $10,000 to $20,000 for supplies; from $2,500 to $10,000 for services; and $2,000 to $5,000 for construction? Also, the increase of the SAT from $250,000 to $300,000?
I am currently reviewing a large proposal. I am now reviewing the indirect rates. The pricing for the proposal is valid for 2024. The supporting information for the proposed indirect rates consists of signed DCAA Indirect Cost Rates agreements for the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. However, there is no agreement for the year 2023. Wanted to run this by some experienced contracting folks to get their take on this. Is this sufficient supporting information for indirect rates? If not, what supporting information should I ask from the contractor in order to verify the proposed indirect rates?
I am currently reviewing a large proposal. I am now reviewing the indirect rates. The pricing for the proposal is valid for 2024. The supporting information for the proposed indirect rates consists of signed DCAA Indirect Cost Rates agreements for the years 2020, 2021, and 2022. However, there is no agreement for the year 2023. Wanted to run this by some experienced contracting folks to get their take on this. Is this sufficient supporting information for indirect rates? If not, what supporting information should I ask from the contractor in order to verify the proposed indirect rates?
Have you ever asked yourself, “What do the experts in the field of contracting read?” We did. So, the Defense Acquisition University reached out to a number of recognized experts to ask them what they would personally recommend that people in the Contracting career read. The Defense Acquisition University (DAU) provides this reading list for contracting officers/specialists and other acquisition professionals. You may want to consider reading or having these important references on your bookshelf.
The list is intended to assist contracting and acquisition professionals interested in broadening their professional knowledge and expertise. Some books (e.g., A History of Government Contracts, The Free Enterprise Patriot) are meant to be read in their entirety, while others (e.g., Formation of Government Contracts, Government Contract Costs & Pricing) are meant for use at time of need, although they may be read in their entirety.
You can also access our online resources below. Simply expand the high-level topic to see the recommended resources.
Contracting
The Defense Pricing and Contracting (DPC) Contract Policy (CP) Directorate is the focal point for developing new, innovative acquisition tools and practices and improving existing DoD acquisition policies. CP responsibilities include recommending simpler, more flexible ways to buy supplies and services for the warfighter and ensuring that contract formation and contract administration are in compliance with law, in the government's best interest, and fair and equitable to industry.
The DAU Contracting site offers the latest on available training, upcoming events, tools to help you be more efficient, blogs that keep you updated with the latest contracting information, developmental recommendations, and a vast array of videos ranging from on-demand training, curriculum support videos, and recordings of webinars and other recorded events.
Cost & Pricing
The Contract Pricing Reference Guide is a five-volume set covering topics such as price analysis, quantitative techniques, cost analysis, advanced issues in contract pricing, and negotiations.
Small Business
Small Business Owners' Community provides resources for quick business solutions for small business owners, contracting officers, contract specialists, and acquisition professionals.
Created in 1953, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) continues to help small business owners and entrepreneurs pursue the American dream. SBA is the only cabinet-level federal agency fully dedicated to small business and provides counseling, capital, and contracting expertise as the nation’s only go-to resource and voice for small businesses.
Doing Business with the Department of Defense provides guidance to businesses who aim to do business with the DoD. Each fiscal year, the Federal Government purchases billions of dollars in goods and services. Small businesses are awarded tens of billions in Department of Defense contracts annually, start preparing your business to compete for and win those awards.
Other Transactions & Grants
This Other Transactions Guide (2023) is issued by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment (OUSD(A&S)), the organization responsible for promulgation of policy for OTs. This guide introduces all three types of OT agreements: research, prototype, and production. The guide focuses on lessons learned on the planning, publicizing, soliciting, evaluating, negotiation, award, and administration of prototype and production OTs.
The Other Transactions Community of Practice (aka the OT CoP) is designed to be your destination of choice for information regarding Other Transactions within the Department of Defense. At the OT CoP, you will find information regarding the history of OTs; links to statutes, policies, and guidance relative to OTs; access to OT training; information about upcoming OT events; and lessons learned from others in the OT community.
Contracting Officer Representative
The Contracting Officer's Representative Community of Practice website is for all members of the COR community, to include CORs, program managers, contracting officers, contract specialists, COR supervisors, and Quality Assurance personnel such as COR Coordinators and Quality Assurance Program Coordinators.
DAU AbilityOne Webinar Series: The series aligns to DAU strategy and the broader DoD mission as the AbilityOne Program is a mandatory source (FAR Part 8 - Required Sources of Supplies and Services | Acquisition.GOV) and a contracting focus area that supports our mission of providing a global learning environment to develop the acquisition workforce.
Available below, you will find a helpful list of research resources to include government, commercial, and educational tools, sites, blogs, and communities.
Online library dedicated to the interests of the Defense Acquisition Workforce. It provides access to licensed databases, DAU publications, professional reading lists, and research capability.
Easy access to scholarly studies and fact sheets in business, acquisition and specific defense programs. In addition to resources like the Harvard Business Review and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global, there are company profiles, market research reports and even unique tools like MDAP guides that provide timely information on 155 major Defense programs.
A repository of approximately 400 short articles, written by DAU Faculty, on many acquisition topics. Each article includes links to related training and documentation. Articles are categorized by topic name and by functional category (Business, Contracting, Engineering and Technology, Life Cycle Logistics and Program Management). Some contracting topics include "Architect-Engineering Contracting", "Buy American Statute", "Counterfeit Parts", and "Performance Based Logistics".
Opening page to get you to DAU contracting course registration, access to all continuous learning modules, to Acquipedia articles, to contracting tools, the Contracting Director's Blog and to various communities of practice including Contracting, Cost and Pricing and Contingency. You may be interested in other Gateways such as Small Business, Industrial/Contract Property and Program Management.
Provides the acquisition workforce with discretionary best practices that should be tailored to the needs of each procurement. The Guidebook is an electronic reference source that links to related information. Chapter 10 of this Guide is Acquisition of Services that describes the principles of a successful services acquisition.
Current and previous issues of Defense AT&L magazine. Numerous acquisition articles and authors, written by people in the field to our senior leaders at the Pentagon.
Current and previous issues of the quarterly released Defense Acquisition Research Journal. Different from Defense AT&L magazine, these articles are jury reviewed and require evidence of research.
A significant collection of tools that include guidebooks, software, and websites with tools that are useful to the contracting professional. The tools page also links to tools in Program Management, Budget, Logistics, and other acquisition related functions. Below are examples of tools found at the TOOLS page. There are more at the TOOL link above.
The tool establishes a database that provides buying agencies with transparency into the prices paid by other agencies at the task or delivery order level. The Prices Paid Tool is intended to give government contracting professionals a straightforward means to identify potential cost savings. By making the prices paid by other agencies available to government purchasers, it can help ensure the government is using its purchasing power to access the best prices possible.
This site provides tools, services and training primarily for understanding and managing Government Furnished Property, Unique Identification, e-Business for procurement (EDA, WAWF, CAGE, CORT, FPDS-NG, etc.) and the Government Purchase Card. It includes the mandatory GFP form required at DFARS PGI 245.103-75.
Use this website to find Service Contract Act and Davis-Bacon Act wage determinations for a specific contract action. Also links to the Department of Labor to submit a request for a wage determination. Also links to the Price Adjustment Calculation Tool which helps contracting officers analyze proposals for Service Contract Act price adjustments.
CALC lets you conduct market research on professional service labor categories. It gives you awarded hourly ceiling rates, per labor category from GSA's IDIQ service schedules. Great resource for building cost estimates and planning the budget.
DPC is responsible for all DoD contracting and procurement policy, including e-business. This site provides recent guidebooks and current/archived policy letters associated within selected policy areas, for example "Defense Pricing", "Services Acquisition" and "Purchase Card". This is a good place to find the FAR/DFARS/PGI and status of all the cases working through the FAR and DFARS Councils.
This is the "policy vault" within the DPC website. It is a central repository for memos, guidance, reports and other procurement related documents. It lists documents by date of release or title. It shows current material as well as archives of older documents. Deviations can also be accessed from this location.
Access to the Federal Acquisition Regulation and various supplements including the DFARS, DFARS/PGI, service supplements, and civilian agency supplements (DOT, DOE, etc.). Includes a search engine that finds keywords in the regulations.
Great for access to the currently updated Code of Federal Regulations and to study the history of change in the regulations. You want to select Title 48 for the FAR and DFARs. Get into the regulation and you can see a subscript which tells you when the FAR/DFAR language was changed over the years. It will give the FR number and date of the change.
Locate proposed and interim rules with a link so you can submit a comment. Also see public comments and documentation related to the proposed regulations.
This is the official website for federal legislative information. (It used to be called the Thomas Register) Follow legislation as it is being introduced, passed through the House and Senate, sent to the President and becomes law. Good search engine to research legislative history of procurement topics.
A site within the Library of Congress, the Congressional Research Service works for the US Congress, providing policy and legal analysis to committees and members of the House and Senate. The CRS reports are typically written just for congressional offices, but "Open CRS" provides citizens many of the archived reports. Just type in "contracts", "contract types", "contract pricing", etc. and you will find related legislation and research papers.
The GAO is a government agency that provides auditing, evaluation, and investigative services for the US Congress. This site has archives of reports on key issues facing the nation, a search engine for all bid protests and a search engine on matter of appropriations law. Other useful links on this site are listed below:
Narrows down GAO's search engine to only GAO Contract Appeals Board of decisions made by contracting officers. Search relatable protest decisions with great precision.
Principles of Federal Appropriations Law, also known as the Red Book, provides discussion on federal fiscal law, with reference to specific legal authorities to illustrate legal principles, their application, and exceptions. These references include GAO decisions and opinions, judicial decisions, statutory provisions, and other relevant sources.
Sponsored by GSA, this is a workspace for acquisition professionals and federal contracting specialists to connect with resources, tools and each other to improve acquisition government-wide.
Federal News Radio 1500 AM and FederalNewsRadio.com comprise the key source of breaking news, information and analysis for the individuals responsible for carrying out and supporting the missions of federal agencies. Federal News Radio addresses federal agency managers, policy makers and contractors. Federal News Radio's coverage is non-partisan, non-political and is designed to help executives more clearly understand and make better decisions about issues affecting their agencies and their companies. Federal News Radio broadcasts live on 1500 AM throughout the Greater Metropolitan Washington area. FederalNewsRadio.com distributes government-to-government and business-to-government news and information worldwide.
The Defense Science Board (DSB) is comprised of approximately 50 retired senior military, government and industry leaders who are tasked to do in-depth analysis and offer practical solutions to DoD challenges. Their reports, with topics ranging from "Improvement to Service Contracting" to "Trends and Implications of Climate Change for National and International Security" are found on this site.
Updated daily, this is a repository of speeches, remarks, press briefings, executive orders, presidential memoranda, etc. that are released by the White House on the actions and activities of the President of the United States.
A simple to use roadmap that guides you through the acquisition process from requirements development through contract award. It provides short descriptions of each step and links to related guidebooks.
If you are buying commercial software, IT hardware and IT services, come to this site to find tailored training, resources, tools and to ask questions.
A site for both industry and government users, it helps the government find ongoing independent research and development projects and allows companies to gain insight into DoD's research and engineering investment priorities.
The OTI goal is to identify and execute broad sweeping changes within the AF acquisition processes to deliver better, capability, faster and cheaper. This site addresses the Bending the Cost Curve Initiative, PlugFestPlus (PFP) approach to Open System Acquisition (OSA), and the OSA Consortium.
This is the site for the only DoD organization focused on accelerating the adoption of commercial and dual-use technology to solve operational challenges at speed and scale.
NCMA is the leading professional contract management association. It is dedicated to the professional growth and educational advancement of procurement and acquisition personnel worldwide. NCMA is closely aligned with the contracting professionals within the Department of Defense and other governmental agencies. It provides educational events; local chapters for dinner speakers and networking; an annual conference. It offers a leadership program entitled Contract Management Leadership Development Program. It offers a professional certification program with related training and testing. Its website posts legislative and regulatory alerts and the digital version of the monthly Contract Management Magazine.
WIFCON is a very active and useful website that promotes thoughtful discussions between acquisition professionals on everything contracting. It hosts regular Blogs by educational leaders in the field of contracting, a legislative page, contracting news, protests categorized by FAR area, and much more. Also available on this site is a legal page that lists relevant GAO Bid Protests and Protests at the Court of Federal Claims, several legal Blogs and various applicable links.
A non-DoD sponsored site tailored to the aerospace industry. It provides the Aerospace community (and Government users) an easy source of DoD information, guides, templates, instructions, news, resources and community discussions page.
A library of over 120 podcasts (and growing), on topics related to federal contracting. Topics include past performance, government furnished property, performance incentives, 8(a) programs, acquisition planning, NAICS codes, clauses, subcontracting, etc.
The official website representing the government technology and professional services industry. Lots of information about current legislative actions related to service contracts.
Sponsored by IBM, The IBM Center helps public sector executives and managers improve the effectiveness of government with practical ideas and original thinking. It is filled with articles, blogs, and reports from both private and governmental sources.
Sponsored by the Army Judge Advocate General (JAG), this is an on-line library of contract and fiscal law. It includes references such as the Contract Attorney's Deskbook and the Fiscal Law Deskbook.
Publically accessible, searchable website on where Federal dollars are spent. Find out how much money goes to your state or neighborhood. Find out how much money is distributed via contracts, grants, loan or financial assistance.
Enterprise Information (EI), a division of Acquisition Data and Analytics (ADA) within the Acquisition Enablers organization, serves as the Department of Defense (DoD) focal point for policy, guidance, and competency relating to acquisition data management and access.
DTIC store and disseminate the scientific, technical and engineering reports, journal articles, etc. of all DoD sponsored research and development. DTIC has more than four million records in its collection.
There are some interesting Contracting Blogs out there that are worth looking at periodically as they can be a quick way to get a feel for what's going on out there in our world
Come CONNECT and collaborate with other contracting professionals (both Government & Industry), just like you.
We will meet every Thursday at 11:30a.m. Eastern Time for 1 hour.
You are invited to drop in and ask questions to contracting experts with experience from the Army, Navy, Air Force and DAU.
We will have an open discussion format and occasional expert presenters on issues facing contract professionals today.
Get plugged in with the contracting community meet-up each week and earn up to 1 CLP* each time you do.
Ask questions, share news, learn best practices, and discover new tools and resources! You can also submit questions in advance to [email protected] and we will try to address at the next session.
(* Participation for the full hour of the weekly CONNECT Live is eligible for one CLP for each full session you attend if your organization approves. In order to record the CLP, you will need to submit a request for the CLP through your organization's process for awarding and tracking CLPs. DAU does not award CLPs.)
This tool provides guidance on the use of all provisions and clauses contained in the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement (DFARS), Department of Veterans Affairs Acquisition Regulation (VAAR), and Department of Energy Acquisition Regulation (DEAR). It also includes guidance on the use of provisions and clauses contained in DoD class deviations.
The Contractor Performance Assessment Reporting System (CPARS) is a web-based system used to input data on contractor performance. Once the data is input to the CPARS system, this data is then uploaded to the Past Performance Information Retrieval System (PPIRS) database and is made available for use in source selections. These contractor performance assessment reports (CPARS) will be used as an aid in awarding contracts to contractors that consistently provide quality, on-time products and services that conform to contractual requirements. CPARS can be used to effectively communicate contractor strengths and weaknesses to source selection officials. During the source selection process, the offeror should be notified of relevant past performance data derived from their CPARS (via PPIRS) that requires clarification or could lead to a negative rating. ACC EDITOR'S NOTE: CPARS Merge Training Course is also now available via the CPARS website. Please select the following link to view this course description https://www.cpars.gov/allapps/cpartrng/webtrain/webtrain_auto.htm
Community
2023_AbilityOne_Fact_Sheet_v20230206.pdf
