ARMY AL&T
ON CONTRACTING
THE NOTICE I NEVER KNEW
When is a notice not a notice of a proposed contracting action? by Dennis P. Longo
Te second article in the On Contracting series based on the Competition in Army Contracting course, which the author developed for the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Procurement.
Regulation Supplement (DFARS) was amended to require the contracting officer to post a request for information or sources sought—two notices published by the government that are intended to gather information about industry capabilities before issuing a request for proposals. When limiting competi- tion to consider only one responsible source, the results of the notice—according to the DFARS—must be included in the sole-source approval document unless a waiver is granted.
A
Let me clarify: It wasn’t the DFARS language that confused me. I was confused because my under- standing of the concepts of a notice, synopsis, request for information, sources sought and notice of proposed contract action was abruptly challenged. A notice is a notice, right?
I knew that the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR), in Part 5, contains policies for publishing contracting opportunities to increase competition, to broaden industry participation and to assist small businesses in obtaining government contracts and subcontracts.
However, Part 5 also uses notice, contract action, synopsis, announcement and pre-solicitation notice as undefined terms—at least not clearly defined for me. Trow in the DFARS amendment requiring a request for information or sources sought, and my head began to ache—and what does this have to do with limiting competition to only one source? I reached for some aspirin.
nyone who has ever tried to do business with DOD knows that it’s complicated. Even people who know what’s going on can get confused now and then.
A few years ago, I didn’t realize I was confused until after the Defense Federal Acquisition
https://asc.ar my.mil
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