Latest / The FAR is Lava / Ep. 8: Government Spam Filter Sparks GAO Protest! Plus New DoW OT Guide & Army Acquisition Reform

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Ep. 8: Government Spam Filter Sparks GAO Protest! Plus New DoW OT Guide & Army Acquisition Reform · The FAR is Lava

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Halloween and welcome to the FAR is Lava, where we use current procurement news to teach you the FAR and the RFO.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: In today's episode, the Army says your move, civilian agencies, were the procurement efficiency pigs.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody had stalled the arms AI race, but this just didn't.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: DAO has a new strategic plan.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And learn what a pile of leaves and spam email have in common.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: Stop sitting on the sideline and join us in the Far is Lava.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: I'm Ben.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is Will.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get started.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Halloween.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Halloween.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of scary stuff going on right now.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's a perfect Halloween.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I did bring a Halloween prop.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: I know we've got others, but this is the uh the resurrection of the zombie.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: This is a this is the old far.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is actually my old far that I had.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's a 2011.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: He dressed up as a tombstone.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is like there's some there's some spells I can give of of dead things.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna be for Halloween?
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, you got some spells you're gonna read?
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I was gonna read a couple.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Uh they're very exciting.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: 15.208 submission uh late rules.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: The offers maybe holder.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_01: The the let's see, what is it?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um use any transmission.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, wait.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, here it is.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: Any proposal, modification, or revision that is received at the designated government office after the exact time is late and will not be considered.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Simpler times when late was late.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: I guess it's late, it still is late, maybe with part 15.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: But late is still acceptable.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Now that's true.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, Will, what are you gonna be for Halloween?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know yet?
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I may dress up as the old FAR.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: The zombie version of the old FAR.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that's good.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: A book that no one opens.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was now I I texted you said we should ask, you know, what are some of the scariest GovCon costumes?
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_00: Did you think of any?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Uh oh, no.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't I missed that.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Like dr you didn't see that?
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, only I didn't come up with any good.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: But if I was gonna dress up as the scariest GovCon or federal federal procurement costume, maybe like just a late requirement.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Or like a if you're uh if you're in policy, maybe just dress up in all red.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: It could be a red line.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, that's pretty good.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is that good?
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: A late requirement's good.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: A late proposal.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, just dress up as a late proposal.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you got like baggy eyes.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: You're just you're running the whole time.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, there's some ideas for you.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's some there's some words that aren't used anymore.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: So there could be you could dress up as a zombie and and be actually it could be the word AI, which is now changed to SI.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Have you heard that?
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_00: I did hear that.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not using it yet.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: I'm still using Twitter instead of X, and I still say Gulf of Mexico because I'm wacky like that.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: You gotta get what the time's been.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's called American AI.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's American intelligence.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I was thinking it should have been.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: American intelligence.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Is why do superintelligence, um, which we're not there yet with superintelligence.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: No, uh, it could have just been called American intelligence.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's such a missed opportunity.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's go right into the day.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: This day in contract history.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we're gonna do October 31st because we want to celebrate Halloween around here of the completion of Mount Rushmore.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: On Halloween, 1941, Mount Rushmore National Memorial was declared a completed project.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's appropriate because they were all dead at the time, correct?
• 3:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's the ultimate Halloween costume for a mountain.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it was completed.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there was funding involved in this.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there was contracting involved in this.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: The project began in 1927.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: And while Europe was a mess in 1941, we were building faces on mountains with President Calvin Coolidge promising federal support, ultimately costing this is great,$990,000 was the cost of Mount Rushmore, which is also the cost of one roadmap in a major consulting company.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Back in 1927, you can have an entire mountain memorialized into faces.
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: Nowadays, what does that what does a million dollars get you?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like one vaccine?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think so.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: So viewers on the on the government contracting side, use that in negotiation, be like, that costs more than Mount Rushmore.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Are you serious?
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: So congressional funding, additional appropriations, and New Deal programs.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know if the the New Deal program that built like uh the uh uh what is it, the um Skyline Drive, you know, along the Appalachians.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they were that program was involved in building Mount Rushmore.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: It went through changing oversight arrangements from a federal commission to National Park Service super oh, the National Park Service comes up later.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they're the agency of the week.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um sculptor Gootson Borglum.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: He is my favorite sculptor.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: He is well, he died.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Borglum in in March, in March.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh well, he can still be my favorite.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: He never got to see the completion, uh, leaving his son Lincoln, appropriately named, to supervise the final work with World War II approaching and money running out.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: The planned carving ended without all of Borglum's ideas being completed.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder what some of those ideas were.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: Were they gonna add another president?
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe should they sharpen up the nose?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_00: Did it end because they ran out of time, money, or is that the actually phase one?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: World War II, maybe, right?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just curious, what was that actually supposed to be to look like?
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_00: Or did that was it supposed to have their bodies too or something?
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: Ran out of money.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: Uh more than 400 workers contributed to memorial.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Big contracting effort.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_01: As again, like we always say, um, so much of what we see in our country, in history, and in landmarks is the result of government contracting.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Happy Halloween.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: This was done.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Mount Rushmore was completed on Halloween.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: I like how federal procurement kind of shoehorns our way into anything because you can always say there there's always going to be a contract somewhere.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like, well, good thing, good thing the contract was there.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: The contract was there.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: The poor chisel, poor hands that were chiseling away by a hanging by an old rope that'll fall off the mountain.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: And the dynamite contractors were happy because 90% of the carving was accomplished with dynamite.
• 5:48
  unknown: Wow.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Blowing stuff up and presidents' faces emerge.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get into the news.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: You ready for the news, Will?
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of great news.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: The news is brought to you by our Daily Dose newsletter.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_00: So make sure you're subscribing to our newsletter.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: You only get us one day a week, but you can get the daily dose five days a week.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Brought to us by Ann Laurent, an amazing editor, amazing uh talent, putting together great news stories.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_00: So subscribe to the Daily Dose.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh today's first news story.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: GAO has released a new strategic five-year plan starting in the year 2027.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: The government's watchdog says it wants to stay ahead of rapid change in AI, cybersecurity, and in federal technology by changing both what it reviews and how GAO does its own work.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: The plan includes specific objects for acquisition, technology buying, and bid protests.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: So as I've teased in our header, everyone's concerned about the AI race and cybersecurity and how do you stay safe?
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: But GAO has it figured out.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And they got five years to implement that plan.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: GAO is getting involved.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're getting involved.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: They want to make sure the stuff we're buying is safe.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: And then the technology that the government's using internally is effective, efficient.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because we can't just be afraid of AI.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: We got to actually use it.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: Are we effectively using it?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so they have a plan.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I encourage you to go read the entire thing.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's out there.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's um GAO, just for the viewer, just as a recap, GAO is an agency, but they are not an executive branch agency.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: They're special.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: They're an agency part of the legislative branch.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: So they work for Congress and they're supposed to be providing oversight.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so let's remind the people what GAO is.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: So GAO is an agency, the government accountability office, not part of the executive branch, though.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: It is an agency in the legislative branch.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_01: They are providing oversight.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's the A in accountability to make sure that Congress passes laws, but the agencies execute those laws, they provide that oversight.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_01: So now they're providing some plans on how they're gonna apply that oversight to the executive agency's application of AI and even do their own AI, it seems, right?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: And they're gonna and this is also they can do this independent analysis for Congress.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_00: So to your point, just go into Congress.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, better government performance and accountability and stronger internal capability.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: So accountability and internal capability.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: So we're not they're not just looking to stop.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Stop bringing in great AI.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, okay, let's bring in good AI, but then how are we effectively using it?
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: And then I mean I hope they're not adding AI, though, to their protests and replacing some people.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: Why would you want to read something from AI when you can get it from EDA emmanuel?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_00: I wish we can get the source information and have AI write a protest as EDA and just compare it and just see if they do a good job, see how it looks.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: We could see.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um but there's procurement procurement objectives in here, so stay tuned, procurement workforce.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: There's some things here happen in the next five years.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh recruit they are they also want to recruit a lot of great new talent.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_00: Data science, AI, cybersecurity.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know, in the next couple of years, if you're graduating from college and looking for a career path in the government, this is one.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: Data sciences and AI and cybersecurity, the government needs highly technical, highly skilled, young talent, old talent as well.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you're going back to school, uh like Rodney Dangerfield.
• 8:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And uh so yeah, we need we need more talent, so they're looking at that as well.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm most disappointed about this though?
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_01: What?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Is in their survey, they didn't use SI.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: I think the executive Oh, wait, that's that's an executive order.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: So the GAO can still use the term AI, possibly.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: There maybe maybe they don't have to follow that order.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the monitoring will be done through its performance and accountability report.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: I don't plan on reading that, but I hope hopefully they do.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: So uh anything else here to add?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um What actually I have a question.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: So what authority does GAO then have over what tools an agency is using for AI?
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: So internal, think this thing, internal resources, they're using AI just uh for all kinds of processes across the whole agency, not just procurement.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Can they come in after the fact and say, get rid of these tools?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: We've decided through our own analysis that they're not safe or they don't meet our standards?
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: So that so GAO, as part of their accountability operations, they investigate and then they write reports.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: So GAO reports are coming out all the time.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the GAO reports will list whatever deficiencies are happening, some good things.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes GAO reports are great examples, like the Army is doing great with OTs or whatever.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_01: But a lot of times they'll have some problems and then they'll have recommendations.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, those are usually taken seriously, they carry weight.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: The agencies are, I think, wise to follow them.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: But I don't know if they've ever been in a role where they say you shall do this, and agencies are now running around, you know.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Especially for tools, like you have to use this tool now.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: That seems kind of strange for GAO to do that.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: It does.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we appreciate GAO's reports because we've used them.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: We use them on procurement fraud that we've done some stories on.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: So we get the reports, we'll bring them to the people, we'll save them time of reading the 20 something odd pages this thing is.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: So that's right.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh we have two quick stories celebrating the American workforce uh on the government side because OPM has finalized a rule eliminating the familiar one-year time in grade hurdle for many general schedule, general schedule promotions.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, in short, you don't have to wait a whole year to get promoted.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can get promoted in less than a year.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: And also, as part of this push to make things more uh like a high performance culture, which is what uh the OMB uh director, uh, what's his name, Scott Kupor mentioned.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: I I love this uh this interview, this video interview.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: I I agreed with everything he he he said, but he does talk about this idea of a high performance culture.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so not only uh are you do you have to be there a year to get your promotion, but if you're there many years, you're not guaranteed that promotion.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: So you're not just like gonna rise up the ladder based on seniority of doing nothing for years.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_00: I did nothing.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, I saw one of my first jobs as a manager, uh, I ran a customer service team.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I'd tell them, hey, look, you gotta stay with me for a year.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: I gotta, you know, if I'm gonna go through the effort of hiring and training, you gotta stay for a year.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um and that typically worked, but then as the company grew larger and art, you know, hired amazing talent, of course.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, you can't really hold them back.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: You can't be like, no, no, no, you got me up, I'll get you six more months, even though this department's desperate for what you have to offer.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna hold you back from more money, yeah, you know, greater opportunity.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: So what are those shows where there's like a boardroom meeting and the intern sits there and they just say something genius and that intern just immediately rises up.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Rises up.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's what we're trying to protect here.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing that we're trying to not have, which I which I like this, uh ending sort of this guaranteed promotion and doing what they call high performance um culture, is I think probably all the viewers know this situation.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: That the the government has really great workers, really, really good workers are in the government.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's also career bureaucrats who believe it or not, they're they're the it's the the stereotype is true.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: They're there.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they show up, maybe with their sweatpants.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: They have their their cubicle has the little Kathy, uh, you know, Kathy little comic strip thing.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're have their uh coffee mug that says I hate Mondays, the Garfield one.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: They don't want to talk to anyone, they don't care.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_01: They've they've worked decades of really not caring about their job, not being mission focused, not being performance focused, and yet been promoted, they are sometimes squeezing their way up to GS 15 positions, that is all over the government.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, unfortunately, and this is part of that.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Scott Kupor speaks, he didn't he doesn't say it exactly like that, but he's he's speaking to that as well.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: Like you you shouldn't have to be a we don't want career bureaucrats who are just gaming the system, rising up to the top because of seniority.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: We did a thing on American Deals with our their little video series.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one of the characters became the boss by just seniority, like age.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_01: Seniority and incompetence rose him to the top.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: We'll throw a link out for our series American Deals.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: This is a TV show all about other procurement workforce, a contracting office.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you check that out.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, one criticism of this though is um that I had too, but but the interviewer asked Scott Kupor this is is how so first of all, what is high performance?
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: What is the definition of high performance?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: With procurement, for example, does that mean you're responding to taskers perfectly and you're you're putting all your Excel sheets in perfectly?
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_01: Or does high performance mean you're ensuring that competition's maximized, you're making sure the tax you're like you're fulfilling the principles in the RFO?
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: There's a difference between what people call high performance, and then the other thing is this is really this this is all great, okay, high performance culture.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: People are gonna get promoted based on performance, not just based on like this, you know, seniority.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: How do you the the real test of this is whether the managers are actually gonna do this and not have what was called out favoritism, just arbitrary, subjective, weird, you know, where the the you know it's gonna be up to these managers to make sure the high performers are actually getting promoted, the low performers.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: But there was one quote that I loved that Scott Cooper said where he's like, he said, I'm I'm fundamentally against the idea that you can't treat diff people differently based on their performance.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I completely agree with that.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, 100%.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the challenge is gonna be though, the managers that are gonna make these decisions are part of the product of being promoted based on seniority.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And so they've been through it.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so then in theory, they're they're gonna just pick the low-hanging fruit.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're for you know people are like, oh, that's just you know, but then when you finally start getting some young managers or yeah, newer managers that are from this cult this high performance work culture, I think it'll change fast.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And we should say we've we've been stereotyping a lot, but there are a lot a lot of good senior members that that are there because of their performance.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, you were one of them.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: You were old and worked for the government.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: So um uh one more little happy positive story here.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh federal retirees starting in 2027 will have a cost of living adjustment.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: So you're gonna get uh 3.6% for civilian civil service retirement systems annuities.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh congratulations, starting in January.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: 3.6% more money, uh uh, which is important.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Things are getting expensive.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Retirees uh aren't getting new jobs necessarily, so that money makes a difference.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: So congrats.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Congrats.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: Just what can you buy with that?
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: A better Halloween costume for next year.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, in January.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_00: Start shopping in January, they'll be on sale.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's great.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: So that's all I have to say about that.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: But I'm I'm happy that they're still uh looking out for the retirees.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_00: And it's more motivation for people to stay in the government.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 16:13
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just see it through, retire uh from the government, and you'll have uh your money and a little bit more once in a while.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let's get into some DOW and a couple Army stories here and uh talk about what they're doing in procurement.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_00: I call them the efficiency king.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they're calling themselves the efficiency kings.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: Is that what they said?
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is that how I interpreted one of the articles?
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: So they didn't actually say efficiency kings.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: It's a paraphrase.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: That's a paraphrase of an article that someone else wrote about them.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I see.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: So all right.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_00: The Department of War just released version 1.0, that's the first version, of its guide to prototype other transactions.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: The update follows a September directive to expand and streamline OT use and gives acquisition teams new guidance on when to use these agreements, who can participate, and how to pay performers, and how to move uh uh move from prototypes into production.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so they're obviously already had a directives back in uh 2023 on these OTs.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's a new uh guide.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is the 1.0 guide released in October and putting greater emphasis on these, um essentially saying we still prefer OTs over FAR-based contracts.
• 17:21
  SPEAKER_00: So start there.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_00: That's the initial part of the guidance.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um and uh simplifying some of the procedures on these OTs.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_01: So the the DOD OT guide, like you mentioned, the most recent one was 2023.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, this is just the new version.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_01: And there are some differences with this new OT guide and the DOD.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's good for any uh, you know, uh from another article, I think that we're gonna talk about later, there is an increase.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's not huge, but there is this gradual increase of the Department of War using OTs more.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: This guide does have uh, I mean, this is it's a good guide.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: I liked the old, I think the one of the first guides came out in 2019 or something, and then it's just been uh kind of updated.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is the most recent update.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's a great uh guide.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: What the danger is though, for any agency um and the DOD, uh setting up their own OT procedures and office offices is just not to restrict too much more than this guide states.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: This guide, the beauty of this guide is that it allows uh it provides guidance, but it doesn't restrict the use of OTs.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_01: It still keeps things very flexible.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: It does have some review thresholds in there, which it did in the previous, but it even um provides even more flexibilities than uh than previous versions.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: One example is uh the competition standard, I think in previous versions it said you need to compete to the maximum extent practicable.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: That was the competition standard for OTs for prototypes.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: They say in this new version, I noticed that's actually not a statutory requirement.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_01: So use your best discretion on how to compete, but you don't have to hang your head on this term maximum extent practicable, which was already pretty flexible.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's like as as much as you can.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_01: This guide is even saying, like just as much just yeah, just whatever.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: I love the flexibility.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: I I know in a the last podcast we were kind of talking about the dangers of OTs being used recklessly.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: We should say on on the podcast officially, big fans of OTs.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, we're not we're not afraid of OTs, we're afraid of it being used recklessly only because then it threatens OT usage, and then these guidances become laws and rules, and then we have a far-based contract.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and then the contract again.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_01: The next DOW OT guide is like, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the flexibility is great.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a great uh addition.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: It is also just kind of adding so it adds construction OTs, which is uh something that you know I think we're gonna talk about here in the U.S.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into it.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's use that example.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: It went from um basically limited, right?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: Just two OTs on a construction project or something like that.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: I was not aware of that restriction, but yeah, apparently you can only do two projects.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: So up to 300 million.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Now they say get rid of the ceilings, go crazy with construction.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: So that rule's gone.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, before construction prototype pilot under 10 USC was limited to two prototype construction projects per military service per year at 300 million aggregate uh projects focused on testing new construction techniques or technologies.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: So not only was it just limited to per year at 300 million, it was supposed to be focusing on new techniques and technologies.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't know what I guess if you get one new screwdriver from like an infomercial and say, like, we haven't used this screwdriver before, I guess that could be the new new way.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_00: The new authority um now separates that and says, you know what, just go nuts.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Just build stuff under OTs.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, yeah, because construction, I mean, not all it takes forever.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: And construction without the government, just building anything is a huge process.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so now they're trying to make that faster as well.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: That's cool.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it's adding uh no, it doesn't have to be a prototype.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: The 10 USC2808, it doesn't necessarily have to be something new, but there's there are a lot of new things.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the biggest thing is additive construction, 3D printing dis construction.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: I have a buddy who has a 3D printing, uh 3D printing construction company that he's got defense contracts.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's it's really cool that there's even a machine that goes out that's in combat environments that can create a structure where people don't have to be out there and and then you know it can create a uh a fortification.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, really cool applications to construction, and now we have enhanced OT authority.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's interesting construction that you mentioned it's so time consuming.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: This is the on the far side, the RFO not the comic, the actual far-related side of contract.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: Carrie Larson's not involved in this.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: Uh part 12 uh is being applied to construction now.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_01: Construction is considered can be considered a commercial service.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_01: So agencies are really struggling with that.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: Like, what does that mean?
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: How do we how do we change the game on how do we do design, build, and and apply commercial procedures to construction?
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_01: So this is just another element for military for O.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you can also do prototype um and uh and other transactions to make your construction even more flexible in the contracting.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: Commercial construction is kind of like Legos.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's true.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: Lincoln logs, that kind of construction.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's like COTS construction.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, exactly.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Buy a mobile home or pre-manufactured home.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's commercial construction.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: So it would look amazing.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: There's your answers, everyone.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all right, staying with the DIW, now the Army specifically, the Army says that its acquisition overhaul is beginning to deliver results.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um remember last year, military leaders reorganized buying, Hexeth in particular, reorganized uh buying around six portfolio acquisition executives or PAEs.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: So one leadership structure could look across related capabilities instead of buying across different programs in or having everything isolated.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so now they're saying there's been a huge increase in the number of um contracts.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Up to 100,000 this year is the most they've ever done of these executive level contracts.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this new PEA program or PAE program, sorry, that they put in place, apparently is having uh a lot of success.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, sure there's other challenges, but in this area, there's huge successes so far.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, maybe I'll make some enemies by saying this on the podcast.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: You heard it first.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a huge fan of, I think Army, as far as the services go with DOD, I think they get it right with contracting.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: We when we were in when I was doing AI projects with the Jake, we I was able to choose different offices.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_01: I consistently went back to Army contracting.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: They lean, they've been leaning into OTs in a great way with the Army contracting command.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I like the way they've been arranging their PAEs, like you mentioned.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I know the other services are doing the PAEs really well too.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: So it's no shade on the on the other services, but Army's been doing when it comes to emerging tech and these new like non-far vehicles and the uh they've been doing awesome.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: I what did it say too that they've been doing a hundred thousand contracts this year?
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: More than a hundred thousand contracts this year.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, yes, Brent Ingram said Army awarded more enterprise level contracts this year than any time in history.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: So not even this year over year.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's just more than ever.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: 100,000 contracts this year.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that in that number, you can see the speed.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you if if you're if your contracts are taking six months, you can't do a hundred.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: So I think this is also indicative that they're just cranking them out as well so that a contracting officer can move to the next contract.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: What did they say?
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: That took them seven days to days instead of sometimes days instead of months, and sometimes hours instead of days.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so they're getting down to just if they see a need, they can write the contract and buy what they need to buy real fast.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it it's a good lesson too, I think, for other services.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: One way to approach other transactions is to be so nervous about your office doing it that you kind of you don't experiment.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: You don't have your teams go out.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_01: And I don't think that's what the Army did.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, the Army was early on, the Army was doing contracts with DIU OTs for like Kessel Run, for example, um, with the uh partnering with the Air Force.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think that came from Army Contracting Command, uh, New Jersey, I think.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: So they were they were leaning in, they were experimenting, they were getting protested.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of there were some OT protests with the Army.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: So they were, you know, they were making some mistakes, but they were leaning in with uh little guidance.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: The challenge with some of these other services is that their answer to using OTs is let's create all of these policies first and then that go beyond this OT guide that we just mentioned.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: I I would say do it the Army way, experiment, have some really good AOs out there, uh cranking out seven-day orders and make your mistakes, learn from them, push forward.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not just the OTs alone.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, obviously the new structure made a big difference.
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_00: So now they're not doing things in silo.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: The other they also mentioned they're using a lot shorter problem statements, so industry can propose their own solutions.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_00: So they're trying to find other ways uh to get to speed, and that's part of the reason they've hit this hundred thousand contract uh milestone.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: So congrats to them.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: And with these PAEs, uh the uh there's a contracting staff that's embedded with that uh acquisition executive there.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_01: So that they're it's a balanced team.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Reminds me of uh uh Mad Max uh Thunderdome, Tina Turner.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: They had Master Blaster, which was the little guy that would sit on top of the huge man's shoulders.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: So I think he that he's that one on the bottom is like the PAE, and he's the contract officer up here on top.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Is the Master Blaster?
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, the Master.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's him.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's just like writing contract.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: He just says what he needs and gets the contract written so fast.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: But the perfect analogy is a good thing.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's what they had in mind, actually, yeah, when they wrote that years ago.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a big Mad Max fan.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'll I'll put an image on the screen.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't seen that, I encourage you to go watch it.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: That that is a representation of a PAE.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Next work.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: Next presentation, we should bring up that slide and just say here is here is the portfolio.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: Here is the contract office.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: It sits above.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: It's the little arrows pointing to Pig Slot and they used it to create uh fuel from pig dung.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: They turned pig dung into fuel, so they lived underground.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: So it's not the most flattering.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: Sort of losing the analogy there.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't really you know, no offense.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: Uh staying again with the army.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: This time it's um we're we're slowing things down a little bit.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um the same army that says it's streamlined acquisition has now had to turn on a task force to create uh to fix the HVAC system widespread problem throughout its military barracks.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: Broken heating and air conditioning systems in soldiers' barracks uh are a major problem.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And apparently it's all everywhere.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: In places like Hawaii.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: In Hawaii, where they're sleeping in their cars, it says.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, these are you know, young men and women, old men and women that are willing to risk their lives and give up their freedoms in a lot of case to move where they have to move and get stuck in these barracks that don't have good heating and air.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, just seems so important.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: But it's taking a task force uh to get this fixed.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And to that I say, why did it why does it do you need like an HVAC task force?
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: I just feel like each barrack, if they had the money, they could say, is it broken?
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: Check yes or no.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if it's yes, get it fixed.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: Call someone to get it fixed.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now, of course, we can call anyone.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't work that way.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: But these they have all these OTEs.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it seems like it doesn't need a task force.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: So not everything is flying uh not every contract's flying off the shelf over there.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: They need a task force to solve this.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: But it's they spent$15 million a couple years ago to fix 44 of these things.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: And they said they they um they surveyed the workforce, right?
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: When it says when it comes to when it comes to safety and comfort, HVAC was the biggest problem across the Army, right?
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: That that was the biggest issue with with comfort is just a broken AC.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, think about it.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like if something was gonna break in your house, like whether a leaky faucet, AC, that becomes Florida.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's an emergency, or in the winter when it's cold.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, an immediate, urgent need.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I uh I think the funniest thing about this article, I I hope I don't misquote it, but it's just funny the way it was written.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it was out of context, but Heggseth said something like the safety and and comfort of our workforce is the highest priority.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then right after that it said, that's never been done before.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: This is this is a brand new thing.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, the task force is interesting.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: What that there's a there's a guy who does billboards in our in our area in Jacksonville, and and the new billboard he has right now is a committee.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_01: He just has little marquee things, little wise sayings.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_01: His new thing is a committee, the the definition of a committee is an organization that keeps track of minutes and loses hours.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a good description of a government committee often.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_01: So hopefully this task force doesn't become a bureaucratic mess that doesn't fix a simple HVAC problem.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, let's let's fix that.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so when you're thinking about our troops, safety, and then also think about the rare conditioning.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: Incidentally, what the what the task force could do.
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is a good this is good testing ground for an OT.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: Put your statement of objectives out there.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Like we're having HVAC issues and get some good emerging tech prototypes to figure like the HVAC out with you know with new technology.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_00: All right, I love it.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um one more, this is not not not much of a news story here, but I wanted to shout out a post by Kevin Brancado.
• 30:06
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that's how you say his name, but I call him Kevin Brancado, founder of Hitch AI.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_00: I just came across his LinkedIn uh post about cost plus contracts are down from I think 42% of all contracts, now down to 14%.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: So from 2016, they were represented 42% of contracts, valuing of a million dollars.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_00: Now in 2026, in the first couple quarters, it's only 14%.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we can say cyanara to cost plus contracts.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: They are dropping majorly.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_00: Uh fixed price now are at 76%, up majorly from where they were before.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so fixed price and uh for civilian and uh OTs for DOW contracts are on the rise cost plus.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, OTs are on the rise like what, 6.5% or something.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_01: So it's it's a gradual increase for OTs.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly 6.5%.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_00: I like that and I thought maybe 6.5.
• 30:57
  SPEAKER_01: Good job.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the so the executive order is working that that kind of mandated this push to fixed price.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe if I was being a little optimistic, maybe it's also the government's moving more commercial.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_01: If you move more commercial, you're not gonna do costs.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna do you're gonna do a fixed price or a version of a fixed price.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so it's good to see you know positive impacts of these executive orders.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: If you're in favor of those executive orders, then they're positive.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not, they're negative.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: And if you are a big fan of cost plus, then you're uh saying sad.
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_00: Again, these come from Kevin Barcado's uh Hitch AI tool.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: So you know, check the data yourself if you'd like.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: Hitch AI.
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: I thought Hitch, I always think about the movie with Will Smith and Kevin James.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Kevin James is good, it was a very popular movie.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: My favorite part of that movie was how Kevin James was such a loser, whatever his character was in the movie, and then finally he gets confidence.
• 31:46
  SPEAKER_00: He's about to take his in take his inhaler right before, you know, after kissing the girl, I think, he's gonna take his inhaler and he just throws it away.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, I don't think confidence is linked to asthma is the is the reason.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't have asthma anymore.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_00: I've had asthma for a long time, and my I've been confident in the past.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_00: It has not improved my asthma at all.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: That inhaler was a cost contract, just threw it away.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: There's no more.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: I have confidence to do fixed price now.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: I think Kevin Broccotta was actually a producer of the Hitch movie, and that's where we got his name, Hitch AI.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Good job, Kevin.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, Kevin.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we should want to give him a shout out.
• 32:17
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for that slide uh you put together on LinkedIn.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was very interesting.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and his point was we saw this coming, we knew it was coming.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was just surprised by how drastic of a change from 42 to 16 percent.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, a little surprised too.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, when you talk to the workforce, we have talked to the workforce about struggling to make some of these huge cost contracts to transition them into fixed price.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you're just talking to the workforce, it would seem like the numbers wouldn't be that high.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_01: Because it has been, those numbers represent a lot of work, I think, in making that transition.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, so yeah, hats off to Kevin, but hats off to the workforce too, and making those numbers.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can teach an old dog new tricks.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_00: Wolf woof.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, that's it for the news stories.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Let's get into the protests of the week.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: The National Park Service solicited quotations for leaf removal at Rock Creek Park in Washington, D.C.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: Casey and Company sent out its quotations six days ahead, but its email got lost.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Will walk us through this incredibly interesting and fairly simple protest.
• 33:14
  SPEAKER_00: Of all the protests I've read, I thought, okay, this is one I can understand.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: It's simple.
• 33:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's a good Halloween protest.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is how Eda celebrates Halloween.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's got leaves, so fall.
• 33:25
  SPEAKER_01: Fall, yeah.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's a very autumn-esque protest.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: It's scary though, because protests are disappearing.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a Halloween element to it.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's Casey and Company.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they're a small business in Washington.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, they're protesting the issuance of a purchase order to brawn services from the Department of Interior National Park.
• 33:46
  SPEAKER_01: So the National Park Services for, like you said, leaf removal services.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: And that's my first question is why are they removing leaves from the National Park?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's the leaves on the trees.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: I think they fall.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the thing about the neighborhood.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yep, but even go back to your time in DC when you know yard gets covered in leaves.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_00: But you you have to rake them up.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: But that's a neighborhood, not a protected national park.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I mean, I don't think they're in the woods.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: That's fine.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's like around the fields and things like that.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just I'm picturing the doge coming in, being like, get these leaves out of here.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_01: Bro, national parks need to be way more efficient.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: Get rid of the trees and leaves, add pavement.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: Well, bronze services is from, I think, the Chattanooga area.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: They have a ton of trees and a ton of leaves.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_00: They know exactly what they're doing.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: Aaron Powell, so we're messing with nature, but just in order to upkeep the parks.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: So Teddy Roosevelt's not turning over in his grave.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Leave removal.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: Teddy Roosevelt used to swim at this park in uh the frozen rivers.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: The ice is floating by.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: He did swim.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, what?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, give me some facts here about this park.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's we would spend some time in the national parks here.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: That's one.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: Remember one, Teddy Roosevelt used to hike and swim there and swim while it's freezing water.
• 34:49
  SPEAKER_00: And his ghost still swims there today.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's spooky.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: It is the only national park with a planetarium.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I mean there's other federal planetariums.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: You don't want, when you're walking into the planetarium, you don't want to stumble over piles of leaves.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's the stuff.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta remove them.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: It also impacts the way the light, the moonlight, hits the leaves and refracts.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_00: It it makes it harder to see.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: You gotta get that nature out of there.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: Get that out of there.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: And number number three, uh, Lincoln was at Fort Stevens, which is there within and taken care of by this park.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: He was not only there, he took fire, took on fire.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: He was uh at the fort, okay, Lincoln, and he wanted to watch the battle.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: So he's up on the over a fence watching, and then he became a target.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: People were shooting at him.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: During the Civil War, they pulled him down.
• 35:32
  SPEAKER_00: They pulled him down.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_00: So it was uh they were actually, I think this might have been part of the assassination attempt.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: They saved him.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's a prolonged assassination attempt.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: That was John Wilkes' booth behind the gun.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, all right, we'll we'll try this again.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh interesting, interesting things.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: A very historical part.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh clearly a leaf problem.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and they needed a contract to do it.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Now, uh, they did a an RFQ according to part 12 of the RFO comes in.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_01: And what's interesting about this is because it was an RFQ, because it was part 12, they didn't have to do trade-off or LPTA.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: They just had one evaluation factor and it was price.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: That was it.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: Lowest price wins.
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_00: No matter who they are, what they are, the lowest price wins.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_01: Which is seems a little risky, but I guess leaf removal is pretty straightforward.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is like a workshop lab I could do when they say, okay, here's the requirements.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: It has to be removing leaves and it has to be lowest price.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: The leaves need to be gone.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: The evaluation all the quotes are like, okay, we'll remove the leaves.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: Here's our price.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: How many people are on this National Parks evaluation board?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're all looking at it.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: All right, everyone vote.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: What's the lowest number?
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: So it's very straightforward.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: One evaluation factor, which was price.
• 36:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then they did have uh something in here in their RFQ.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where this is about just a heads up.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, we should probably say this at the beginning.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: This was dismissed.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: So they denied the protest.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: Spoiler alert.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, sorry.
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_01: And um, this is about a late protest.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_01: So we we've had a lot of conversations about the new RFO with part 12.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: Kind of this late is late rule not applying.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: This kind of gets talked about.
• 37:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the question is here this is where was it late or not received?
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's the big question.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's late.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think they called this late.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the offers, they said the offers are responsible for submitting, this was in the RFC, for submitting quotes so as to reach the government office.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: It had to reach the government office designated by the solicitation by the time specified.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_01: It also said at the bottom, late proposals will not be accepted.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: But they also, yeah, they also use part 12.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_01: Part 12, just as a reminder to everyone, the new RFO clause uh 52212-1 provides that uh late on under uh paragraph C, uh offers are responsible for submitting offers and any modifications or revisions and the solicitation by the time specified.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_01: Any offer not received by the time specified is late and will not be considered unless it is received, one, before a word is made, and two, the contracting officer determines that accepting the late offer would not unduly delay the acquisition.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so what is Casey arguing then?
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: What happened to Casey?
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: So Casey submitted, so this is electronically.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now remember the offers have to reach the government office.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: And when you're submitting your uh proposals uh electronically, that uh proposal has to reach the inbox that that's on there.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so the record shows that Casey sent its quotation to the email address specified in the solicitation on July 23rd at 8 59 a.m.
• 38:45
  SPEAKER_01: By the way.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Six days early.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: The the due date was July 29th at 12 p.m.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_01: And just as a uh little gripe on my part, I hate it when the it's 12 because people get the AMPM confused with 12.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_01: You always think like, is AM uh midnight again?
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: Or is it anyway?
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_01: But they and so so um but they did it six days early.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: They got a they got a message back that they casey received a delivery confirmation that its email successfully sent the message to the email address.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: An outlook notification.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: Message has been delivered.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, here's the scary part though.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is where the Halloween gets in.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, by the solicitation's closing date of July 29th, the contracting officer received 15 quotations in the email box to include uh Braun, who won.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: Casey's quotation was not among them.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's haunted.
• 39:38
  SPEAKER_01: Where is it?
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_01: So they didn't even know Casey submitted the quotation.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_01: Casey thought that that submission was in.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, after evaluating the quotations received, contracting officers selected Braun.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Casey asked for a debrief.
• 39:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's where Casey found out.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_01: He asked for the debrief.
• 39:55
  SPEAKER_01: Contracting officers, like, we didn't even get your uh quotation.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Now remember, last week, we remind I think it was last week, right?
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_00: We told contractors, hey, ask for your debriefs.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: Commute, even if you don't win, you don't hear back, ask for debriefs, ask for information.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, here's an example.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't, you know, you could find out some crazy stuff.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: You thought maybe you weren't picked for because your price wasn't lowest.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, you weren't picked because you never got to play.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: So your email, even though you got a uh a notification that the government received it, it never actually went to the CO.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: So what happened?
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_01: So uh the next day the contracting officer responded to Casey's email informing the protester, the contracting officer did not even have a record of receiving a quote from Casey.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_01: And then so the contracting officer declined to consider Casey's quotation, stating that the onus is on the contractor to ensure all communications are properly evaluated.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: So what happened was it it spam.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_01: When's a spam?
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_01: His email went a spam.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: It went to a server that identified it as a phishing email and it never went into the contracting officer's inbox.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: It it was marked as quote unquote high confidence fish.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: Fish spelled, of course, like the band.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh P H I.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: Is it fish smell spelled that way?
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: It is, yeah.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_00: High confidence fish.
• 41:11
  SPEAKER_00: Man, what's really frustrating is, I mean, if you're putting in a a bid or a solicitation, who knows if you're gonna win?
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, there's so many things that are evaluated, you know.
• 41:19
  SPEAKER_00: They might, you know, there might the fix may be in, you know, maybe they know a guy, and you just don't know what's gonna happen.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: When the only evaluation factor is price, yeah, then at least you know, hey, let's just get it in there.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: If we're the lowest, we'll win.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: You know so to to not to basically have that email lost, where if you just would have had the right email, then you would have gotten the money.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: That one's that's gotta burn.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_01: If this had been a systemic problem, the the protest kind of goes into, and I think there's been protests about that as well, where the contracting office didn't receive any proposals because there was this email malfunction.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_01: Or uh then courts have ruled, yeah, that that is a that is an issue you need to consider.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: But this wasn't a systemic problem.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: They received the other quotations.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 15 people got it.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: This, by the way, has come up.
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh this has been a kind of an age-old problem with the latest late rule.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it used to be uh it's like the physical version of this is when you're having problems like trying to deliver your proposal at an installation and you're having issues at the gate.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: Like they're there for some reason you can't get into the gate to deliver.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost this is the electronic version of that.
• 42:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you're trying to get your electronic proposal in, but there is an installation gate, and it is this.
• 42:29
  SPEAKER_01: I let me ask you though, what could KC have done?
• 42:32
  SPEAKER_01: Like he he submitted this email, it bounced back and it didn't bounce back.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: It it he got a response that said the government someone received it.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_00: I have a couple thoughts.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_00: One, I asked you a minute ago, could so there was one of the um uh solicitations that was 27 minutes late, but because it was deemed not getting in the way of the award process, it said look, we'll still accept it.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: So they brought it in.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: Because again, they're only looking at the lowest price.
• 42:54
  SPEAKER_01: So the CO exercised the new uh discretionary protest because they said bring it in.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 43:01
  SPEAKER_00: Late is not late in this case.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's not gonna again, the only evaluating factor is price.
• 43:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so a 27-minute late solicitation, you might as well take it because it could be lower and you could save the taxpayer money.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_00: So they accepted that one that was late by by uh 27 minutes.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_00: The difference here with Casey is they never got it according to their terminology.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't that it was late, it just never arrived.
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well uh and it was already warded.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_00: But it did technically arrive.
• 43:25
  SPEAKER_00: So I I I would it's a little unfair.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: He at least had his he did one thing correct, or they did one thing correct.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_00: They had on the uh notifications and outlook that you could at least say the email was delivered, so the email address is receiving email.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: So you at least know something was delivered to someone, or your email is delivered to someone.
• 43:42
  SPEAKER_00: The only thing else they could have done would be email the contracting officer, said, Hey, can you please confirm r that you received this?
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:49
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and they apparently had had some trouble.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: They said in in their protest that this uh you know, that there have been some issues of their emails going into spam.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_00: But again, that actually puts it to me, puts it back on.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Casey to say, look, if you knew this was a problem, and you you send an email and then six days later you haven't heard anything still, maybe just send one more email, just hey, make sure you guys got it.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: You got the attachment.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_00: It is a little unfair, though.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_00: I mean it's only based on price.
• 44:11
  SPEAKER_00: The problem is it was already it's not that they denied it because they were late.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: They already moved forward.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_00: The award went on.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like they already awarded it correctly.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_01: The contracting officer can only accept a late offer if two conditions are made.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: One is that they say it doesn't unduly delay the acquisition, but the second is before the award is made.
• 44:30
  SPEAKER_01: And they didn't even find this out until after the post-award debriefing.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the official ruling.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: It is what it is, man.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: We that's what they are like it stinks, just as what I said.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_01: Some defense for this ruling is this has been litigated upon, this idea of electronic proposals bouncing off of servers.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: And the alternate to allow this in is to require the contracting officer to dig into all the servers and you know and and figure this out.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, the onus is, you know, the the courts have said in the past, if this is not a systemic problem, the onus is on the contractor to make sure that that email reaches that, you know, what they call it.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_01: It reaches the government office, which is that email unbox, not not some like pass-through gate.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I think is like, how would they so how would they do that?
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because every email they s they send is gonna be bounced.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's another funny thing, is they also found they also found out there were 16 other emails that the contractor had sent or that Casey had sent before the two weeks prior that was also being held as phishing.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know what those were was were they was that his company spamming?
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, probably is that why?
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe it's their own fault.
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's their own fault.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, that's that's a great protest.
• 45:46
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for going over that with us.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_00: And Edda, once again, yeah, did it again.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Halloween, Edda.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_00: That was a good scary story.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: That was a good one.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um that was pretty scary for contractors.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's a tough situation.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh real quick, I keep forgetting uh our friend Ann Laurent, who puts a lot of these news stories together for us from these great publishers that put this put this news out there on the web.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: She said we need to explain the title, The Far is Lava, um, which I you know I thought, you know, The Floor is Lava is the name of a popular game kids played, turned into a popular show on Netflix where you just pretend the floor is lava and you hop around on your couch.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now it's a TV show.
• 46:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um so it's a I think it was really an unofficial game well before it turned into a board game.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: We kind of when I was growing up, yeah, just pretend like you shouldn't be touching parts of the floor.
• 46:30
  SPEAKER_01: So the far is the lava.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: So that's where it comes from.
• 46:32
  SPEAKER_00: The floor is lava.
• 46:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh so thanks, Ann, for letting us uh reminding us that maybe we should explain that.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we have time for a couple listener comments and questions.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to get into that, Will.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_00: Anything else before we move on from our news stories to kind of wrap up our show here?
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let's do it.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: Um this one comes from Stephen Clements at Stephen Clements.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_00: Another fun episode.
• 46:50
  SPEAKER_00: When you mentioned bad contracting employee of the week and said Steve at VA, I got a little nervous until I remembered I'm no longer at VA, I'm at DOW now.
• 46:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it was a couple weeks ago when we said we are agency of the week, and we gave HHS the agency of the week.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: This week it's gonna be National Park Services.
• 47:05
  SPEAKER_00: National Park is the agency of the week.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_00: Excellent job on this uh on that protest um or on the uh solicitation.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: Runner-up may be the army.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: We did have a lot of articles on it.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_00: So Steve was worried it was him.
• 47:16
  SPEAKER_00: Steve, it was not you.
• 47:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it's it will never be VA until he remembers.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: So he's no longer there now.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_00: Congratulations of being a DOW, the runner-up of, or I guess the Army would have been.
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_00: But uh Steve, thanks for commenting.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, a question then from uh Steven Clements.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_00: In my new role, I work mostly with staffing contracts for both personal and non-personal services.
• 47:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any suggested readings, watchings, or classes to sharpen my skills for those items?
• 47:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, that's a good question.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we actually do have, I don't know if this is gonna just be exclusive on our pro account, or we'll have this video on um YouTube, but we recently uh made a video on um part 37 of the RFO.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that's where we we go into a little bit of a comparison and contrast of two issues that come up when you have service contractors working in your office.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's different from custodial services where it's or leaf removal services.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_01: These guys have a specific job, you're not really interacting with them much.
• 48:12
  SPEAKER_01: There's other service contracts where that's like people call them staff augmentation.
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_01: They're basically they have offices, they're working with you.
• 48:19
  SPEAKER_01: They don't even have name tags sometimes.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: You can't even really tell.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um that can start looking like they are government employees and there's liability issues that come up.
• 48:29
  SPEAKER_01: You can't treat them like government employees.
• 48:30
  SPEAKER_01: You can't.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's a personal service contract if you do, and those are not allowed.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so, but then there's the other side.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_01: So what one side of the coin is when you supervise one way that you show uh personal services uh or that you're it's like de facto employees, is when you're supervising contractors' time, when you're not allowing them to take leave because they're just part of the office, you're making them go to like different functions and stuff, you're treating them like an employee.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a obsessive micromanaging of these people who are really bound by a performance work statement on a contract, not some kind of HR.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh the other side of that coin is something called inherently governmental function and uh functions, as that is where you don't a result of a resulting from maybe when you don't supervise them enough, and they start actually taking on functions that should be performed by the government, writing policies, obligating money like contractors can't be, contracting officers, uh fighting wars, so combat, things like that, uh is an inherently governmental function.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_01: So we we do have a video, uh, Steve, on um kind of comparing those two, uh, inherently governmental functions on one side, personal services on the other.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_01: Both big issues you have to consider when you have a team of contractors working hand in hand with you.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because you know, you got water cooler talk, you start bonding with them, uh, so they can be your friends, just not friends with benefits.
• 49:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, Steve.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_00: Did we publish?
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_00: Is that published yet?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_00: If not, if hey, look, Steven, if it's not on YouTube, it's only on our uh behind the paywall of Pro, where you can earn CLPs for this kind of content.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe Steve, I'll just shoot me a message, Steven.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'll uh send you the link, the you know, the free link.
• 50:11
  SPEAKER_00: Don't tell anybody.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_00: Um we have time for more questions, I think.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Will.
• 50:15
  SPEAKER_00: Question, gents.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any experience awarding a SIBR phase three contract?
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_00: Ah, good question.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_00: Was that process like?
• 50:23
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: So SIBR phase three.
• 50:27
  SPEAKER_01: So with phase one and phase two are usually provided through SIBR funding at Sibber offices.
• 50:33
  SPEAKER_01: And that's to for a small business to work a prototype out.
• 50:37
  SPEAKER_01: By the time you get to phase three, you need money.
• 50:40
  SPEAKER_01: You need money from the agency.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, customer, some kind of transition office.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now there's a little bit of resource sharing between maybe that SIBR office and then the office that's gonna be accepting this uh this phase, siber phase two contractor.
• 50:56
  SPEAKER_01: I've had little experience at the Air Force.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_01: We did have Sibber phase three contracts that we worked with af uh Afworks.
• 51:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we found out we we just had to align that with our needs at the Air Force, but we'd we'd look and see what phase two, what con what uh small businesses passed phase two and were ready for a phase three, and we'd see if any of them were um were applicable for us to award.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so I personally never awarded a phase three, but I was in an office with contracting officers who did award phase three, so that came up a lot.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: I would just say the process, I think the process is um, of course, streamlined because you can go directly to that.
• 51:34
  SPEAKER_01: Uh in the file, you you you know, you want to have that endorsement letter, the letter that um that this has been uh that phase two has been completed, and then um you have to provide that resource sharing with your SIBR office.
• 51:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but great question.
• 51:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'll leave you with one more question, a little trivia for the audience.
• 51:52
  SPEAKER_00: On the Casey protest, yes, what how much do you think it costs based on the award?
• 51:58
  SPEAKER_00: How much does it cost to to rake all the leaves at a national park in DC?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah you can hit pause so you can think for yourself.
• 52:04
  SPEAKER_00: I want you guys to answer.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:05
  SPEAKER_01: Just to give you context, you're talking about removing leaves around the planetarium.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a thousand acres.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's a thousand acres the size of this park around the frozen river that Teddy swam in around the little stoop that Lincoln almost got shot for the first time.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_00: $43,000 for the first year.
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, and then there's a few extra years added on, but the first year is$43,000 in the auction years after that.
• 52:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's not too bad.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: No, it's not.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: I thought that was that's like so again, some of these protests, we're not talking hundreds of millions of dollars here.
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_00: You know, this we're getting into the weeds.
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: Into the leaves.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: Into the leaves.
• 52:40
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for joining us on The Far is Lava, where we dissect the headlines so you don't have to.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: If you enjoyed today's episode, please subscribe to our channel, subscribe to the podcast, leave a review on the podcast, and of course, share with your best friend, your fellow 1102.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, the Far is Lava is sponsored by ASIGovernment, the greatest company in the world.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_00: Editorial work by Pamela Rent, produced in collaboration with Studio Podcast Suite.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_00: We'll be back next week with another round of stories of the RFO take.
• 53:10
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Halloween.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_00: Happy Halloween, everyone.