Government Contracting Resources » Letter Contracts

Contracting with the U.S. Government

tdiguiseppe — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:25:16 +0000

A great paper by Rod Marvin, Esq., of Cohen and Mohr, on all aspects of doing business with the Federal government and how best to be successful in this market. While it is a long paper, it is a great resource to keep in your files for a reference tool on the many requirements of doing business with the government.

Click here for a copy of the White Paper

Execusable Delays in Government Contracts

tdiguiseppe — Thu, 05 May 2011 13:42:19 +0000

A good short article on execuable delays as execptions to strict compliance with government contract T&Cs.

Click here for a copy of the article

Increase threshold in Price proposal audits

tdiguiseppe — Mon, 01 Nov 2010 13:36:44 +0000

A DCAA memo issued 10/18/2010 raises the threshold for price proposal audits.

According to the memo, contracting officers’ requests for DCAA reviews of contractor cost data must meet a threshold of $10 million for fixed-price proposals and $100 million for cost-type proposals, unless there are exceptional circumstances.

Previously, the threshold was $700,000 for fixed-price proposals and $10 million for cost-type proposals. The rule became effective Sept 17, 2010

Tim

Click here for a copy of the DCAA memo

News Alert – Letter Contracts and Risk involved

tdiguiseppe — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:00:31 +0000

During the past year contractors have experienced an increase in the number of letter contracts both from the Government and Prime contractors. Unsuspecting contractors and subcontractors accept “firm fixed price” letter contracts with a price to be negotiated and/or a Not to Exceed price. After the letter contract is signed, the government or the Prime delays definitizing the contract until most or all costs are incurred and then prices the contract at the lower of actual cost or the NTE. And because the costs are known at this point, the risk and profit are lower than what would have otherwise been allowed. Much of the delay is now due to DCAA rejecting proposals as not adequate as a basis for negotiations. The new DCAA initiative to disapprove everything has revived the DCAA estimating concept that budgets and estimates cannot be trusted and the best (maybe only) way to estimate costs is to use history. The only sure cure is to ”Just Say No To Letter Contracts”