Periodic Table of Acquisition Innovations

Betterment is a process where vendors have the opportunity, in a dedicated space in their quote or proposal, to outline specific aspects of their proposed solution that exceed or enhance the government’s requirement and the value those aspects bring to the government. These Betterment promises are submitted as a stand-alone factor and are considered in the overall tradeoff analysis. These Betterment promises are captured and included in the awarded requirements document (award) replacing the former minimums of the original requirements document (solicitation). For example, an offeror proposes a definite promise of 600 actions per day with an explanation of the value impact it brings and how it is possible to exceed the government’s minimum document production of 400 actions per day.

• Allows vendors to propose an enhanced solution and the government to evaluate and incorporate it into the award document, if selected for award.
• Allows vendors a dedicated space in the proposal submissions to identify how their unique approaches exceed or enhance the government’s minimum requirement.

• With the Betterment technique, teams can include a separate evaluation factor to allow vendors a place to formally propose a solution that exceeds or enhances the government’s requirement in a meaningful way.
• Increase successful outcomes of the work performed under the contract.

• Solicitation: DHS USCIS TDPS Solicitation
• Award Decision: DHS USCIS TDPS Award Decision
• Overview: DHS PILCast #13
• Sample Evaluation: DHS USCIS TDPS Betterment Evaluation Report

A Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) (FAR 35.016) is a notice from the government that requests scientific or research proposals from private firms concerning certain areas of interest to the government. The proposals submitted by the private firms may lead to contracts.

• Acquisition of basic and applied research and that part of development not related to the development of a specific system or hardware procurement

• Allows for funding of state-of-the-art advances without a specific programmatic requirement in place
• Similar to a regular BAA, DHS"s Long-Range BAA covers a wide range of subjects and is short on details. This enables DHS to contemplate proposals for original research that fall outside the scope of its more narrowly defined BAAs

• Website: DARPA BAA
• Website: USAF BAA
• Video: NASA Between Two FARS Broad Agency Announcements Part I
• Video: NASA Between Two FARS Broad Agency Announcements Part II

• Commercial Solutions Opening
• Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I and II Competitions

A Challenge-Based Acquisition (ChBA) presents a real-life challenge scenario inviting vendors to conduct technical demonstrations with the capability for the government to test or interact with the technology and select the challenge-proven solution with award to the best suited working prototype or functional automated solution. ChBA uses the Federal Acquisition Regulation or Other Transaction authorities and in both the pre-award and post-award phases.

• ChBA uses challenges to communicate the needed capability, encourage innovation in a minimally prescriptive environment, assess candidate offerings, and ultimately purchase solutions in quantity.
• ChBA is especially appropriate in situations where the Government"s need is urgent and time critical, where no traditional solution seems viable, or where emerging technologies have the potential to provide non-traditional solutions.

• Focus (encourages Government understanding of sought capability gaps)
• Innovation (communicates needs without constraining the solution space)
• Risk Management (understanding the range of solutions without a major commitment of resources)
• Verification (if you don"t see it, you don"t buy it, no more paper proposals only)
• Synergy (incentivizes industry participation and engages user community)
• Fairness (levels the playing field for small, innovative companies)
• Procurement (at the end, unlike prize competitions, you can buy the solution in quantity, not just the prototype)

• Innovative Contracting Case Studies (Refer to pages 13-14 and 79-83 in the report)
• Challenge-Based Acquisition Handbook 5th Edition
• Case Study: JIEDDO Counter-IED Culvert Challenge
• Case Study: Army Cyber Innovation Challenge Using OTA
• Case Study: USDA's Farmers.gov Portal Development
• Toolkit for Developing a Challenge/Demonstration

• Technical Demonstrations

Reimagine use of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) Subparts 12.6 and 13.5, to procure technology development services using commercial procedures. Acquisitions are marked by brief and goal-oriented requirement documents, short proposal times, multiple awardees and contracts with short periods of performance (base and option periods). Option periods are used as performance phases, where only successfully demonstrated solutions are carried forward.

• Provides for government sponsored new development work without the need for Cost Reimbursable contracts and the challenges associated with traditional development programs.
• Maximizes flexibilities of traditional FAR procedures.
• Solicit commercial products and services without special authorities.

• Accelerates technology development for government-unique requirements
• Increases access to new entrants
• Accelerates time to award
• Decreases risk of incompatible technologies
• SMALL BUSINESS BENEFIT: Improves opportunities for small businesses to obtain Government contracts through manageable commercial-style processes that focus on helping offerors engage with potential government customers, minimize administrative requirements and maximize opportunities to demonstrate strengths

• Solicitation: Pilot IRS - Treasury-wide Data Governance and Analytics (DGA) Initiative
• Solicitation: Pilot IRS - Data Mashing Initiative

• Commercial Solutions Opening
• Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I and II Competitions
• Modular Contracting

Government buyers often want prospective offerors to learn more about requirements before submission of full proposals. Discovery is like an in-depth site visit that allows interested sources to conduct due diligence. The government may provide a reading room and access to key requirement owners for direct exchanges with individual companies. In order to get the best possible proposals, the Discovery process takes the site visit concept and makes it more interactive, letting offerors ask specific questions. This is typically done after release of the final solicitation and before receipt of full proposals, possibly after phase 1 of a multi-phased procurement when the competitive pool has been reduced to only a few remaining offerors.

• Reduces the often overwhelming advantage of incumbency.
• Incumbents typically have greater access and insight to close-at-hand information, such as the background of the mission, the environment, or the underlying government need.
• Awardee transition and ramp-up times are reduced due to better understanding of the work.

• Builds supplier diversity and resiliency by creating a more manageable playing field for competition
• A thorough understanding of the requirement results in more competitive and customer-responsive offerors from industry.
• Offerors can ask questions of the 'as is' landscape to better understand the scope and to better shape their final phase proposal submission.
• The government receives improved performance due to a better alignment of requirements and the selected offer.
• SMALL BUSINESS BENEFIT: Allows new entrant small businesses to gain insight and a level of understanding about the requirement that would otherwise not be available

• Presentation Deck: DHS PIL Boot Camp Workbook Innovation Technique #9
• Solicitation: DHS USCG ISD Fair Opportunity Notice (FON) (para 1.3.4 - P.6)
• Solicitation: DOI BSEE EITCS Request for Quotation (RFQ) (para 4.2, P. 44 - 45)
• Video: PILCast Episode # 26: Discovery Sessions for Services

• Interactive Q&A
• One on Ones
• Down-Selects

This technique allows procurement teams to build flexibility into the solicitation to allow for future conversion from one contract type to another, such as from time-and-materials to firm-fixed-price, after award.

Consider this text in your next solicitation: "As appropriate, after award, Labor Hour/Time & Material (T&M) contract line item numbers (CLINs) may be converted to Firm-Fixed Price (FFP) CLINs through mutual agreement of both parties, based on the rates (and labor categories) negotiated at the time of award."

Possible clause to reference: FAR 52.212-4(c), Contract Terms and Conditions – Commercial Items, Changes (Oct 2018)

• Allows procurement teams to award the most appropriate type of contract, at time of award, but convert to a more appropriate, less risky, type after enough historical performance data is known.
• Improves collaboration between the contracting office, program office, and the contractor. As appropriate, after award, CLINs may be converted through mutual agreement of both parties.
• Provides the flexibility to include optional CLINs for support that cannot be accurately priced before work commences.  For example – an optional T&M CLIN can be converted to FFP when appropriate, such as when the work is more defined after performance or when funding becomes available.
• Allows flexibility when the program office is faced with budget constraints, such as in continuing resolutions. The team can convert CLINs to firm-fixed price when appropriate.

• Contract type can be converted during the life of the contract instead of waiting until the next competition.
• Allows for additional flexibility under hybrid-type contracts.
• Increase successful outcomes of the work being performed under the selected contract type. The government and contractor teams can build upon previous work and/or once knowns are more determined, finalizing pricing, within scope and within the awarded price estimation.
• Procurement teams can test a new contract type environment within scope during award.
• Allows the team to be more flexible in meeting the mission during continuing resolutions.

• Solicitation: DHS Financial Systems Modernization (FSM) Request for Proposal (RFP), pg. 57
• Solicitation: DHS Service Management Tool (SMT) and Support Services Request for Quote (RFQ), pg. 11
• DHS Presentation: Enhanced Contract Type Conversion, 2021
• DHS PILCast #5 (training video)

This technique fuses or brings together multiple requirements into a single solicitation from what would normally be multiple separate solicitations for each specific requirement. The varying requirements could be the same, similar, or completely different documents combined into the single solicitation. Prior to issuing the solicitation, the acquisition team would determine the evaluation strategy for each requirement outlined. The team can use the same or different evaluation approach to evaluate responses to the solicitation for each requirement, as established in the single solicitation. After evaluations are complete, the contracting officer issues separate awards for each requirement to the respective successful offeror. The Fusion Procurements technique does not refer to the process of issuing a single solicitation for a multiple award contract or agreement.

•  The government can streamline the review process by submitting one solicitation package for review rather than multiple solicitation packages. This enables only needing one solicitation or acquisition strategy to be reviewed by legal advisors, solicitation review boards, or other reviewers such as source selection teams rather than multiple reviews. 
•  If teams keep the evaluation process the same for the multiple requirements, then all parties (government and industry) can get through the evaluation process more efficiently.

• Streamlines the review and approval processes for government teams. 
• Provides teams a method to issue solicitations concurrently rather than separately. 
• Streamlines the evaluation process for government and vendors when using the same evaluation criteria for each anticipated award on the solicitation. 
• Streamlines buying for same or similar requirements.
• Supports portfolio management, regardless of scope, across programs or agency requirements.
• SMALL BUSINESS BENEFIT: Includes multiple requirements into one solicitation, thus reducing the probability of missing a requirement issued by the government and increasing strategic participation in the acquisition by the small business community.

• Solicitation: DHS CBP TASPD Unrestricted RFQ
• Solicitation: DHS CBP TASPD Small Business RFQ
• Solicitation: DHS ICE LEIDS RFP & PWS
• Solicitation: DHS TSA ATSS RFQ
• Webinar: PIL Webinar #64 – One Solicitation To Rule Them All
• Overview: DHS PILCast #16

This practice allows award to the highest technically rated offer that is also found to have a reasonable price without using trade-offs between cost or price and technical.  This practice ranks or rates offerors according to technical factors following either the Self Scoring Model or a government technical evaluation.  Price evaluation of only the highest ranked or rated offer proceeds next.  Price reasonableness can be determined through various techniques such as benchmarking or statistical analysis (within one standard deviation of offeror distribution, for example).  If the offeror’s price is not determined to be fair and reasonable, the offer is rejected and the next highest ranked or rated offer is evaluated until award can be made to the highest ranked or rated offeror with a fair and reasonable price.

Agencies have successfully used this technique in FAR 15 and FAR 16.5 procurements.  Not recommended for acquisitions where cost is a significant consideration.  Also not recommended for FAR Part 8 actions because of statutory and regulatory requirement that best value determinations result in the lowest overall cost alternative (considering price, special features, administrative costs, etc.).

• Promotes efficiency in acquisition through a streamlined selection decision, especially for knowledge based services where technical ability is of paramount concern to the point that cost is not used as a comparative discriminator among offerors.
• Allows technical capability to be prioritized over price and/or cost without requiring explicit trade-offs between technical and cost that are not likely to change the outcome.
• Ensures proposed pricing is more accurately associated with proposed quality of work.

• Simplifies the best value determination; provides a streamlined means to make award to the highest technically rated offeror.
• Accelerates time to award.  An agency reported an award time of 79 days after release of the solicitation compared to 268 days for a comparable procurement.  

• Presentation Deck: AIA_USAF_HTRO-RRP.pdf
• GAO decision: B-418796.pdf
• Solicitation: USAID EPRR (p. 82).pdf
• Solicitation: VA CEDAR IDIQ (para E.8 on p. 109)
• GAO decision: B-413559.pdf

• Self Scoring Model
• Comparative Evaluation

Modular procurement is a procurement model that breaks what would traditionally be a large, monolithic contract into several shorter-term, lower dollar amount contracts. When combined with human-centered and agile practices, it can mean allowing those who use your services to use portions of the new software faster.

• As the government needs to more closely monitor the performance of smaller contracts they can help remedy problems to avoid cost overlays and drawn out schedules. In contrast, the vast majority of larger projects are overbudget or failing

• Modular procurement makes it easier to manage software development by segmenting risk
• This acquisition strategy permits isolated failure in one unit of many units, rather than letting it impact the entire project
• Because each project is smaller, they are easier to comprehend and manage, making problems and risks smaller so you can recognize and resolve them more easily
• SMALL BUSINESS BENEFIT: Smaller contracts provide small businesses more manageable opportunities better aligned with their capabilities

• DHS CWMD HAIBP Backpacks RFP
• GSA 18F - Managing Modular Contracts

• Down-Selects

This process allows for the Government to: remove non-performing contractors, add new contractors during "open seasons", etc. Too often multiple-award IDIQs or BPAs have contractors that are either not competing for work or require more competition in out years. Here the Government has the flexibility to address issues of performance and competition after the IDIQ or BPA has been award, not just prior to award.

• With long periods of performance, a multiple-award contract (MAC) may become less useful over time, reducing access to innovative, best-suited vendors who actively participate in the procurement process.  

• Maintains access to the best solutions
• Incentivizes vendors to engage in the procurement process
• SMALL BUSINESS BENEFIT: Gives small business offerors more opportunities to enter an agency’s supplier base by gaining a spot on the contract vehicle after initial competition and award rather than being ‘locked out’ of the market as a prime contractor for a number of years

• Job Aid: On and Off-ramp procedures for BPAs
• Solicitation: GSA OASIS IDIQ RFP
• Announcement: HHS NIH CIOSP3 SB

• Down-Selects
• Modular Contracting

The Rates Only for Pricing Evaluations (ROPE) methodology alleviates the burden on vendors submitting complex pricing submissions and on contracting officers when evaluating these submissions as part of establishing an indefinite-delivery indefinite-quantity (IDIQ) contract or blanket purchase agreement (BPA).

Prior to the issuance of the solicitation, the Government creates a realistic estimated number of hours or a scenario of the labor categories or CLINs to evaluate pricing. In contrast to typical practice, the Government does not share the number of hours with the vendors. Instead, the Government asks vendors to submit only the rates, for the price submission factor, of the requested labor categories for the parent award, using the same scenario or estimate for all price evaluations. The submitted rates by the vendors are evaluated by the Government and inputted into the estimated hours or scenario to come up with the total evaluated price for each vendor. The total evaluated price is used for evaluation purposes only. All proposed labor categories and rates are incorporated into the final award. The scenario and results are shared with vendors as a part of their debriefing or when being given a brief explanation of the award decision.

ROPE is recommended for use when using a best-value tradeoff to award single-award IDIQs and BPAs and may be used in a multiple-award environment. ROPE is highly recommended for labor hour or time-and-materials type IDIQs or BPAs and may be used for other contract types. This technique should not be used for the award of orders against an existing IDIQ or BPA.  

Consider this text in your next solicitation:

“To help select the best value Quoter for this BPA [or IDIQ] opportunity, the Government will use the hourly rates from the BPA [or IDIQ] LCAT Pricing Rate Worksheet/Excel Spreadsheet. The Government will apply those rates to an estimated number of hours for each labor category to arrive at a total evaluated price. Quoters shall submit the attached pricing worksheet.”

 OR

 “All vendors must complete the LCAT Pricing Rate Worksheet by completing all cells not already filled-in by the Government. The Government will then apply those rates to a sample task order scenario to arrive at a total evaluated price to use in the best-value tradeoff analysis. The estimate [or ceiling] provided in the solicitation may assist in coming up with discounted rates for the base period and all option periods. The Government will not disclose this sample task order scenario with vendors.”

• Streamlines the submission of pricing for vendors.
• Enables contracting officers to perform a  more efficient evaluation of vendor price submissions.
• Reduces the gamesmanship in pricing submissions.

• Streamlines the solicitation, evaluation, and award process. Eliminates the need for a full “sample task order” and instead focuses only on the realistic scenario pricing.
• Reduces the burden for the government during price evaluation and streamlines time to award. The government evaluates the rates and discounts submitted for the life of the parent vehicle and applies the vendor rates to the estimated hours or scenario.
• SMALL BUSINESS BENEFIT: Streamlines and reduces the complexity of the vendor’s price proposal submission.

• Guide: DHS PIL Innovation Technique 16 (Rates Only Pricing), The Next Level Workbook
• Solicitation: DHS CBP Investment Analysis Office RFQ (FAR 8.4)
• Sample Price Sheet: DHS CBP Investment Analysis Office Price Sheet
• GAO Decision: DCSA Rates Only Pricing
• Sample: DCSA Instructions to Offerors
• Sample: DCSA Evaluation Process
• Sample: DCSA Price Workbook
• Sample: USDA Technique Example
• Sample Price Sheet: USDA Pricing Matrix
• Sample Evaluation: USDA Pricing Evaluation Worksheet (5 Scenarios)

Agencies conduct mission essential acquisition activities virtually and remotely, leveraging new or existing technology and tools. Virtual and other remote acquisition activities include i) online industry conferences, ii) phone interviews, iii) virtual site visits and inspections, iv) video proposals, and v) virtual oral presentations and consensus evaluations.

• Innovative virtual and remote activities with online tools and telephone devices can be highly beneficial when in person activities are not practical or possible, with emergency acquisitions (FAR Part 18) or when stakeholders are geographically dispersed.
• In the face of a pandemic, such as COVID-19, remote acquisitions represent not just more efficient practices, but a necessary mechanism to prevent unnecessary disruptions to soliciting new work and enabling continued contract awards in support of pressing mission requirements in a manner that is consistent with the HHS Centers for Disease Control"s guidance and shelter-in-place orders.
• Alternative authorities, such as challenges and prize competitions and commercial solutions opening pilots, combined with virtual and other remote activities may help with ideation processes to solve urgent mission needs.

• Accelerates time to award.
• Reduces administrative burden.
• Reduces barriers to entry.
• Enables more effective decision-making.
• Enables procurements to continue where they might otherwise be stopped, such as to comply with social distancing guidance for public health safety.
• SMALL BUSINESS BENEFIT: Allows new entrants, recent entrants, and small businesses to participate in federal contracting opportunities who might not be able to otherwise on equal footing as to established contractors.  

• Solicitation: DHS FEMA Video Proposal for Software Design and O&M
• Solicitation: DHS FEMA Video Proposal for Technology Prototype
• Solicitation: DHS CBP Phone Interview for Services
• Solicitation & Case Study: VA TAC Virtual Technical Demonstration for Coding Artifacts
• Solicitation & Case Study: VA TAC Virtual Technical Demonstration for Mobile Application
• Solicitation: VA TAC Virtual Post Award Kick Off
• Workforce Guide: USAID Tips for Virtual Requirements Development
• Website: US Army Challenge for COVID-19 Ventilators
• Commercial Solutions Opening: DHS Teleconference or Videoconference

• Oral Presentations
• On-the-spot Consensus

Self-certification, or a self-scoring system, puts the burden of proving the contractor's capabilities on them instead of the Government. Bidders score themselves on one or more factors and provide documentation to support their assertions.

• Awarding large multiple-award IDIQs or BPAs is an arduous process. Many vendors may submit proposals while few are actually qualified. It falls to the contracting officer to separate them

• Incentivizes non-qualified bidders to avoid submitting a proposal
• Reduces administrative workload in verifying credentials
• Creates a true "apples-to-apples" comparison among bidders

• Solicitation: GSA OASIS IDIQ RFP
• Solicitation: DHS CBP TACCOM 2 RFP
• Solicitation: GSA VETS2 (Sections L&M p.74)
• Template: GSA VETS2 Self-Scoring Worksheet

• Comparative Evaluation
• Confidence Rating
• Oral Presentations