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Check-out our new President's Corner! |
The West Sound NCMA President's Corner
November 11, 2008
These are exciting times to be in contract management. As I write this, just one week ago today, two developments of potentially enormous consequence to contracting occurred.
First, was the election of a new President. Whenever a new administration comes in, especially one of a different political party, everything in government comes up for review. So we can expect a re-appraisal of the entire contracting process as new people take over, not only in the White House, but at all the levels of government. Many of these new policy-makers have decided positions against cost reimbursement contracting and sole source awards. So we can expect some major changes there.
The next development that happened on November 4, 2008, was something that has not hit public awareness yet. On that date, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, the Supreme Court of government contracting, declared unconstitutional the federal statute that mandated that the Defense Department have a goal of awarding five percent of its contract dollars every fiscal year to small and disadvantaged businesses (SDBs).
The court concluded that when Congress passed the statute it did not have sufficient evidence to justify such an action. So it constituted unjustified racial discrimination. While this only dealt with one statute involving the Defense Department, the ramifications can be enormous. What the government will do (appeal to the Supreme Court, ask the Court of Appeals to reconsider, or ask Congress to reenact the Act but with better evidence) is still up in the air. But it will certainly cause a stir once the new Congress convenes. [Click here for more details] Stay tuned................
September 8, 2008
Well, here we are at the start of another year. As you know, we normally go from September until about May or June.
Managing contracts is not getting any easier. The war on terror is having a cascading effect on all aspects of contracting, straining budgets, creating terrible turnover in contracting personnel, exponentially increasing the number of scandals as people involved in the contracting process on both sides of the table are convicted for bribery, kickbacks, false claims, and the nation struggles with the very fundamental issue of how much of our security and war fighting should be handed over to contractors.
Also problematic is that Congress seems to view procurement as a process onto which they can, with no ill effect, keep adding requirements, such as checking contractor employee immigration eligibility, or making sure they’ve paid taxes, even those totally unrelated to a government contract. All these measures may make good sense individually, but there are only so many items that you can expect one horse to carry. Beyond a certain point, these new requirements have the effect of increasing cost, decreasing competition, and slowing down the procurement process.
Reaching crisis point is the fact that the baby boomer contracting professionals, especially on the government side, are retiring. Many are then coming back as retired annuitants or are being employed by contractors. A third group is setting up shop as contractors themselves to perform contract closeout services, etc., for overworked and understaffed contracting offices. These former contracting officers and contract specialists will do all the necessary paperwork and then prepare it for the current contracting officer for signature.
All-in-all these are very challenging times to be contract managers. The old curse “may you live in challenging times” is certainly true today in contract management. All of this may well be the calm before the storm as whatever happens in the election, a new administration will take place in January 2009, so we can expect a flurry of new statutes, executive orders, regulations, memos, etc.
This chapter is all about you. Please let us know what you want us to do. If there are any particular topics or speakers that you want to hear about, please tell us. Because many of our members are involved in federal contracting, that has been a primary focus of our meetings and newsletters, but we must also address state, local, private and international contracting because you also need to be aware of that. We shall also focus on all facets of contracting (supply, services, construction, research and development) and at all tiers: government/owner, prime/general contractor, subcontractor.
If you are aware of other people who would be interested in joining or simply attending one or two of our meetings on subjects that might interest them, please invite them to do so. If you have any thoughts whatsoever on the subject, please let us know. If you become aware of new articles, new studies, new websites, new cases, a contract clause that you have used or seen in the past that has worked out very well, please send them to us for dissemination. If you have ideas for new places to have our meetings or any special events you would like us to participate in, please let us know.
It is trite to say that our success depends on you, but it does. I look forward to working with all of you this year.
Sincerely, Jim Nagle 701 Pike Street, Suite 1700 Seattle, Washington 98101-3930 Phone: (206) 623-3427 Fax: (206) 682-6234
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