Latest / The FAR is Lava / EP: 4, Roasting Congressman Neguse, RFO Rulemaking, CMMC Hits Pause & Who’s on the Naughty List?

Transcript

EP: 4, Roasting Congressman Neguse, RFO Rulemaking, CMMC Hits Pause & Who’s on the Naughty List? · The FAR is Lava

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Welcome to The Far is Lava, where we teach you the FAR and the RFO through Federal Procurement News in today's episode.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Congrats! You can afford Exigan thanks to GFSA! Contractors were just handed a tax easy button.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_02: The SBA's attempt to help the short kings falls one month short.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_02: The RFO is in its rebellious phase.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, wait, sorry.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_02: Rulemaking phase.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_02: Somehow, that sounds worse.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_02: And learn how you can also claim a 33-hour workday.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_02: As long as you're okay with small, cold jail cells.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_02: Stop sitting on the sidelines and join us in the far is lava.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Ben.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_02: This is Will.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get started.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Episode 4.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_02: Will, welcome.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: The big four.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_02: The weather's great.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_02: Football's in full swing.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's getting nicer.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: The year, actually, when they watch this, the year is over.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_02: It's now 2027 officially.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_02: Congrats.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, congrats.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_04: So do yourself a favor, hit this news button a couple times.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if you spent all your money, round of applause.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_02: Good job.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Don't leave a dime.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_02: Give it to the contractors.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_02: And so let's let's get right into the news today.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_02: We've got a lot to talk about.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Ready?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Let's do it.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_02: Uh the first story already teased it.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_02: Beginning October 1st, the standard continental U.S.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: lodging rate increased from 110 to$113.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_02: That's a$3 increase, friends.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_02: The first one in two years.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_04: The per diem lodging rate, right?
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the per diem lodging rate.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's been two years.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_02: Inflation's gone crazy.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_02: But now, after two years of struggling, you can now claim three extra dollars on your lodging rate.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_04: Think of all the new hotels.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's going to be great out there.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_04: There was a little uh there's a little secret people had in the DC area uh where the the Ritz-Carlton and in the Pentagon Mall accepted per diem rates.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, fancy.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_04: You could, I think the the travel system's called DTS, and you can choose a little option that says down to sleep.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_04: That's what the stands for.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_04: Down to sleep.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_04: And it's the and you can it'll choose your hotel for you, which will put you in like a motel six or something.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_04: Or you can say, I'm gonna choose my own hotel.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, a little option, and you could choose the rats and fall within the per diem rate.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_04: And people checking those uh reimbursements hate that.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sure.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_02: I teased in the intro that you'll be able to eat eggs again.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's not really true.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: The typical expense rate for meals is the same, still$68.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there are some non-standard rates that have gone up, but sorry, bring your own eggs or maybe a carton of liquid eggs.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_02: That's so meals haven't changed.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: Meals really haven't changed.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_02: But congrats, food has.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but into some more uh boring but more important news.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk CAS.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yes.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_02: Let's get into some CAS.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh beginning October 1st, the threshold for mandatory cost accounting standards, or CAS, as I like to call it, jumped up from 2.5 million to 35 million for negotiated contracts in subcontracts.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_02: This is a lot of help for uh some mid-sized businesses that don't want to do CAS anymore.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's in not irrelevant to small, so they're still out of play here.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_02: And also small businesses, there's a ton more of them.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_02: So CAS, there's a lot less CAS going on in 2027 than before.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_02: They expect a 60% reduction, I think.
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_04: So that's a lot.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_04: It's it's part 31 of the FAR.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_04: It's cost accounting standards.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_04: And for those viewers who are just jonesing to know what CAS is, it it is the government's kind of the way of saying if we're gonna take, if we're gonna share in your costs, you need to have a rule, we need to we need to know your rule book.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_04: You need to have a rule book on how to account for all this stuff, and it is very uh laborous, um, very burdensome.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_04: And so, you know what's interesting about this though, with the CAS, is because the CAS threshold is so high, there's gonna be a lot more contractors who have never done CAS before.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, the one of the ways to determine a non-traditional company was if you hadn't had full cast coverage.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_02: And by the way, full cast coverage is up to 100 million, right?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_04: It's a hundred million.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_04: So if if you haven't had to do a uh over a hundred million dollar contract with full cast coverage uh for over a year, this is the DOD way of determining a non-traditional you're non-traditional.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_04: So usually, you know, I think the intent of non-traditional statutory intent may have been more toward the new tech, emerging tech startup companies.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_04: But this could include if they keep at that definition, yeah, will the new CAS rules uh and thresholds mean that pretty much anyone can be a non-traditional.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_04: Any company is a non-traditional now.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_04: It seems like it.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_04: Or only the only the large one, the you know, the large ones that just have to maintain these big systems contracts with CAS.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_02: And the certified cost and pricing data is still the same.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_02: That's still relevant.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_02: But that's pr that's, you know, as when you're doing a proposal submitting information at 2.5.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: But when you have the award CAS of actually giving the information through uh as the contract goes on, that is now up to 35 million or or uh and then 100 million for full.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: It's uh a big change.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_04: Is this under review or did this does this happen now?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think it's as of October 1st.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_02: So when the when maybe when you're watching this video, this is already happening.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_02: So uh small or a mid-size uh companies are rejoicing that they don't have to do this.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's a ton of work.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_04: So this is related to another article we'll talk about later about CMMC.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_02: Matisse, say stay tuned.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's the uh it's the it's these extra things that we're acquiring on the contractor, and do we want to let up on that?
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_04: Uh because if we don't let up on it, we're again the a big criticism, you know, in the government is companies don't want to work with the government because we put too much on them.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_02: This should this should open it up.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_02: But again, this is not relevant to small.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_02: It anyone that's small, they're not doing cash.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_02: This is anyone above that.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_02: And now companies above small are making$500 million.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_02: They should be able to afford the you know the accounting practices here.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_02: They'll just potentially be able to be non-traditional companies now.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, these small businesses.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: Amazon is officially a small business as of today.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um, okay.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we have a you we we do an RFO part of the week.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, this segment is gonna be brought to you by ASI Education Pro, our online learning platform.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_02: Link in the description if you'd like to learn and gain some uh CLPs.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_02: Uh this part of the week is the entire part.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Oh.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it is the RFO entering the rulemaking phase.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_02: So the update here, and they made a number of updates.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so phase one, now we're in phase two, more formal of the formal notice and comment rulemaking process, and they made some more changes specifically to cover parts 8, 12, 13, 15, 38, 44, 51, plus some of the clause provisions in 52.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_02: We're covering a lot of different things here and the RFO updates that are happening.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, there's a lot of links information out there.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: We'll share some in the description where you can find some more specifically about this.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but there's some best in class mandates uh deviation that's removed.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of commercial stuff's happening in part 12 and part 15.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: There's some simplification going commercial.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: They're keep pushing that, making that a little easier.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_02: Um, any parts in here, Will, that really stand out to you?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, this is a bit so so the case is now uh like a case as it's going up for regulation.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_04: It's about to be rule.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_04: And now I think you have until what is it, October 19th?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_04: Yes, for comment.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_04: For comment.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_04: So this thing's moving forward.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_04: This is how many of these are they doing?
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_04: These uh eight is eight of twelve.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_04: We've done eight of twelve.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: Eight of twelve.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_04: Four left.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_04: And this is a big one because this is parts, like you said, it's parts eight, twelve, thirteen, and fifteen.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_04: Those are the big ones in this package that are just a lot of comments.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_04: People, I mean, I can't think of maybe more controversial parts.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe part 19 is gonna have a lot of comments, maybe part 16, but this is a big one, and a lot of comments have come up.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, understandably, a lot of small businesses have issues with part eight.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_04: Um, and so one thing in the one new thing in part eight.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_04: So when when things move into cases, if anyone's been like reading the deviations, like the RFO deviations, which I do every day, everyone's done.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, uh, you'll notice some changes because those deviations were just deviations.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_04: Uh but now that we have cases, there have been some some changes from those deviations.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_04: And one is in part eight, I think the the best it says the best in class mandate uh from the model deviation is removed.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_04: So this push to consider best in class first is is removed.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_04: Is that right?
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_04: I think so that was, I mean, my some of my challenges with that was it it it just chips away at the contracting officer's discretion to go with a best in class or not best in class.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_04: Small business didn't like it.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, right, because uh the rule of two is completely optional when you use best in class.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_04: So whether you're using part eight or sixteen, and part eight, this this mandate was directing them also to six part sixteen.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_04: It's just like just use an existing government-wide.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, and we're we're using small business was was an option.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_04: So obviously a bunch of small businesses had an issue with that.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_04: It's been removed uh and prioritized.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh best in class becomes prioritized consideration after acquisition the acquisition team considers that, and here's the part that still scares me that no required use contract meets the need.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_04: They they mentioned required use, still there's there's still no required use yet, but what if those starting cropping up?
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so that's good.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_04: So part 12.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, another funny thing about um, I think it was either part 12 or part 13.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_04: It was part 13.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_04: They had they required a formal DNF for going sole source.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_04: And um who had a problem with that?
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_04: I think I thought companies had a problem with that too, because this is supposed to be simplified.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_04: Why are you gonna make this a big deal for the contracting officer if they um now it's just a documented decision?
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, just document it.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_02: Just not formally documented, just sort of documented.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, just yeah, what we wouldn't need a template term, just uh yeah, a documented decision.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_04: No, so don't you don't need a DNF.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_02: No.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_04: But you do you know what's funny about uh what funny about that whole thing is I think a lot of offices I've worked in in offices that if they were using part 13, they they would use a JNA.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_04: They would go way the other way.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_04: So actually saying all you need is a DNF is a lot more groundbreaking for a lot of offices to begin with.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_04: But I do like the change and good on industry for for kind of getting on them about that, because the DNF can turn into a whole thing.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_04: Like you need a signature, you need someone to review it.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_04: A DNF is spelled out in far part one of the far.
• 10:19
  SPEAKER_04: So now that's one of the changes in the case.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_04: It's like, all right, forget it.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_04: We're not even gonna do a DNF.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_04: If you're gonna do Solar Source in 13, we're gonna prove that this is simplified, just document it.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: Bringing back common sense.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_02: My favorite is part 15's change of you can now accept a contracting officer can accept a late proposal if they want to on their discretion.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_02: So if you get one of those lovely contractors, if you get one of those lovely end of year, you know, you know, December 31st submission dates, and you don't really feel like turning in, technically you can be late.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_02: If the CO determined if they want to.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and that that was in the deviation as well.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_04: But it's funny, the article talked about that that late is late rule not applying in 15, that was one of the most news, what do they call it?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_04: They said it's one of the most newsworthy changes was you can accept the CO can decide to accept late proposals.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_04: I I didn't realize that was a newsworthy thing.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, must be.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_04: We had that issue actually with late proposals uh when we actually got boxes of proposals in.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_04: Because we I worked on a military installation, and sometimes they had issues boxes of proposals.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_02: There's a big folder after folder of proposals.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_02: One box per company.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, good.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_04: There was an evaluation team who had to, each of them had to have a set of binders.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_04: So just a box full of binders, so much wasted paper.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so but sometimes they couldn't get through the installation.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_04: Um, something came up, something unforeseen, and they couldn't get through.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_04: And we had to, the late is late rule was very strict.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, you couldn't accept it, even if you wanted to, even if there were some situations where the email bounced back that had the proposal information.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_04: So I like this uh rule because it lets the CO say, no, these guys, I I get it.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_04: You know, that there's a different situation here uh that led them to be late.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna accept it so we have good competition.
• 12:05
  SPEAKER_02: Well, that's why the solicitations sometimes will say, Hey, look, you know, do it early.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_02: We're not responsible for technical problems during the submission.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: I've seen that on some contractor uh, you know, or some solicitations.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_02: They tell him, hey, look, this is on you.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_02: If you wait till the last minute, have issues, you should have told them that and send the boxes back.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_04: Yep.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_04: So get your comments in for parts uh eight, twelve, thirteen, fifteen, thirty-eight, which was deleted.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_04: So who's gonna comment that?
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_04: Bring it back.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_04: We want 38.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: And 51 was deleted too.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it was just put into part eight.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_02: And Far Council has proven that they will listen, read these things and listen and make changes.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it's not, you know, it's not just blowing smoke when you submit these things.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_02: This is your opportunity to make change, whether you're a contracting officer or a contractor.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_04: Oh, speaking of which, on the deviation thing.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_04: Uh Don Mansfeld.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_04: Of Don acquisition, we did a uh episode two.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_04: Episode two, we did a discussion on uh Don acquisition bringing a suit against the whole RFO process.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_04: He wrote us in a comment with some things.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_04: Uh where is it?
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and we want to clarify some things because he clarified them uh as he should have.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_04: So we we mentioned, so first of all, we mentioned that he was tossed out of a Part A competition.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_04: Technically, that's not right.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_04: He was protesting the GSA mass solicitation.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_04: That was the solicitation for companies to even get into the mass club.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_04: And that had some issues.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_02: So no protests being up uh being held up.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, there was no order ordering.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_04: There was no competition award.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_04: So it's just that solicit that the whole process of getting into the mass and the TDRs and all that had to do with that.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_04: So that's a good clarification.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_04: The other clarification he said was the use of class deviations was the issue.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_04: And so it's not that he was arguing that the whole FAR uh was being deviated or should have been deviated, but the class deviation itself did not go through uh the rulemaking process.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_02: They deviated it and then just put it into practice, right?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_04: Instead of waiting for they had a yeah, they had um they had feedback that they put in on their website.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_04: I remember that because we put we put feedback in.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_04: And then they have like you asked, we answered, kind of they had like an informal notice, but it didn't go through, as Don Acquisition is arguing, uh, the federal register required by 41 USC 1707, where the class deviation itself should have gone through that.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_04: It didn't.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_04: That's the uh um uh really the the gist of of the Don Acquisition's case.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_04: And then the final correction he made, which we have to let the viewers know, is the picture that he uses in WIFCon is Socrates.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_02: Socrates.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's not him.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_04: No, it's the last known photograph of Socrates.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_04: We'll put that on the screen.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_04: I would never guess that was Socrates.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_02: See, Don's teaching us things all the time.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_02: Don, we appreciate you watching, appreciating the clarification there.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_02: Um that's why we're bringing you the hard-hitting news of the most up.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that's one of the most up-to-date moments here on the important case on the RFO.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_04: And although we're not picking sides on this, I do think it's it's good that Don is using this right because it's it's just showing that things are moving so fast with this RFO and it's trying to meet the needs of what the administration's doing, trying to do it the way the the most legal compliant way that they can while still pushing it forward.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_04: And what was it, 180 days?
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_04: So it's it can if if it at that speed, things can get messy.
• 15:24
  SPEAKER_04: It's great, people are using their legal right to challenge this.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so yeah, see how that goes.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_04: We should follow that.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we're we'll stay, we'll we'll follow that case.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we'll follow it.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_02: We'll we'll make sure you guys know what's going on.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_02: We should attend.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_04: Do a live uh can we do a live uh podcast?
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we'll do it.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_02: All right, next story.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna watch a quick video with you all and react to a ex an exchange between Congressman Joe Nigusi of Colorado and Interior Secretary Doug Bergham during a May 13th, 2026 House Natural Resource Committee hearing on Interior's fiscal year 2027 budget.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_02: Uh short version, two dudes arguing about the reflecting pool, and they had no idea.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_02: The procurement of the reflecting pool.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: It's all about procurement.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, the reflecting pool.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it appeared that they neither of them really had strong arguments.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_02: So we're gonna.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_04: And you'll see from the argument here or that they're making, obviously, the the procurement guy was not in the room.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of high-ranking people in there.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_04: Procurement was not there, which you'll see from the clip.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_01: Are you familiar with Atlantic Industrial Coatings?
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not familiar with that.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so Atlantic Industrial Coatings is a company.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_01: Are you familiar with that company?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're saying Atlantic?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: Atlantic Industrial Coatings, correct.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_01: Are you familiar with it?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not familiar with Atlantic.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Atlantic Industrial Coatings is the company that received a no-bid federal contract for the project at the Lincoln Memorial Reflective pool.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_01: Are you familiar with that now?
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'm familiar with that project, yes.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: But not the company.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I wasn't familiar that with that specific name of the company.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 17:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um you're familiar with the fact that a company received a no-bid contract to do the work on that project, correct?
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: I I'm familiar that we have that we're working on a project to uh restore uh the reflecting pool before the uh summer season with record attendance, yes.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and that was through a no-bid$13 million contract, right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's not that's not up for debate.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: That's a fact.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: I I I'm positive that we followed all of the required bidding rules.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you're you're emphasizing the word no bid like something nefarious has happened.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, then I reject that.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: Explain it to me.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Here I'll ask you the question.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: My understanding of the federal procurement rules is that a no-bid contract is reserved for situations where, quote, any delay would cause serious injury to the government.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: What is your your proposition as what?
• 17:53
  SPEAKER_01: That there'd be serious injury to the government if this company didn't get the$13 million contract to do this particular project right now?
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I think we do have a sense of urgency.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we got handed a record amount of deferred maintenance.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_00: We had 19 fountains across the city that didn't work in the city.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's the serious injury to the government?
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_01: The serious injury to the government?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not I'm not I'm not uh a suppose a lawyer could decide that, but I think that maybe all of us could agree that we would want to have our nation's capital looking great for the 250th.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is a common sense decision.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: I would say I just last question who picked this company because President Trump, a few months ago in a New York Times article, said, I have a guy who's unbelievable at doing swimming pools.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: He looked at it, he called me up, he said, Sir, we can do something on it.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_01: Last night he posted on Truth Social, also I did not give out the contract.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_01: He's talking about you.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: Did you give this$13 million no bid contract to this company that's never done business with the federal government before?
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: The gentleman's time's experience.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_01: The secretary could answer the question.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: The gentleman that you're talking about that has done uh construction work regarding pools and fountains for President Trump is not part of this contract.
• 19:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's worked, he just he's just a citizen that cared about it and offered some.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_04: So I mean, this guy can you imagine awarding a contract to a company that's never done business with the government before?
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_04: Like some kind of, I don't know, like non-traditional.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_04: I bet I bet they don't even do CAS.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_04: So what's the funniest thing about this clip, and we can break it down, but is that we have two high-ranking uh people talking about procurement, and neither of them know the rules enough.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_04: If if that if that's is it is it's the Senate or the House?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_04: Um Cro Congress.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_04: If that Congressman would have known the rules, he could have done the gotcha thing a lot more effectively.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_04: If the Department of Interior director is that Secretary of the Interior, Secretary Interior.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_04: Secretary of Interior had under had known the rules a little bit more, he would have been able to just squash his defense immediately.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_04: But neither knew exactly.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_04: So it's just this funny argument.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_04: It could have gone yeah, it could have gone well for either of them.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_04: I heard I heard something.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_04: I I forgot there was like a uh a YouTube video that was about the reflecting pool.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_04: The way the reflecting pool is designed or something, it's almost impossible to maintain because algae is just gonna build up.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um so that's a it's a I mean the the funny thing about that, so a couple things.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_04: Um no bid contract, a sole source.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_04: It's soul source.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_04: So and you know, there are you know, I'm sure the contracting officer was was in, you know, what if he was watching this video or she was watching this video, she's probably screaming at her her phone or her computer.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_04: Because there's there's a he said, my understanding of no bid is it there has to be what is it, an uh urgency that would prevent injury.
• 20:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_04: That's one of the reasons, like unusual or compelling urgency.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_04: There's a lot of reasons you can decide to go with one company only.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_04: So he, I mean, maybe they did urgency.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_04: It doesn't say in the record that he did.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_02: He didn't clear again, the other guy didn't clarify which, you know, what what and why?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_04: But it could have been too like oh, the other thing about urgency, and he could have argued this too, is what was the the congressman's definition of urgency was interesting or injury, prevent injury.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_04: We're talking about like war.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_04: Like, I don't know.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_04: Is that the Department of Interiors uh definition of preventing injury?
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, uh he did make a good case.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_04: Like this is the 250.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_02: No, I agree with that.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_04: The reflecting pool is one of the most iconic things.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Just make it look nice.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_02: And third, you know, they had what all the all the fountains weren't working, apparently, lots of back.
• 21:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there isn't a case.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: They look at the birthday's coming up.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: And we can all have time to mess around here.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_04: It's America's birthday.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna assume for for you the DOI contracting officers out there.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_04: I'm gonna assume that things were done properly.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_04: But no one was in that room to deflect the gotcha, the gotcha uh gimmicks of of Congress there.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_04: But uh yeah.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he was stressing no bid real hard.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_02: And the other guy kept saying, well, of course.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it's there's gonna be record attendance.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_02: They're both saying what you know, their little gotcha things that try to sneak in.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_02: And uh, but I did a lot at the end.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, never done business with the government before.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, oh, good.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll just call another consulting firm in DC to make a PowerPoint slide about the reflecting pool.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that that'd be better.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: That would be better.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, to that congressman's defense.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, he he could have it is a$13 million contract, high visibility.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_04: You could just ask, why wasn't this competed?
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_04: Do you have do you have a reason?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_04: And then he would have said what he did, which is I'm sure we abided by all.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_04: He called it bidding rules, which I love.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_02: The secretary might have said, I'm not aware of uh the contract.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_02: Atlantic.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's Atlantic.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_04: Let me get back.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_04: He could back to you on that.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_04: I want to, I wanna I wish it had been the guy Trump's friend, if it had been the contract.
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_04: That would have been awesome.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_04: Some guy from Boca Raton looking at the reflecting pool like this needs this needs more jacuzzies.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_02: Some TikTok pool cleaner out there making a TikTok video.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_02: It would have gotten done better, probably.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Probably.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_02: Probably would have.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_02: No offense to Atlantic.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure they're great.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm sure they're great.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_02: Next story.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_02: SBA proposal to change 995 separate Nakes codes down to 338, and then raise the thresholds for small business has come under fire.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so we talked about this a couple weeks ago.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_02: I think one of our first stories talking about raising the standard for small business.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_02: So now small businesses, there's a hundred thousand more small businesses than there were before based on this potential proposal.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: And they have opened it up for comments, and there has been 67,220 comments.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_02: 85% or more are negative.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: Uh most people are opposed to this, eight to one ratio against it.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, again, mostly because now small businesses feel like they're gonna have no ability to compete with all these mid-size or large businesses that are officially small now.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's just gonna make it difficult.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_02: But there's a ton of feedback.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: There was also an opportunity for us to actually do a virtual town hall.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: More than 200 people signed up for a one-minute speaking moment.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we could have done a lot with that.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_02: That would have been nice.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_02: But 200 people came back, most of them spoke against it.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so the feedback has been overwhelmingly negative about these changes.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_04: Probably existing small businesses.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: Existing small businesses are a little concerned about the size of these coming in.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_02: And again, just for reference, uh, one of the NAICS code changes or one of the growth changes that people are will will use as an as an example is um a custom computer programming services, its receipt standard would go from 34 million to 531 million.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you could be doing 531 million in those services and still be called quote unquote small.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_04: And the NAICS is called custom computer programming services.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_02: AKA AI.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_02: AI.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_02: So you can be a pretty large small business.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_02: Supporters say um the current standard forces successful companies uh to graduate before they're ready.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: So now like, you know, they're they're small and they're gonna get too large, so now they can stay small, quote unquote.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but there's some negative impacts here to small businesses.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_04: So the GovCon Intelligence found an approximately eight to one ratio against the proposal.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_04: And it also said there were 67,000 comments.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_02: I mean it's a ton.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_02: So we'll see.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_02: The comments uh extended period now is extended by 60 days.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_02: So there's more time you have until November 20th to share your feedback.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not sure if 68,01 negative comments are going to make a difference, but we'll see what they do about this.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_02: But it's a huge change.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_02: Small businesses are concerned.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: We'll find out.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, I I understand the criticism, right?
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_04: Because then the, you know, I'm sure this was part of the one minute speeches that they were saying is well, what does it even mean to set things aside for small business?
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_04: Well, what even is a small business anymore?
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_04: Because it with when we think of small businesses, usually you had that sales force.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I think it was like it was like five million a year, 150 employees or something like that.
• 25:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean 500 employees maybe, but I think it was five million a year was the number at what a typical you know business B2B software company would say and classify as a small business is five million, not five hundred and thirty-one million.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_04: You know, like some towns have that small business day where you you go out to it, is now small business day, you're going to like Target.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, usually it's a regular chiropractor with one employee and a little table, and they're gonna sample.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_04: You're going to like the candle shop that's on the old town main street, and you're just buying a candle.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_04: Now you can just get a Walmart.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_02: And subcon and small businesses are concerned, you know, even being used as subcontractors.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, these large businesses need to get subcontractors into these uh contracts.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: But they don't have to do a lot of them aren't going to do that anymore because now these giant companies are officially small, so they don't necessitate the subcontractors.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_04: So each each if you're a large business, you usually have a subcontracting plan where you have to show the government you're gonna utilize small.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_04: So even the subcontracting plan will include a lot of larger businesses that qualify as small.
• 26:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, so I wonder what's gonna happen to this thing.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_02: Keep watching the stay tuned.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're gonna introduce a new uh we're gonna introduce a new segment called the Naughty List.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and last week we talked about Unar Simsek, a Turkish man who faked an American company and sold weapons grade goods and services to uh the military, but they were all actually Turkish made, not USA made.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_02: We're still trying to get him on the show.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, he is on the FBI's most wanted fraudsters list.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_02: That was last week's.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_02: This week we're adding Richeline Aniso Fung, who worked full-time at SISA from September 2016 through October 2025.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_02: But she also held contractor positions during that time, supporting six federal organizations while concealing the overlapping jobs from SISA and the contractors.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_02: So basically, she worked remotely, which allowed her to work for the government.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_02: And then also for the government for contractors.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_04: Sometimes 33-hour days.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_04: She's what you would call a 10x person.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, she's a part of that hustle, hustle culture.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so was able to, yeah, work, you know, get paid 33 hours for a day.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: And so basically I was doing that.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: And like in, you know, every day is worth three days to her, is what she was making.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: Made a lot of money.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think I think they said it cost nearly$250,000 in government losses.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_02: I would think even higher than that.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, she didn't get with it very long, apparently.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe she did, but it was only uh$250,000 in losses.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_02: Very creative, hardworking, I mean, very hireable, obviously.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think she you know is on multiple contracts, uh, worked for for CISA.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: Uh so she is our official uh naughty list uh winner of the week.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_04: She got caught up on the numbers.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_04: This is not to defend uh our naughty list person, but this can be a challenge when you have to add hours of numbers.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_04: You know, there's that whole question of okay, so if I do this really good quality work for you in less time, am I gonna get less?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_04: Or do you want, if your work statement is for the actual quality of the product, are you just gonna pay for that?
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_04: Like are you gonna pay for are you gonna pay me more for taking longer?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_04: And so this is also maybe a reflection too of are we treating our service contractors like by the by the billable hour, like almost like we talked about person like personal service contracts.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_04: Um so uh when you if she is, if she was like a 10Xer where she's doing multiple great things for all these uh federal agencies, and then she makes the mistake of saying, okay, I gotta price all this out.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_04: All right, well, technically this was a full-time day for these guys, and technically it was a full-time day for the, well, that's where she gets in trouble.
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and yeah, the challenge was it was some overlapping work.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_02: It wasn't just she got the job done early.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_02: She's like, Well, I could get, I could send an email here and here, the same email and get paid twice for it or the same PowerPoint.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_04: I wonder though, if if you're doing remote, is it possible to be in four different places at the same time?
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_04: Could she have four meetings?
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_04: She got yeah, she has her she has her system meeting up and then her Department of Justice meeting up.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_02: I've been on some meetings and some government meetings where I think that is attainable.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: That's exactly what's happening.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_02: You could get away with it.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_02: You could work an 80-hour day.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_02: All right, for our next story, the Chief Information Officer, Solutions and Partners 4, called the CIO SP4, is being canceled because 93% of this GWACS services and solutions are available in GSAs.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is a another loss of GWAC and trying to consolidate and make GSA the giant powerhouse of goods and services that it is and is becoming.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_02: So we can say Sayanara to CIOS before.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_04: And GSA has one GWAC to rule them all.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_04: But wait, there's still one.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_02: So it's soup.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_02: There's soup and there's you know, Oasis and Alliant.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's OSI's is GSA.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: So there you go.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_02: So they have they're having all this.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_04: GSA always had Oasis.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_04: They created Oasis, but um, yeah, but there were these other multiple award government-wide contracts.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, NASA's the biggest one, soup.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yep.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_04: So and I I don't think NASA's gonna lose soup.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_04: I don't know.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_04: We should look into that.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_04: We should see.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_04: Is there I know there was a question about whether GSA would have been.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_04: They couldn't oh they can't.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: They can't maybe they they might own it, but they won't consolidate it.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um but you know, this this one did specialize in a lot of health and IT services and and research, but apparently that is being covered in GSA as well.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_02: So a good consolidation, I guess.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_02: What is the what is your thoughts?
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_02: What's the community's thoughts on this executive order to kind of start streamlining and bringing everything into GSA?
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_02: Are people excited about that, nervous about that?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, if if if GSA uh is uh improving the way they on-ramp and off-ramp really good employees, I mean I'm really good contractors, then um having these other nothing against what is it, CSO, CIO, CIO, SP P.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_04: SP4, yeah.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_04: SP4, yeah.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_04: So nothing against SP4, but a lot of these government-wide uh vehicles uh can become stale.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_04: Um so it just becomes a little bit of a distraction.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_04: It gets diffused a little bit.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_04: If if GSA does a really great job at continuing to create these really great vehicles, then yeah, maybe why have another?
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_04: Because you're also the SP4, I'm sure it took a lot of manpower to maintain those big contracts.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_04: So now those contracting officers or uh contract administration, you know, folks can do something more valuable with their time and let GSA take the large G WAC.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_02: If GSA can do it better, and so if the if all the you know, if all if the work's worse, then we're in trouble.
• 32:13
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's but GSA are great.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_02: They do a great job.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're a great G.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_02: Make us proud.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_04: I think that's one reason why Soup is staying with NASA because they don't say because Joanne was it Joe, yeah, was it who rest in peace in your retirement.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_04: She retired, she's alive.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_02: Rest in retirement.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: Rest in retirement peace.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh all right, next news story.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk some CMMC.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_02: The DOD suspended the CMMC.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_02: The DOD suspended the CMMC phase two requirements that were scheduled to take effect this fall, including third-party assessments for affected contractors.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_02: Uh contractors everywhere are scrambling with CMMC.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_02: It's a huge lift, and so they've paused it.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: Cybersecurity, maturation, model certification.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Is that it?
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_02: And so they've been getting a lot of feedback.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_02: Uh there was 1,100 RFI responses, totally more totaling more than 10,000 pages.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_02: And uh the uh people here are saying AI is not reading these.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_02: People are gonna read these responses.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_04: I love I love how that was a point.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_04: She she made it.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_04: And the CIO of defense.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_04: Now we have to actually say out in the open.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_04: Humans are reading these.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_02: Don't worry.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we're reading these with our human eyes.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_02: And it drew more than 3,000 attendees to a meeting, meetings around the country.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: So huge feedback.
• 33:30
  SPEAKER_02: Now, on this feedback, uh, this is my favorite comment.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_02: DOD described the responses.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: You know, this is a response to them, some of the CMMC stuff.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_02: DOD described the responses as positive, but the positive response was largely supporting the pausing of phase two.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_02: So great job.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for pausing it.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: They thank you for stopping what you're doing.
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_04: Keep up the good work.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, CMFC, it is incredibly uh, especially for these new companies coming in.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you know, and a lot of these, it's just it requires you to come up with if you're handling government uh federal contract information or you know, CUI sensitive information that you have to come up with.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_04: It's almost like the CAS thing.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_04: You gotta come up with these uh procedures.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_04: You have to have at some points like a third party coming in and auditing your procedures.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_04: Uh a lot of these companies, uh, and you know, uh we've we've talked to uh some that they have uh they're really good, they provide something great for the government, but they have one person on their staff, and he or she, she's doing the invoicing.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_04: She's I mean, they're small, right?
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_04: So this was incredibly uh burdensome for for small, small businesses.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_04: Um now we have to say, now we have to say small, small.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_04: Small, small, actually small.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_04: There's large small businesses.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_04: There's small, small.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_02: Really large small businesses.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_04: These guys were just getting drowned by the CMMC stuff.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_04: It's still important.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_04: So my recommendation, okay.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_04: Let's hear it.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_04: This is my hot new idea.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, patent pending, is that the contracting offices, if they have the funding for it, if they're gonna pay a company to include CMMC anyway, just include it as a clin in the contract.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, make it part of their performance.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_04: Is you you need to give us a price for the team you would need to hire, yeah, or the office you need to have to do CMMC type requirements.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_04: Because the, of course, the reason why CMMC is such a a problem and why it's not completely going away and it's just being paused, is because the security is a huge deal and national security is important and information leaks.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_04: So we know that.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_04: So just make it part of like make it a contract, Clint.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_04: You know, and then and then the con and then the small business knows, oh, I need to hire someone instead of them just now, or what they're trying to do is retroactively getting into the P I E system.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_04: They're checking that they do all this stuff when they may or not be, you know.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so yeah, just make it a thing.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_04: And then make it part of the performance of the contract, and then the the small business can hire accordingly.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I like it.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_02: All right, that's the news for the week.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk this day in contract history.
• 36:07
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're watching this on October 3rd, back in 1942, General Leslie Groves awarded DuPont a letter contract to design and procure chemical separation and pile equipment for the plutonium pilot plant, helping launch the industrial effort behind the Manhattan Project.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: They're making chemical goo and separating it for the atomic bomb.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, so Groves approached DuPont in 1942 in September.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: DuPont was reluctant.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_02: They said, I don't know if we know how to do that.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know if we have uh the expertise in the facilities, and it's gonna ruin all of our other government work.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Uh they reluctantly got involved, but then later on said, Hey, we're doing pretty well, we're making some money.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_02: They got uh a full cost plus fixed fee arrangement.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_02: And my favorite part of the story is DuPont waived normal profits, normal profits, and accepted only one dollar of profit to kind of help the war effort.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: I think Groves kind of gave him the old uh guilt trip and said, Well, Hitler's making bombs pretty fast.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_02: And if we can't get the atomic bomb first, he'll get it first.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_02: And gee, it sure be nice.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_04: It started as a letter contract.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_04: So, oh, and by the way, this is this is yeah, this is probably be this coming Saturday for you.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_04: If you're watching this this week, the week that we uh release it.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_04: A good way to start the fiscal year.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_04: And maybe it was a good way for in the 19th for them to start the fiscal year.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_04: With a bang.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_04: New fiscal year, Manhattan Project.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_04: Let's talk nuclear weapons this year.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_04: Uh they're obviously this is DuPont.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_04: They had been involved in in the industrial effort before, now that they're hesitant, but they did a letter contract first.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_04: So that's a letter contract where they don't have the terms spelled out yet.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_04: But let's like, let's just get something out.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_04: Let's get something out.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_04: And then what ended up coming out, what you mentioned, was a cost plus fixed fee arrangement.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_04: And the fixed fee was one dollar.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, it's great.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_04: Which is a third of what the what the employees now get with the per DM, GSA, three more dollars.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_04: Um yeah, so this was a very high, high, uh, highly intense situation, right?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_04: All really um managed by government contracts and contracting to move into nuclear weapons through the Manhattan Project and do it through the types of contract vehicles that you're familiar with.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, as viewers on the show, this was a letter contract, move to costs plus fixed fee, and a little bit of guilt tripping with DuPont.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, are you a do you like America?
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_04: Do you like Hitler?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_04: Which one?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_04: The Germans are going nuclear.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_04: What's your excuse?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_02: DuPont.
• 38:35
  unknown: Yeah.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_02: So if you're a contacting officer out there, be creative, use the tools ahead of you.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe one day in five to thirty years on this podcast, we will talk about your contract, your creativity, and your moment in history.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_04: Ten years from now, when we're fighting the robots, you can issue a letter contract, say we just got to get out there.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_04: We just got to do some kind of Manhattan project against time travel.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_04: It'd be a good movie idea.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_04: Because we're we're always talking about our foreign adversaries and the race with AI, like against China and Russia.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_04: A really good movie idea uh would be if the robots we were fighting and we teamed up with China.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_04: Against the robots.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, we're like, okay, this technology that we're competing to harness, that technology has turned against the world.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_04: And so America, China, Russia, they team together.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: Iran gets in there.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_02: We'd go in, we go into a meeting with China, like, we have an idea.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: We we're gonna send you the.
• 39:29
  SPEAKER_02: We know, we saw it already.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_02: They already have the information.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: They stole it.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_04: The first 20 minutes is them just getting together.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_04: Like, all right, let's let's get over our differences.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: I know we've we've had our thing, but half the people in the room are already on, yeah, like, well, they're already on your team.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_02: They're spies.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_02: It became humans against machines.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_02: Good movie.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: That's a good movie.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 39:48
  SPEAKER_02: With a contracting officer saving the day.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_02: Will uh let's get to your segment, the protest of the week, H2L Solutions and the cost of saying we will comply.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_02: Protest of the day.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_04: Now, this is a good one.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_04: This is H2L Solutions Inc.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_04: This came out September 14th.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_04: We always give you the hottest, freshest protests.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_04: And actually, I just want to say I looked at the a couple of the last four, two of them involve RFO.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_04: So the RFO's coming in.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_04: They didn't, they weren't about the RFO and how the RFO has changed.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_04: But the the protest does say that the agency used RFO part 12 procedures, RFO 15, and they mentioned the procedure.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_04: And then so you can actually see in the protest right now, a lot of the deliberating, a lot of the it's it's going to be the same considerations, but they're just doing the RFO this time.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_04: All right.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_04: But this H2 Solutions, this was the Department of Veterans Affairs, and they were buying.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_04: I thought it'd be good for us to get into what they buy and doing it in an interesting way, but this one's sanitation and disposal of sensitive media.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_04: So, but this is sensitive media that's important.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, it is important.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, everything you put on a printer, that picture gets saved onto a hard drive, right?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_02: And so now if you copy a license plate, or I mean it's license plate, you copy your driver's license on a government copier, that image is saved on the hard drive in the copier.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_02: Someone's got to dispose of that.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_02: You got to scrape stuff.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_04: You gotta sanitize it.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_04: You have to dispose of it.
• 41:16
  SPEAKER_04: And so the VA sensitive media, you can only imagine, right?
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_04: This is veterans' affairs.
• 41:21
  SPEAKER_04: So we have personal information of veterans probably.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway, what they needed to sanitize and dispose of included stuff on tapes, CDs, compact discs, iPads.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_04: But the the thing that's interesting about this, though, is the tapes.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_04: I think the tapes and the cassette tapes.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_04: It's like I was thinking VHS.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_02: It could be.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, there's a room, probably there's a room full of tapes.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: They don't know what to do with.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_02: And they can't like just throw it in the dumpster.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe it's the fact that there's tapes and CDs, it's maybe it's been a minute since they've done this.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_04: The data's not relevant.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_04: So it's an SD V OSB set aside.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_04: That's uh service disabled veteran-owned small business.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_04: So it's so the protest.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the Dalton Gang isn't our nickname for it.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_02: It is officially the Dalton Gang Inc., the Dalton Gang.
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_04: The Dalton Gang Gang.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, the mobster gang.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: No, never get us.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_04: So they got the contract, and H2L um is upset.
• 42:25
  SPEAKER_04: So I I want to go into a couple things here because there's a there's an RFO, a little bit of an RFO point here.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_04: But then I there is something I think for contract.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_04: This is why it's good to read protests.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_04: There's some really good, good stuff in here for how you can uh start crafting your own um solicitations and source selections.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_04: So uh this was a an RFQ off of a federal supply schedule.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_04: So they were they said they were using part 8.4, but there was a there was a uh a little footnote at the bottom here because they used 8.4 procedures after the part eight deviation had come out already, which there's still an 8.4, but it basically tells you to go to GSAM or the GSAR.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_04: Like, you know, so there was there's a whole like really long footnote all about the RFO saying, you know, there were amendments, and then the the the GAO went into, well, what's the differences then?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_04: You were you were using the GSAR, you were supposed to be using this GSAR, but you used 8.4.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_04: Uh ultimately, this was all indicta because it didn't matter for this.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_04: Uh there weren't enough differences that really that really showed.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_04: But I think the thing to learn from here is that if you were supposed to, if you were using old FAR procedures when the deviation had already come out, they may crack open and see, well, when was this supposed to be effective?
• 43:45
  SPEAKER_04: Were you supposed to be using the deviation?
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_04: So anyway, so this went out on GSA, uh, a federal supply schedule, a single order, uh base plus three, the base period plus three.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_04: And uh they went with the pretty much the most straightforward.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_04: Evaluation technique you can come up that that's in the government.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_04: That is best value.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_04: We'll award based on best value and we'll consider three uh criteria technical, past performance, price.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_04: Price.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_04: That's as that's as American as apple pie.
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, those are the three things you do.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_04: Uh the thing at issue, though, the factor is technical.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: And they actually, the Dalton gang, uh they were they were more million dollars more, right?
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_02: A whole million dollars more.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: They were more expensive.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: Well, you got the Dalton gang.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_02: It's not gonna be cheap.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_04: They probably robbed a bank.
• 44:33
  SPEAKER_04: And yeah.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_04: Uh so the Dalton gang was higher uh in price, but they were also higher in this technical competition.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_02: Much higher.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_04: So uh they uh let's see.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_02: That's a lot of money to uh just to smash some stuff.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, must have been a lot of cassettes.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, think about that.
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_02: It's a million dollars more.
• 44:51
  SPEAKER_02: What's the total?
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: Do we have the total on here somewhere?
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_04: Uh five million dollars.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: Man, we need to get in the CD cassette crushing business.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_04: When you look into sanitizing, and just as a heads up, as as uh H2L learned the hard way, there's a difference between doing it with tapes and doing it with others.
• 45:07
  SPEAKER_04: Man, couldn't you just get a hobo barrel and some gasoline and just start burning them?
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_04: Just burn them all?
• 45:12
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you have to sanitize them too.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_04: Are you just are you disposing of all of them?
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_04: I don't think I don't think you're destroying the data.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_02: Why not?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's true.
• 45:21
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, what's on the cassette?
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_02: Are they trans?
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: So they're transferring the data on the cassette somewhere else.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: Is that part of it?
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe yeah.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_02: Clearly we don't know enough about this.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_04: The Dalton gang does.
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_04: But there was a PWS that talked exactly about how to sanitize and dispose of the data.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_04: And here's what I like about what the solicitation did.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_04: It it this is a good, this is a good rule of thumb if you're if you're doing like a source selection and you're doing evaluation criteria and you're you're telling the offers how you're gonna do this.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_04: So what was required was they had to give them a detailed approach.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_04: A detailed approach.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_04: That's the wording that becomes important later.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_04: A detailed approach to three things.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_04: The vendor's the vendor's approach to performing all the stuff in the PWS, the vendor's approach to mitigating risks that's spelled out in the PWS, and then the vendor's approach to securing a web portal service according to the PWS.
• 46:15
  SPEAKER_04: So that's all they did.
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_04: I think it's a really great way to write a source selection because you're saying give us a detailed approach of how you're gonna be doing what's spelled out in the PWS.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_02: So if the VA is saying destroy these cassettes, you can't just come back and say we can destroy cassettes.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, probably just say how you're gonna do it.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_02: And that's what uh the Dalton gang did.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_02: They just did the how and uh did not?
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_04: They gave him a low, they gave him a brief explanation and they gave them um two kind of low uh two discriminators.
• 46:46
  SPEAKER_04: They said they failed to address destruction of the tapes specifically.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_04: And then, you know, H2L saying, Well, you didn't say we had to specifically talk about tapes.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_04: Uh and then and then they said they failed to do a risk mitigation approach uh addressing the loss or theft.
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_04: So um, so this is common with with companies.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_04: They said, you know, you said I had to give a good approach.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_04: You didn't specifically mention I had to speak to X, or you didn't specifically, but they kind of did when they said, and this is what the whole decision is when they said you have to give a detailed approach to the B PWS, it can be anything in that PWS.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_04: And the PWS did mention uh tapes.
• 47:25
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it's challenging.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_02: A lot of times, you know, these things will say limit the number of pages or focus on the right things, and you don't necessarily know.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: So you just like, oh, just let's just talk about these other medias.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_02: Well, it'll show our general process of handling everything.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: And they just skipped over cassettes thinking, maybe that doesn't matter.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh and so you have a limited amount of time and sometimes even pages to do this stuff.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_02: And so, you know, you skip a page and they get frustrated when they're they call you out for skipping the one thing that you were just trying to, you know, like, well, we don't have time to cover that.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_04: They they oh, by the way, they they used a case a lot that comes up a lot uh past protests, and it's called uh DEI Consulting.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_04: That was the name of it.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_04: Can you imagine having that name today?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_04: It's illegal.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_04: That company is illegal today, apparently.
• 48:06
  SPEAKER_04: That must be a tough company name to have right now.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_04: I wonder if they change their name.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_04: Anyway, that but they said destroying tapes is different.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_04: Every media is different.
• 48:13
  SPEAKER_04: And they asked for a detailed approach that addressed uh the services listed in the PWS.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_04: They also stated that their confidence rating would be based on that approach.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_04: Um, so the argument was, yeah, we made a statement.
• 48:26
  SPEAKER_04: This is what they said.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_04: We made a statement repeatedly that we are committed to fulfilling everything in the PWS.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_04: Can you imagine?
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: A one-page submission.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: It'd be great if every we should do that.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_02: If every submission was just we're committed to doing it.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_04: We will do what's in the PWS.
• 48:42
  SPEAKER_04: We could just, we could win.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_04: We could like, yeah, we are committed to doing nuclear missiles.
• 48:47
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna be so good.
• 48:49
  SPEAKER_04: The government's like, okay, calm.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_04: They said they could do it.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_04: But these blanket statements, I mean, that this is common, uh, you know, where you get that, where you know, they just have that the company will come in, they'll say, We will, we are committed to fulfilling everything that's written, almost like a blanket check.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_04: And then the the court, Etta, Edda's at it again, she rightly said, Look, they they said they're gonna come up with a confidence rating based on your detailed explanation.
• 49:13
  SPEAKER_04: You're not giving them any meaningful basis for them to come up with by just blanket saying that you're gonna do everything that's in the PWS.
• 49:21
  SPEAKER_04: So uh the GAO said, it's up to the vendor.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_04: This is a quote, I think.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_04: It's up to the vendor to submit a well-written quotation that allows meaningful review.
• 49:30
  SPEAKER_04: Um so did H2L have a process for destroying tapes?
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_04: I'm sure it did.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_04: Maybe it was even better than the Dalton gang, but they didn't say it.
• 49:38
  SPEAKER_04: They didn't detail it in there.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_04: And it makes you wonder if they if they used one of the footnotes, uh, this is just a just aside, was uh the protester used AI, and there's a whole footnote Edda goes off on them on that.
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_04: Like the apparently the AI, it's it said something, it didn't say AI, it said it's clear that there were errors made due to large language models being used.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_04: But Edda has in a footnote, she's like, please don't basically.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_04: I'm paraphrasing if Edda's watching, I'm sorry, but she's like, please don't do this again.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: Don't waste our time.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_02: Don't waste our time with hallucinated citations.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_02: It was just citations that didn't exist.
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_02: So people are looking through or control finding, looking for citations, like, this is nowhere.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: They found out just AI, unchecked AI.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_04: And what's funny is they they used AI for for the protest.
• 50:25
  SPEAKER_04: If they had used AI better for the pro for for the proposal for the quote, they may have caught because a lot of the stuff they didn't get it because they just didn't include things that I'm sure they had an approach to.
• 50:36
  SPEAKER_04: It was just a it was a dumb mistake they made.
• 50:39
  SPEAKER_04: AI probably would have made them, you know.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_04: Like we don't just we don't just destroy tapes.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_02: We don't just dispose of tapes.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_02: We sanitize them.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_02: We sanitize them.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: Come work with us and we'll put them in a barrel, we'll burn them, and we'll do it a lot, a lot less than five million, less than their four million dollars offer.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_02: We'll do it for one million dollars.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_04: So they said we'll clean and dispose data based on the media type.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_04: That's what they said.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_04: Then they said, Yeah, well, we already said it.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_04: We're gonna clean, and then agents said, Yeah, okay, but there are differences between doing that to a tape and doing it to a CD.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_04: Do you know what those differences are?
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_04: It wasn't clear.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_02: Can't prove it.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_04: The other thing is the risk mitigation.
• 51:16
  SPEAKER_04: Um, the agency said they mentioned that missing media and transportation was part of their risk mitigation plan, but loss or theft was not.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_04: So, I mean, and and and they didn't mention that at all, which I think I think it's a big deal.
• 51:31
  SPEAKER_04: People can I mean CDs, for example, are getting really big.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_04: Aren't they?
• 51:37
  SPEAKER_04: Aren't the kids listening to Skys?
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_02: The kids are listening to CDs again, they want you know media they can hold in their hands.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you go to the thrift store and you're scrolling through, like, I got some uh Silver Chair, yeah, little Pearl Jam, little Dolly Parton, VA records.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
• 51:50
  SPEAKER_02: I got oh, I got John and Joe and Susie's VA systems.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_04: Because they've been destroyed by the VA's project.
• 51:59
  SPEAKER_04: Well, you go to Goodwill, forget finding like Wu-Tang or thriller Michael Jackson.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_04: It so it the loss of theft could the the danger of theft could go up.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_04: It's enough because CDs are so hyped just to listen to audio of sensitive VA data.
• 52:17
  SPEAKER_04: It's like fine.
• 52:18
  SPEAKER_04: It's a compact disc, I'll take it.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: And and H2L didn't address it.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: So you're saying hipsters are listening to VA recorded data non-ironically.
• 52:27
  SPEAKER_02: They'll they'll take anything.
• 52:28
  SPEAKER_02: They'll take anything.
• 52:29
  SPEAKER_02: It can be stolen.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_04: So here's the one of the big lessons is so much paper over there, by the way.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_04: I know.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_04: If you if you ask the contractor for a detailed approach of and then what's in the PWS, and you just gotta make sure that what you're dinging the quotes on and what you're giving them straints on is something that's included in that PWS, but it's a great way.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_04: And the court will defend you.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_04: If if your confidence rating is based on their inability or ability to really go into detail about what's in that PWS, you're fine.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_02: So there you go.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, nice job.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, let's get to the questions from our listeners.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_02: Every week we're gonna look for questions on our YouTube videos uh or LinkedIn comments and bring questions from our loyal listeners.
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we already talked about Don acquisition and his comment.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, so we'll get to Cole JSO.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_02: This is on page nine, Will, if you're looking through your giant stack.
• 53:22
  SPEAKER_04: I am.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_04: I think maybe over there.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_02: I'll put it here in the middle for you if you need it.
• 53:26
  SPEAKER_02: Um we're gonna look at a question from Cole Jasos 3622.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_02: All right.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_02: I was a little confused about BPAs on IDIQs.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_02: I might be wrong, but couldn't that be used as sort of a soul source loophole?
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: BPAs on IDIQs.
• 53:40
  SPEAKER_02: BPAs on IDIQs.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for the question, Cole Jason.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah, thank you, Cole.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_04: So it's there's not it's not a sole source loophole, but I know again, this is something that small businesses hate because IDIQs, um, you don't have to um you don't have to go out to small business.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_04: And what you could do with a BPA off of an IDIQ is enter into a really long-term relationship with a company that uh small business wasn't even aware of or wasn't even part of that competition.
• 54:07
  SPEAKER_04: So there is um you you can award a BPA off of an IDIQ now, but you can't just sole source it without following what's in uh actually I'm gonna pull out my RFO.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_04: So uh you just Google RFO and and you get it.
• 54:23
  SPEAKER_04: You get it.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_04: Should I go through the tip of the week?
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_04: Google RFO and you'll get it.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_04: This is a phone.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_04: Um so in uh 16.507, you have procedures for setting up uh the BPA.
• 54:37
  SPEAKER_04: That's I think that's 16.507-2C.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_04: Um and then you have procedures for what's called fair opportunity and exceptions to fair opportunity.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_04: When you're going sole source off an IDIQ, let's say you're you're on NASA soup and you just want to award to one of those companies on NASA Soup, you can.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_04: You just have to write what's called a justification for exception to fair opportunity.
• 55:01
  SPEAKER_04: It's not a J and A, but it is a document and it spells that out, I think in 15.
• 55:06
  SPEAKER_04: So it's 16.507-6, spells out how to do an exception to fair opportunity.
• 55:14
  SPEAKER_04: So when you're doing a BPA, you're supposed to do a multiple award uh BPA.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_04: Um uh so if you don't do a multiple board and just do a single award, you can do that too, but you have to provide justification.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, but at least you're competing that single award.
• 55:30
  SPEAKER_04: If you're just gonna go to one company single award, for example, let's go to the extreme.
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_04: Okay, you're just going to one company in soup.
• 55:37
  SPEAKER_02: Like Atlantic to build the uh to fix the pool and just go into Atlantic,$13 million requirement, obviously urgent.
• 55:46
  SPEAKER_04: It's the 250th.
• 55:48
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, so you're just going to Atlantic to build the pool, and you're like, it's not going to be a multiple award.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_04: I'm just going to do orders off of you.
• 55:55
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, so you not only need a some kind of documentation that you're going to go single award and not multiple award, but you you also have to come up with the reason why you're not competing for that single award.
• 56:06
  SPEAKER_04: And so if you're going to set up a BPA only to one provider, you have to do that justification for the exception to fair opportunity.
• 56:14
  SPEAKER_04: It's in the it's in the new RFO 16.507-6.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_04: You have to have your reasons.
• 56:20
  SPEAKER_04: Here's some of the reasons.
• 56:21
  SPEAKER_04: Let's let's let's find the reason for Atlantic.
• 56:23
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, the agency need for the service is so urgent that providing a fair opportunity would result in unacceptable delays.
• 56:32
  SPEAKER_04: We need a reflecting pool by the 250th.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: An acceptable delay.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, it didn't say it didn't say had to like have, you know, injury, right?
• 56:39
  SPEAKER_02: There's no injury there.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: It's just if you got a birthday coming up and nothing is, you know, doing all of the competitions is going to delay the birthday party, yeah.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_02: Which is not acceptable.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: It's not.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 56:49
  SPEAKER_04: Okay.
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_04: Uh only one awardee.
• 56:51
  SPEAKER_04: Uh, yeah, there's other stuff in here as well.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_04: And then it it shows you how to write it, the justification, it's it's in detail.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_04: So you don't want to turn it into a whole J and A thing, but there is, uh, there are requirements for.
• 57:03
  SPEAKER_04: I mean, competition's a big deal with multiple award contracts as well.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_03: All right.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_04: So to answer your question, Cole, no.
• 57:08
  SPEAKER_04: Uh you're not bypassing uh the competition procedures.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_04: They're just a little bit different.
• 57:14
  SPEAKER_04: But if the question is, can you buy, can you use, can you abuse this?
• 57:18
  SPEAKER_04: Absolutely you can.
• 57:19
  SPEAKER_04: Get out there and abuse it.
• 57:20
  SPEAKER_04: But you shouldn't.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_04: Oh.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_02: Get out there and don't abuse it.
• 57:23
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely you can, but shouldn't.
• 57:25
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, perfect.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: All right, that's the last question for the day.
• 57:28
  SPEAKER_02: We have no more time.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you for joining us on The Far is Lava.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_02: If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to our YouTube channel or our podcast.
• 57:37
  SPEAKER_02: Leave a comment or question below, and also email us if you have a question if you're listening to the podcast.
• 57:42
  SPEAKER_02: The Flar is Lava is sponsored by ASI Government, editorial work by M.
• 57:46
  SPEAKER_02: Lorenz, produced in collaboration with Studio Podcast Suites.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_02: We'll be back in the next week with another round of tutorials at the Roll.
• 57:52
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks, David.
• 57:53
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks everyone.
• 57:54
  SPEAKER_02: Adios.